The Dark Tower: Stringer Bell as Roland Deschain?

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

2 minutes ago, red snow said:

While there is an element of that in the books King acknowledges that he essentially acts as a conduit for the story rather than it's under his control. Otherwise he wouldn't be at risk of death and wouldn't point out at length that he only writes what comes to him even when it's an element he doesn't want to write eg character deaths, etc. It's still a bit meta/indulgent but not as straight-forward as you make out. If anything he's probably admitting to what most authors are when creating a story if they realise it or not they fundamentally are responsible for that story existing. Beyond that is the question of where do ideas come from - in this case the Dark Tower.

 

Yeah I was being purposely flippant about it. I understand Kings reasoning and in some ways it was a clever idea. But then on the other hand its a complete betrayal of the previous books and looks entirely self indulgent.

I personally consider it one of the biggest and most obvious mis-steps of storytelling I've ever observed. Its totally up there with Lucas and the prequels.

[Slurktan]

I have no idea if this will be a good movie or not, I have my doubts on whether they can fit really anything coherently in with all that they have presented.  But still I want to see any and all nods to Kings works...... stuff like McConaughey walking past while tapping on graffiti that says "All Hail the Crimson King", the Pennywise amusement park with the balloons just so, the Overlook hotel photo, Jake having drawn a picture of a structure I presume to be the breaker prison, the Man in black caressing what I assume to be Black 13, Taheen.  The movie could and very well will be terrible but I'll still go over it with a fine tooth comb looking for stuff.

[red snow]

1 hour ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

Yeah I was being purposely flippant about it. I understand Kings reasoning and in some ways it was a clever idea. But then on the other hand its a complete betrayal of the previous books and looks entirely self indulgent.

I personally consider it one of the biggest and most obvious mis-steps of storytelling I've ever observed. Its totally up there with Lucas and the prequels.

I see where you're coming from. The books definitely changed for the worse after the Wizard and the Glass. It's frustrating as there are still some good ideas in there amongst the terrible ones

the characters realising they were characters in a book were more of a problem for me. A far bigger problem was the structure and pacing at the end. Susannah's utterly bizarre pregnancy and her "twin" - WTF was that all about? And the entire adventure of Wolves of the Calla

. I actually liked the diary aspects etc and King clearly dealing with his near death experience by playing it out as a story element. It highlights the problem with King in that he doesn't plot far ahead and will change as he writes if he feels that's the case. I'm pretty sure the King that wrote the first three books would not have written the remaining ones but time definitely changes the outlook on a story.

32 minutes ago, Slurktan said:

I have no idea if this will be a good movie or not, I have my doubts on whether they can fit really anything coherently in with all that they have presented.  But still I want to see any and all nods to Kings works...... stuff like McConaughey walking past while tapping on graffiti that says "All Hail the Crimson King", the Pennywise amusement park with the balloons just so, the Overlook hotel photo, Jake having drawn a picture of a structure I presume to be the breaker prison, the Man in black caressing what I assume to be Black 13, Taheen.  The movie could and very well will be terrible but I'll still go over it with a fine tooth comb looking for stuff.

I think it's going to be a fun aspect of the film. As soon as I saw the house Jake saw, i knew it was the haunted/possessed house so they are doing a good job of capturing descriptions from the books in places.

[Isis]

I'm surprised that nobody else thinks an adaptation can improve on the source material, by keeping the best bits and losing the overtly weird/ unpalatable / self-indulgent bits. 

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

2 hours ago, Isis said:

I'm surprised that nobody else thinks an adaptation can improve on the source material, by keeping the best bits and losing the overtly weird/ unpalatable / self-indulgent bits. 

I'm honestly not sure there is a version of the book that would make a good movie. Back when I read the books I felt drawn into them but was always aware of their 80s-90s Stephen 'tv movie' King-ness. 

I think as soon as these things get to screen you'd realise how dumb and badly thought out it all was.

[Ramsay B.]

2 hours ago, Isis said:

I'm surprised that nobody else thinks an adaptation can improve on the source material, by keeping the best bits and losing the overtly weird/ unpalatable / self-indulgent bits. 

If only things could be this simple.

[briantw]

2 hours ago, Isis said:

I'm surprised that nobody else thinks an adaptation can improve on the source material, by keeping the best bits and losing the overtly weird/ unpalatable / self-indulgent bits. 

I do think adaptations can improve on the source material (see: Fight Club, where even the author of the book admits the film has a better ending).  I just think it's rare, and it's incredibly unlikely with this series simply because it seems like they're trying to adapt seven books into one movie, which just reeks of disaster.

[all swedes are racist]

On 5/4/2017 at 1:41 AM, Isis said:

I think the trailer is great and I am way more excited for this than I am for American Gods; King created a better mythology than Gaiman (just based on these two works alone). 

Not sure why people are bothered about some stuff getting cut out of the books...It's a long series and there is for sure some stuff that can afford to be trimmed. Lobstrosities, anyone?

Tl;dr I am excite 

damn, you gotta make it personal?

[mormont]

I'm not sure 'adaptation' is the best word here, even. It's another version. And in this case, we know the story of Roland and the Dark Tower has several iterations, so best to look at it that way.

This is just the version that has to be told on screen instead of on the page, in a shorter time.

[Isis]

4 hours ago, r'hllor's reformed lobster said:

damn, you gotta make it personal?

Awww. I'm sorry, I haven't read the books for a long time and they were the first example that popped into my head. I'm not sure including them will be a positive thing for lobsters overall though.

57 minutes ago, mormont said:

I'm not sure 'adaptation' is the best word here, even. It's another version. And in this case, we know the story of Roland and the Dark Tower has several iterations, so best to look at it that way.

This is just the version that has to be told on screen instead of on the page, in a shorter time.

I think it is because it's adapting the material in the books. It features the same characters, (some/much? of) the same story, and (hopefully) the same mythos. 

Yes, there are a lot of side stories and overly indulgent dalliances in the series. But are they all essential to the plot? Hardly. King tells you what the plot is in the first line of the first book. Yes, we need to know some of the back story to WHY that is happening (so we definitely need the gunslinger history) and we also need events which move the story toward the conclusion. But we don't NEED every single one of the avenues King took us down on the way.

I mean, this series is an everything AND the kitchen sink thing for King. He put in all the elements which resonate with him in his storytelling, across multiple different books, with recurring themes, places, characters...to the point where he ended up writing himself into the story. And yes, I think that's a cringeworthy part of the series. But it's his series and we can't really dispute his right to tell it how he thinks it should go. 

However, as sprawling and messy as the series gets, there is a good story in there if someone could follow King's own advice from his excellent On Writing and carve it out of the straggly mess. That would be worthwhile. 

Will this film do that? Who knows (at this point)? But there's no reason that it can't do that. It is certainly possible.

[briantw]

1 hour ago, mormont said:

I'm not sure 'adaptation' is the best word here, even. It's another version. And in this case, we know the story of Roland and the Dark Tower has several iterations, so best to look at it that way.

This is just the version that has to be told on screen instead of on the page, in a shorter time.

Yeah, but they could have done a version that took several movies instead of just one.  It still would have been a shorter time than the books, and it still could have been a pseudo-sequel.

I just don't think there's any way you can take seven books worth of content and compress that into a three hour (presumably) film.  Granted, it's better than turning a short book like The Hobbit into three six hour films like Peter Jackson did, but only slightly better.

I still think Dark Tower would have worked much better as a big budget TV show on a Network like HBO or Showtime.

[red snow]

i don't recall them ever claiming this movie would cover the entireity of the books? That would be insane - like trying to condense all the books into 500 pages.

Far as I can recall the plan is for this to be a franchise with a TV series attached. Unless the first film bombs we'll be getting several movies and at least one tv show from this project.

The first film is supposed to incorporate elements from the first 3 books. The trailer suggests this is the case.

To be honest I think you could still make a decent movie if all you were taking was the concept of gunslingers. You could ditch everything else and make an action packed mad max fantasy western of Roland chasing the man in black. Disappointing for fans but I'd still watch that.

As for the later elements of the book I guess in terms of film, if they want to go the same route

they could have the director/screenwriter etc become targets in the translation of the meta elements

[mormont]

1 hour ago, briantw said:

Yeah, but they could have done a version that took several movies instead of just one.  It still would have been a shorter time than the books, and it still could have been a pseudo-sequel.

I just don't think there's any way you can take seven books worth of content and compress that into a three hour (presumably) film. 

My point is, that's not necessarily what they're actually doing. Instead they're telling a different version of the same basic story.

I feel like you're comparing one hypothetical version to another hypothetical version in your head, instead of looking at what the film-makers are actually doing.

[briantw]

8 minutes ago, mormont said:

My point is, that's not necessarily what they're actually doing. Instead they're telling a different version of the same basic story.

I feel like you're comparing one hypothetical version to another hypothetical version in your head, instead of looking at what the film-makers are actually doing.

Well, all I have to go on right now is the trailer, and the trailer was pretty terrible.  

[red snow]

3 hours ago, briantw said:

Well, all I have to go on right now is the trailer, and the trailer was pretty terrible.  

Here's some links for you then so you can have more to go on than the trailer and stop thinking they are doing the whole story in one film.

General wiki on the film's various iterations of development

someone who didn't like the trailer

loads of good quotes from King, the director and the screenwriter on sequel plans, why characters aren't present (and where they will appear if they do sequels), how the gunslinger still isn't that chatty, etc, etc

I think if you read some of them you can at least find things to be worried about other than invented issues with the film such as "they are doing the entire book in one film".

[Isis]

9 hours ago, briantw said:

I still think Dark Tower would have worked much better as a big budget TV show on a Network like HBO or Showtime.

But there is going to be a TV show though.

You don't need to fit EVERYTHING from all seven books into this one film.

Do you realise that trailers are not made by the same people who make the films? Sometimes trailers show things that don't even end up in the final cut of the film. Sometimes they make it look as if character A is the lead and gets more screen time just because they can construct a cool trailer out of it, when actually character B is the protagonist. They are trying to grab attention and get people to go and see the film without knowing anything about the source material.

Yes, this particular movie might suck. But nobody knows whether it will or not at this point. And even if it does that could be completely unrelated the to the fact that it only focused on the first 1-3/4 books.

ETA: Oh dear, person who 'didn't like the trailer' sounds like a proper 'book purist, the series was my first love, please don't make the film at all unless it's perfect' type of person. Well, clearly, they will NEVER be content with anything other than a slavishly devoted loyal adaptation. Just setting themselves up for disappointment but no matter, a few years down the line they'll be ready to understand that an adaptation of your favourite book does not affect your favourite book. It still exists and you can still enjoy it just the same.

ETA2:

Just read another of the links. Yes! This is what I'm talking about. Cut everything down to its essence and you get an archetype.

King chilled the script with his own changes, making the Gunslinger the strong, nearly totally silent type, like the heroes of the old time westerns.

“I took a pen and cut Roland’s dialogue to the bone,” King told EW. “The less he says the better off, and why not? Idris Elba can act with his face. He’s terrific at it. He projects that sense of combined menace and security. [Roland] is the Western hero, the strong, silent type: ‘Yep,’ ‘Nope,’ and ‘Draw.’”

[briantw]

15 minutes ago, Isis said:

ETA: Oh dear, person who 'didn't like the trailer' sounds like a proper 'book purist, the series was my first love, please don't make the film at all unless it's perfect' type of person. Well, clearly, they will NEVER be content with anything other than a slavishly devoted loyal adaptation. Just setting themselves up for disappointment but no matter, a few years down the line they'll be ready to understand that an adaptation of your favourite book does not affect your favourite book. It still exists and you can still enjoy it just the same.

I wouldn't consider myself a book purist here.  It's been years since I've read the Dark Tower books, and I've forgotten a lot of the later books (a good thing, maybe?).  I just thought the trailer for this particular movie was pretty terrible, and it looks like they're trying to shove far too much content from the books into it instead of just focusing on making a solid adaptation of the first novel.  I also didn't particularly care for the overly flashy gunslinging in the trailer.  I always pictured Roland as a more traditional kind of western guy like Clint Eastwood (and this isn't meant to be a commentary on Elba playing the role, something I don't particularly care about one way or the other), not someone who tosses bullets in the air and catches them in his gun in super slow motion.

Anyway, I just think this movie is going to turn out to be really bad, and that's unfortunately because I would have loved to have seen a good adaptation of it.  I'm certainly not opposed to adaptations.  I loved the Lord of the Rings films (The Hobbit not so much).  I mostly love Game of Thrones, although there are some obvious issues.  Fight Club is one of my favorite movies, and better than the book imo.  I've enjoyed basically all the Marvel films except Iron Man 3.  So it's not adaptations that get me...it's just bad ones, and that's what The Dark Tower looks like.

[Isis]

When I said 'person who didn't like the trailer' I was talking about the person in the link from red snow, who explained why they didn't like the trailer. Sorry, if that wasn't clear. 

[Centrist Simon Steele]

Those books though--they're fuckin' terrible, right? I mean, definitely by Wolves of the Calla when Roland and gang are sitting around sipping tea and discussing plans. I was reading that right when it came out, and I remember going back to the Gunslinger and rereading the first chapter and thinking, "THIS Roland would never sit down and drink tea and discuss plans."

[briantw]

31 minutes ago, Simon Steele said:

Those books though--they're fuckin' terrible, right? I mean, definitely by Wolves of the Calla when Roland and gang are sitting around sipping tea and discussing plans. I was reading that right when it came out, and I remember going back to the Gunslinger and rereading the first chapter and thinking, "THIS Roland would never sit down and drink tea and discuss plans."

Generally speaking, I credit the quality decline of the last three books as a product of King rushing to finish them after his car accident.  On the one hand, it's nice to see an author come to terms with his own mortality and work to finish a series so he doesn't die with it unfinished (we're all on this particular website, so we all know someone who could use a bit more urgency).  On the other, when you rush to finish something it probably won't end up as good as if you'd written it as it came to you like he did the first four books.