Fans have been waiting for a movie based on Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series for years. Now that the film has finally come, was it worth the wait? The reviews have come in on the much talk about, little promoted, opening entry in what is planned to be an epic that crosses both film and television. Looking over all the opinions that are hitting online, the consensus that seems to emerge is a feeling that the movie is, well, fine. It’s clearly not the epic that you might be expecting or that fans were clearly hoping for, but it’s a perfectly serviceable movie.
Our own Mike Reyes saw the film and felt that the movie was a bit thin, but overall he was engaged with the material.
While The Dark Tower may leave a little more to be desired, it’s a pretty strong start to a promising series. Most importantly, it’s a visual spectacle of action and fantasy that leaves the audience wanting more.
IGN’s Marty Sliva has a similar opinion on The Dark Tower. He, like Mike, found the lead characters to be solid, and likely doing the best they could with the material, but what they were doing just wasn’t worthy of the work.
The Dark Tower is a thoroughly average take on some truly incredible source material. While the fantastic leads do the best with what they’re given, it’s ultimately not enough to compensate for a lack of time spent building characters and their motivations in the script.
This is not to say that every review is completely middle of the road. Scott Wampler with Birth.Movies. Death. just flat out didn’t care for the movie.
But even if we set aside this particular interpretation of the mythology, The Dark Tower is a deeply flawed movie. It’s a film that feels rushed and plodding, sometimes within the same scene.
Similarly, Mike Ryan with Uproxx opens his review of The Dark Tower by blasting it with both barrels.
The Dark Tower is so astoundingly awful that when you leave the theater you’ll likely be less mad you wasted your time than flabbergasted that something like this could a) happen and b) be released as something that, theoretically, is going to launch a multi-platform franchise.
At this point, I would love to include the opinion of a critic who unapologetically loved The Dark Tower, the problem is that at this moment there is not one. As of this writing, there are only four positive reviews posted to review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, and all of them fall into the slightly better than average category.
While The Dark Tower might not be a complete waste of time, it’s clearly not the blockbuster that fans have been waiting for. The box office expectations for the film are not massive, but at the same time, the film was inexpensive to produce, at least by blockbuster movie standards. We’ll have to wait and see if the film does well enough to continue the story to the end.
[“Source-cinemablend”]
