The Dark Tower: Two giants duke it out
But they’re not who you think.
See the spoilers of enormous girth/In this post, they walk the earth/Stop right here, you’ll be in time/Here endeth now the part that rhymes.
The creators of The Dark Tower movie have gone to great lengths to tell you that this 95-minute movie is a battle between, wait for it…GOOD & EVIL.
But the real battle is actually between the film and television.
I went into The Dark Tower film with low expectations. Fans of the books have waited decades for these movies, but the first trailer made our cherished Stephen King opus look like the 19th sequel to Underworld. The second trailer didn’t do much to fix that. Then the reviews arrived, and they ranged from savage all the way to faint praise. Somehow The Dark Tower got a Rotten Tomatoes score of 19, which is both devastating, and a fantastic Mid-World in joke.
But here’s the thing — if you’d seen the first half of this movie as a television pilot? You’d be PUMPED. It’s got two great actors as “good guys”, one A-lister bad-guy, and lots and lots of moody scenery, populated with more post-apocolyptia than The Walking Dead could ever fit in the Georgia back country. There are also oodles of Stephen King-verse Easter eggs, just waiting for a couch-surfer with a pause button.
Take away the poorly rendered monsters, preserve about 91% more mystery, and stretch this whole movie out to 10 episodes on Starz, and you’d have people falling over themselves to praise the showrunner, cast and crew. Put another way , if they can make eight episodes of Legion, they can make 10 episodes of The Dark Tower.
(Note to Starz: DO THIS.)
These days, movies seem to only have three sizes: Indie, Prestige, and Marveltastic. The Independent movies show up on Apple TV about a week after they’re released in a few New York & LA theaters — some are even released day and date, which I honestly believe should be the future of movies. Prestige movies first arrive in October and go all the way to December 29th. Unless you’re Dunkirk. Then you get released in July, and hope Academy viewers remember the cinematography.
Finally there’s the Marveltastics. This category includes Marvel movies, DC Movies, Star Wars Movies, Transformers movies, and the recent Star Trek reboots. Are there any others? I don’t know, but chances are it belongs to Disney. Marveltastic movies, of which I am a huge and unapologetic fan, are eating up the entire calendar year. I mean, the best X-Men movie ever came out in March. March!
Please forgive this “methaphor”, but Marveltastic movies are like hard drugs. You anticipate the moment you get them, spend a few hours in your version of blissed-out happy town, and then you crash. When that’s done, you’re back to wondering when you’ll get your next fix.
The answer is November. At which point some cranky guy will get on TV and say “This is your brain / This is your brain on Thor /Any questions?”
And December brings us Star Wars: The One Where Mark Hamill Actually Speaks.
But here’s the thing — what chance would “When Harry Met Sally” have had if it was released at the same time as “When Captain America Punched Iron Man?”
But then there’s peak television. Spoiler alert — it’s still peaking. There’s so much great television that lesser cable networks are starting to buckle, even when they have a prestige drama that people love. (#SaveUnderground)
And if the stewards of The Dark Tower movie had been truly bold, they might have entirely skipped theatrical release, hired Glen Mazzara two years ago, and gone straight to serialized television. Heck, Matthew McConaughey might still have done it — look how much fun he had on True Detective. (Ok, not fun, but you know what I mean).
So, go. Watch The Dark Tower movie. You won’t be as disappointed as you think. And as you watch, think about all the things you wouldn’t need in the first episode of a quality television series — my list includes:
On the nose exposition
Aforementioned badly rendered monsters
Plot resolution
Any mention of Devar-Toi, beam-breakers or Excalibur
What would remain?
Creepy as shit low men in yellow coats
Floor demons
The Dixie Pig
That’s more than enough. It might even leave room for thinnies, popkins, and a crow that sings about beans.
As a wise man once said — “Ka was a wheel; it was also a net from which none ever escaped.”
If that’s doesn’t describe peak TV, then I’m a tooter-fish sandwich.
