Almost everyone has stumbled across or at least heard of some famous Stephen King movie (and it’s most likely some “Green Mile”, which is not associated with King at all). In addition to such iconic stories, however, this writer is also known for their controversial presentation. Some people adore it, others can’t stand it; and it seems to be a common thing, but in front of me this controversy suddenly appeared a bit beyond the usual framework of “in/out”. In less than a year, I’ve read 7 of King’s books, I’ve seen every possible film adaptation of those books, and now I’m ready to bark out facts, state obvious thoughts in confusing terms, and try to make jokes. However, let’s start (we?) at a time when King was not yet the king of horror.
The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger (1982)
King himself admits in his preface to the edited version of The Gunslinger, which is now 16 years old, that the book is difficult to read, because by the time of its writing he had not yet formed his writing style (well, or in this book he decided not to demonstrate it). It’s also hard to read because of the lack of proper exposition at the beginning; the first chapter greets the reader with the words “The man in black went into the desert, and the gunslinger moved after him.” Who is the man in black? Who is the gunman? It won’t be explained to you in the next hundred pages, nor will it explain the concept of the world here. The main character, the shooter (aka Roland), wanders through the desert, stumbles upon one unfriendly settlement, remembers where he lived in a flashback in the second third of the book, and climbs a mountain. Agreed, not exactly enough information to form your own idea of lore.
And yet the book arouses interest. First of all, there are hints of the modern world in passing, in the form of some expressions, a poem that Roland recalls, a boy who came from our world. Speaking of the boy, the narrative quite clearly guesses the main idea of the work, or rather the question that King puts to the main character: “What are you willing to do to achieve your goal?”. The goal of the shooter, as one could guess, is to catch up with the man in black and, with his help, to get to the Dark Tower (at least in the first book). The Man in Black, in turn, gives Roland an anchor in the form of the boy John, which our Western friend decides to drag along with him. The answer to the question posed vividly reveals the sad outcome for John, which is the protagonist’s fault. At this point, despite the all-encompassing guilt, Roland does what he does, epitomizing one of the most fundamental traits of Stephen’s books, Contradiction, which is absent at all from the film adaptation called (you won’t believe this) The Dark Tower.
It’s one of those long-suffering projects whose creators don’t know what to do with their brainchild, and because of that the script is constantly being rewritten. In the end, of course, it’s not Frankenstein’s Monster a la “Justice League”, but it’s still a shame for the lost potential, especially considering the beginning. And the movie starts with really intriguing things: some experiments on children, some strange dudes with strange skin, some earthquakes, some epathetic McConaughey, some shooter who loses his someone there. And the viewer doesn’t even have a chance to get lost in this flow of events. This is achieved only thanks to the change of the main character from a shooter with an established position of a dude who is tired, but goes on, to Jared with a position, loosened by creative urges in a wide soul, who only learns the world together with us.
But it is only when the boy enters the desert world that the narrative begins to lose a lot of intensity, and the movie itself turns into a near-budget “live action” feature film on the Disney channel with all the attached templates and plot moves with textbook dialogues. If you start looking at the movie in the context of the film adaptation, things get even more interesting. The thing is, the movie is like a continuation of a series of seven books, but also kind of tries to fit the events from those books into its hour and a half. For all that, for example, it nails the motivation of the main villain (he wants to destroy the tower, just because he wants to). In the book, this blue-eyed man did whatever he wanted to do: set up massacres, vault people, ruin their lives, and watched it all with a smirk because he enjoyed it. Yeah, it’s not the most scripted motivation, but at least it’s there, and it’s understandable. As for Roland, it’s easy enough to look at (no skin color jokes, no skin color jokes) his relationship with John (already Jake). Just seeing the boy up close, he points a gun at him and threatens him. In the book he also points the gun, but here, as they say, there is a nuance, which consists in the fact that before the shooter dehydrated walked for a hell of a long time in the desert, and foolishly takes Jake’s silhouette for the local McConaughey, then cools his ardor, losing consciousness, and then finding himself in the shadows, where the dumbfounded spinogryz managed to drag him. And, of course, there’s no chemistry between these two in the movie whatsoever. It’s super-sterile, so of all the screen adaptations, it’s probably on the spectrum of worst.