Rating of
2/4
"The Dark Tower" by Yojimbo
Yojimbo - wrote on 12/18/19
A young boy who has been dreaming of a terrifying alien world finds that they are actually psychic visions of an existing realm and becomes the target of an evil sorcerer hellbent on subjugating the universe.
The Dark Tower is a wish fulfilment fantasy based upon a series of novels by Stephen King, which explains why on occasion it feels very much like Stranger Things, which itself heavily pilfered ideas from King’s back catalogue. The old trope of a young, socially awkward child discovering they’re actually the most specialest kid in the whole wide world who can do anything they set their mind to is hackneyed at best, being a stalwart of Disney cartoons and comic strips the world over. But the darkness of some scenes are rather too scary for children and the plot and themes too juvenile for adults, which makes The Dark Tower fall between two stools. Even the casting coup of Elba versus McConaughey doesn’t really work because they have so little to work with; the lone gunslinger who finds new purpose while bonding with a surrogate son is a walking cliche and McConaughey’s bouffed hair, open shirt and orange tan makes him look more like a Vegas conjurer than an evil, malevolent conqueror. On the plus side, it looks nice, there are a couple of decent action sequences and it never bores thanks to its brief running time.
But the patchwork of unconvincing and cliched mythologies fail to build an engaging world and the anticlimactic ending makes it feel more like the pilot episode of a cancelled TV show than a Hollywood blockbuster.
