The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
The Dark Tower, Coming Soon to a Theater Near You (SPOILERS ERMAGERD)
ElJeffe
Registered User, ClubPA regular
Registered User, ClubPA regular
This is a thread to discuss Stephen King's super-excellent Dark Tower series, and the movie(s) it is being adapted into, featuring Idris Elba as Roland (!) and Matthew McConaughey as the Man in Black (!!).
It is the most bestest thing and deserves a grand OP full of grandness, but I am short of time so it gets a little dinky OP instead. Blame the Crimson King.
Also, this thread has ALL THE BOOK SPOILERS EVER so, you know, beware. No tags necessary for book stuff, but if you know something about events of the actual movie for some reason, please be considerate and tag those.
It is the most bestest thing and deserves a grand OP full of grandness, but I am short of time so it gets a little dinky OP instead. Blame the Crimson King.
Also, this thread has ALL THE BOOK SPOILERS EVER so, you know, beware. No tags necessary for book stuff, but if you know something about events of the actual movie for some reason, please be considerate and tag those.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
+10
Posts
pleasepaypreacher.net
Only if you're watching it near a massage place...
Also if we see Roland has the horn things might be different.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Post credits scenes have finally found their true use.
That would be perfect. Flash a couple messages on screen or even have King make an plea at the end and warn people not to stay.
No, he's not. I was just saying JDM as old, bald, and fat, like they did at the beginning of Watchmen.
I vote Rocket for Oy.
Really excited for this but also hugely wary. The Dark Tower is a big deal to me and I love them dearly.
So seeing Idris Elba cast as Roland has me raising an eyebrow. He's a great actor and could do most of the role just fine, but there's a big part of someone else's character that revolved around Roland looking like Clint Eastwood. Idris Elba doesn't look much like Clint Eastwood, so I'm curious how they're going to change those racially based story beats. I worry that with this change they'll have to keep changing things until parts of the story aren't recognizeable. Which may still make a good story, but maybe not the same story I'm hoping to see. But this is just me worrying too much for something I love. I'm hoping everything's great and the few changes they make are fantastic. I want the first season of Game of Thrones, not the most recent one.
All that would change if he has the horn or something, yeah. That'd be pretty cool. Maybe he'll see the number 20 everywhere, not 19.
I wouldn't call it big. I'd call them a series of throwaway lines that change nothing within the story context.
But I recall it got way too meta for me toward the end.
And I cringe whenever I remember that King actually wrote himself into the books as himself.
I mean,
Stephen King has said the casting choice is great so I'm hopeful, I just have fanboy concern about change. Maybe they can shift it onto Eddie more, but that would change dynamics as well.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Yes, but at the same time there exists another dynamic of
Which I think could work very, very well with Detta Walker.
Yeah they could definitely do it right and I really hope they do.
Also they better not make it just 1 movie. I'd like to see a movie covering the Gunslinger, Drawing of the Three, and maybe the start of Wasteland, should be easy enough. Wizard and Glass could be it's own movie, as could Wolves of the Calla. But they could also be really boring movies on their own. Very curious to see the format. A movie for each book seems unlikely.
the worst part about that was him killing off Jake to save himself. i mean, seriously, how many times have you gotta kill that kid Stephen?
pleasepaypreacher.net
Which part of ERMAGERD is giving you trouble?!
And the Drawing of the Three and The Waste Lands maybe.
But Wizard and Glass and beyond is just the kind of balls up crazy that only works in books.
...
Marten O'Dim is Randall Flag!
Unless you're Roland I guess.
Don't know, he never died.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Now, 6 and 7 will be odd but I'm guessing they'll thread in the multiverse stuff earlier on. Perhaps we'll get more Jake stuff faster.
edit: Not everyone does that, only people who go Todash when they die.
That was how I always thought any movie/series would work, the whole series is so Meta already may as well start the Movie with a Reference literally only the book readers would understand.
All I really remember is hating Wolves of the Calla so, so much.
And also hating how Walter O'dim got taken out like a punk by a character that had only been introduced earlier in that very same book. (Dark Tower, not Wolves)
Having Roland played by Elba doesn't bother me. As far as racial tensions go in the books, we've got:
1) General racism from old-west era times (see how W&G treats the Hispanic analogues). I think we can maybe scrub a little of this without harming the story. Not every Western these days has to be Quentin Tarentino.
2) Racism when Roland steps into our world briefly. Given that he's done it a) to kill a bunch of people in a gunfight or b) in New England/New York in 2000, avoiding calling his skin color out is again, fine.
3) Detta v Roland. Detta hated/feared Roland from the first instant he stepped into her mind because (paraphrasing) she could "feel his whiteness" and how easily he was able to overpower her. Making it just an anti-authority streak instead of racially charged is simpler, but doesn't hurt anything in the long run.
There is one point where his ethnicity does have an impact near the end: Roland is supposed to look uncannily like Stephen King himself, either as an unconscious author insert or maybe a father figure. However, by this point the novels have started to disappear into King's ego as he tied himself into the decades-long run of a series that reached into so many of his other universes. I don't think a Dark Tower movie series will be able to do that, and the existing movies based on King properties don't make DT callbacks, either (I didn't watch Under the Dome, though, so maybe I'm wrong). And, again, we can present Roland as being as important to the Tower as King is to the multiverse without having them be twins.
I'm going to miss all the references to "bombardier blue eyes," but that's about it.
PSN: Wstfgl | GamerTag: An Evil Plan | Battle.net: FallenIdle#1970
Hit me up on BoardGameArena! User: Loaded D1
pleasepaypreacher.net
I hope the movie focuses mostly on the second and third books. The Gunslinger is okay on it's own, but really doesn't seem like it would add a lot to the story as a whole in movie format. The only thing I'm not sure if they did that is how they'd handle Roland bringing back Jake, since you wouldn't have that backstory then.
I really don't know how they're going to do it in general. I started to write out how I though the script might go, but every attempt I made felt pretty hollow and didn't seem to capture the books in any substantial way. I certainly don't think they could go any further than The Waste Lands in a single movie, and even that seems like it's stretching it. You'd probably have to severely condense The Gunslinger, make Drawing the meat of the plot, and round it out with them saving Jake and bringing him into mid-world. I can't see them getting into the shit-storm that is Lud and Blaine, and that last half of Waste Lands would make a great opening act to a second movie.
Either way, who cares, it's finally coming! There'd better be a 19 in the release date somewhere.
Oculus: TheBigDookie | XBL: Dook | NNID: BigDookie
I believe King had him more as a Robert Duval. McConaughey can do it, if anything it'll be playing against his usual type.
pleasepaypreacher.net
pleasepaypreacher.net
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
pleasepaypreacher.net
Idris has that in spades and is exudes a dark, brooding charisma.
if King is happy, so am I.
And Matthew Mcconaughey as the man in black? Get the fuck out of here if you don't think that's plain perfect casting.
Like, this is the illustration from one of the books.