Stephen King’s The Dark Tower Movie Adaptation

Much like all of you, when I learned that there was talk of a Dark Tower adaptation for film, I was at first extremely excited. That was about a year ago now.

Now, I just can’t see it happening, no way in Hell no thank you. Someone needs to talk Stephen King out of handing over his life’s work and masterpiece to the likes of Hollywood. I have seen too many other movies which had really good acclaim completely bomb, many of them being adapted from books.

The big wigs in tinseltown will rip through this work of art, gut it out and rebuild on it’s foundation until we can’t recognize it anymore. Some books, some stories are just too good or too beautiful (or both) to have their insides hollowed out and filled with something lighter rather than staying heavy with deep meaning and feeling.

Maybe that’s just me, but I’m sure people are going to start agreeing with the idea that this story is just too precious and epic to be torn open, pulled inside out and thrown onto a screen. In the event that The Dark Tower is made and released to theaters or, god unwilling, television then I’ll have to go and see it.

Contradictive to my point, I know. But God help me, I want nothing more than to see the ‘territories’ I want to explore Mid-World and End-World. In Eddie Dean’s words in The Waste Lands, Book 3 of The Dark Tower
“I want to see it Roland. Can you dig what I’m telling you? I want to see the Tower.”
Or in Jake Chambers’ words
“And that’s the truth”

What I mean to say is, isn’t reading the books and now graphic novels enough? What are our imaginations for anyway if we never use them?

All of us King fans should be happy, lucky, blessed enough that Mr. King even got to finish his masterpiece which is The Dark Tower. For those of you old enough to remember (most likely all of you) Mr. King was in a near fatal car accident some years ago. He almost didn’t get to finish The Dark Tower. Where would we all be today if he had died? Ultimately, we would be left with a void in our lives. We’d be left wondering if Roland and his friends, his ka-tet ever reach the Tower because The Dark Tower would have never been finished.

If you fellow fans care enough even one iota about The Dark Tower, then we can all speak out against it being adapted to film. We can’t let hollywood have it’s way with a story as epic or masterful as this. We mustn’t allow hollywood to reach The Dark Tower.

The greatest obstacle that any film studio would face is taking all of the internal dialouge that is vital to the plot, and applying it in a way that makes it suitable for the big screen. Look at Detta Walker, or the events in The Drawing Of The Three, and Jake’s solo quest around New York in The Waste Lands. I honestly feel that so much of this would be lost in translation, the plot would have to be totally reworked in order for a modern audience to appreciate it.

As I write this, I recall my disbelief when reading the first chapter of Drawing… where Roland looses his right fingers to the lobstrosity. Part of what attracted me to Roland’s tale was that he seemed invincable, traversing the desert on a single canteen of water, taking on the demon in the ring. For him to loose his fingers was devestating, and it made me question King’s direction with the story. Ofcourse this worked out to drive the narrative in such a way that I feel a kinship with the ka tet of nineteen that I don’ t with other characters (except maybe Rorschach in Watchmen, and Commander Vimes from the Discworld series). Is it possible that a cinematic audience could revolt against such a brutal mutalation so early on? It may seem trivial, so let me put it another way, would a cinematic audience flock in droves in Indiana Jones had a peg leg?

In anticapation of an obvious parralell, Luke Skywalker got a robot hand at the end of Empire. This replacement means that in watching Jedi you only see an elevation in his status due to dillangent practice and honing if his arts. The removel of his hand offers little in the way of plot development, and would barely be noticable had it been left on the cutting room floor.

I am such a geek

I have read this series more times than I can count. I love this masterpiece. I have been anxiously waiting on a film. I do however think they should take their time, and make sure it is done correctly. Deep down I think they will destroy the beauty of the story, and the beauty of of characters, but I know when and if it does come out either in theatres or on TV I will not be able to convince myself not to watch. All I can do is keep my fingers crossed, and hope they do not completely destroy it.

I’ll admit I’m worried, but I REALLY want to watch it. I might do nothing more but complain, but I’ve been itching for this since I first heard about it.

One thing that really ticked me off about the stand is they swapped the time at which larry underwood met nadine with lucy swann and swann was accompanied by joe rather than nadine… wtf was the point of doin that? hopefully if they make a dark tower adaptation they do it in SIX movies so that they can include enough information to at least be on par with the book a little bit. understandably some details will have to be left out though.

I think this needs to be done much like the stand. A seven (eight if they include the book King is rumored to be working on now which takes place between wizard and glass and wolves of the calla) made for tv movies shown as a mini series. If it goes to hollywood it will be gutted into a trilogy because no one will want to commit to a seven movie series. All though apposed to NBC CBS or even SYFY I would prefer this to be done on HBO so it can be produced untouched by sensors.

Yeah, I agree with the whole Eastwood thing and would have make a great character for Roland. Although, I feel George Lucas and Stephen King would make a better combo. I mean damn, look at the Star Wars trilogys and in THX. I feel it would bring people to the theatres. If only there was another John Wayne/Clint Eastwood type to fill this role. I would go on the record and say this gross on this movie or movies would be staggering.

I want to see the film adaptation(s)–movie, miniseries, or a combination of the two that was mentioned as a possibility in the article. After all, even though Tolkien’s written work was better (naturally… great books are ALWAYS better than film), the movies were obviously made REALLY well. So there’s a possibility that the Dark Tower series could be done properly, as well. There’s a big ‘HOWEVER’ to this though… Ron “the hack” Howard does not need to be involved in any shape or form with this project. He’s such a generic director… he needs to stick with stories like ‘Splash’ (cute little movies). Why not get a guy like, oh say… Frank Darabont? You know… ‘The Shawshank Redemption’, ‘The Green Mile’, and now ‘The Walking Dead’? The first two of these examples were film adaptations of King works, BTW–and the two best that there have been, PERIOD. Or you could try and recruit another proven winner, and someone who has experience bringing sprawling fictional worlds to life (but maybe a “too obvious” choice)–Peter Jackson. Good luck with that, though… I’ve heard he stays pretty busy these days!