La torre oscura

Película de fantasía del grupo Equilibrium o Dark City que aunque huelen a clase B, tienen un reparto bueno, una dimensión y atmósfera de fantasía funcional, y sobre todo trabajan con una idea muy interesante. Matthew e Idris interpretan muy bien a sus personajes y el niño también es bueno. Por mí, está bien. (31.08.2017)

Si un fanático de King ve la película, que estará esperando una adaptación de su serie de libros favorita, estará expuesto a una experiencia infernal. La Torre Oscura, sin embargo, no es una adaptación, sino una variación alternativa a la primera parte de la obra de King, que sus creadores también intentan pretender ser una especie de continuación canónica de esos libros (y sí, tiene bastante sentido, es simplemente algo sustancialmente diferente de lo que la mayoría de la gente espera). El resultado da la impresión de un conglomerado incoherente de libros tomados de motivos, entrelazados en una pieza apresurada y extremadamente condensada, que parece terriblemente acortada e incomprensible, y que recuerda sobre todo a varias adaptaciones recientes de novelas fantásticas para adolescentes desde El Dador de Recuerdos hasta Cazadores de sombras: Ciudad de hueso. En comparación con estas, La Torre Oscura no es peor, pero dada la calidad, la importancia y el alcance del modelo de King, la devaluación es realmente terrible. (25.08.2017)

King's seven-part saga is unique in the way it has evolved in genre and literary terms over more than two decades, during which Stephen has managed to write dozens of other books, confess his love of Westerns and pop culture, and come to terms with his own drug past. It's a fascinating dose of the truly epic and bizarre, but the year I spent reading it was nourishing for me, literarily speaking, in the best sense of the word. The series offers about two dozen themes that could be turned into a proper blockbuster. But what they did here is in every way the worst possible option. This The Dark Tower took a few random motifs that seemed apt, but they are put together in a completely nonsensical whole. It lacks any dramatic arc. Jumping between locations, he pounds on the editing room door, desperately searching for the rest of the filmstrip. At best the characters have no chance to stand out, at worst they are annoying. Elba relies on a charisma that will engross even those for whom Roland Deschain is still a blue-eyed blond, but McConaughey played perhaps the most idiotic role in a decade. Taylor's Jake Chambers is a tragedy. This is a creative failure on all fronts that someone tried to salvage at the last minute by selling it as an action B-movie. Even decent special effects can't save the fact that before the first scene, someone should have vigorously yelled stop and turned it over to the cable people, who would have made four rich seasons of ten episodes each out of it. (13.10.2017)

It wasn’t as terrible as all the negative, almost hysterical responses had made me fear. Overall, it’s rather ordinary, unambitious and unremarkable. The casting is good, even the main boy, who didn’t annoy me, which in this kind of role it’s always a success. The special effects are pretty lame, most of the scenes are covered in darkness (for instance, the fight with the demon in the woods, that one was so dark that I thought the projector had broken down), and the entire film feels terribly rushed, like a fragment of a bigger whole. This is perhaps understandable, given the length of the book it’s based on, but, as a viewer who hasn’t read it, I’d appreciate the adaptation not making it so awfully clear. I don’t see the reason to make much of a fuss, but rather to sigh over the unfulfilled potential. (24.08.2017)

I never thought an hour and a half could drag on like this. The Dark Tower has its moments, both Matthew McConaughey and Idris Elba fit their roles excellently and Nikolaj Arcel is confident in the action scenes, but unfortunately it's all pretty banal, ordinary and boring. Plot-wise, The Dark Tower never surprises with anything, which doesn't matter when it pretends to be an action B-movie. Unfortunately, however, it more often than not tries to pretend it's a grand fantasy full of fascinating worlds, other dimensions, terrifying monsters and mysterious creatures. And given that the ventures outside our reality end up in a desert with one theme park, one village, and a few completely uninteresting side characters, it comes across as a bit funny. The Dark Tower looks like a pilot for a more ambitious fantasy series that would like to show its world to viewers in the episodes and seasons to come. Unfortunately, it shows so little the first time around that I have no desire to be there the next time (though there probably won't be a next time anyway). It's not a disaster, but there really isn't much of the downright interesting stuff to send you to the cinema for. (27.07.2018)