The Dark Tower

[Your browser does not support frames or is currently configured not to display frames. Please use an up-to-date browser that is capable of displaying frames.]
https://www.hkedcity.net/english/sites/default/files/grs2/resource/59a9035dcfcec8243e3c9869/1504248731_poster.jpg
Genre Adventure, Fantasy, Science Fiction
Director Nikolaj Arcel
Cast Idris Elba, Matthew McConaughey, Tom Taylor, Claudia Kim, Fran Kranz, Abbey Lee, Jackie Earle Haley
  • Release Date 31/08/2017
  • Category IIA
  • Duration 95 mins
  • Country The USA

There are other worlds than these.

Stephen King’s The Dark Tower, the ambitious and expansive story from one of the world’s most celebrated authors, makes its launch to the big screen. The last Gunslinger, Roland Deschain, has been locked in an eternal battle with Walter O’Dim, also known as the Man in Black. Roland is determined to prevent Walter from toppling the Dark Tower, which holds the universe together. With the fate of the worlds at stake, good and evil will collide in the ultimate battle as only Roland can defend the Tower from the Man in Black.

Between these battling forces comes a young boy from our world who could tip the balance either way. 14-year-old Jake lives an ordinary life in New York City with his mother Laurie and stepfather Lon. Plagued by dreams that he doesn’t understand, he draws detailed sketches of otherworldly images which he sees: the Gunslinger, the Man in Black, and the unearthly world in which they live – Mid-World, in which he gets sight of the Tower.

Characters:

  • Roland Deschain, aka the Gunslinger

    He is the last of the long Line of Eld – a legacy of Gunslingers who are peacekeepers and protectors of the Tower, which protects the universe. After the slaughter of the rest of the gunslingers, Roland is now on a quest to save what is left of his world by reaching the mysterious Tower.

  • Walter, aka the Man in Black

    Walter is Roland’s mystical foe and a modern day psychotic who destroyed the Mid-World. He is now on a mission to bring all worlds into chaos, which bringing down the Tower will do. ]

  • Jake

    Jake follows the clues in his dreams and finds a way to travel to Mid-World, where he searches for Roland Deschain. After meeting the Gunslinger, the boy becomes involved in the fight to protect the universe, spanning across the dimensions from Mid-World to New York City.

Stephen King, one of the greatest storytellers

The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

With these words, Stephen King sparked an entire universe that makes its long-awaited screen debut with The Dark Tower.

In a career spanning 50 years and over 80 books, King has amassed a towering reputation as one of our greatest storytellers. The author of innumerable bestsellers, he is recognised everywhere as a master of blending our everyday world with the supernatural.

And there is one work that is at the centre of his entire canon: The Dark Tower, the eight-novel epic telling of an eternal battle between good and evil, with the fate of multiple worlds at stake.

 

‘I started The Dark Tower when I was 22 years old, when I had just graduated from college, so it’s spanned my entire career,’ says King. Over time, he says, as the books and stories piled up, ‘I started to realise that I had all these characters that were referring back to this other world, Mid-World, the world of The Dark Tower. It had become the centrepiece of my fictional universe –characters who showed up in other books would show up in The Dark Tower and vice versa.’ Even King himself would become a character in later novels.

King was influenced to create his magnum opus by blending together several unlikely sources. ‘I was very much under the influence of Lord of the Rings – even though I’m not crazy about elves and orcs and walking trees, I loved what Tolkien did.  And around that same time, I saw the movie The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, and Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name was also an influence. And there’s a poem by Robert Browning called ‘Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came,’ and I used that to start an epic fantasy. I wrote the line “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed,” and I didn’t know anything about where he lived, what Mid-World was or how it connected to our world or anything else.’

It eventually became an epic that has inspired millions of readers.


Vocabulary

canon – all the writings or other works known to be by a particular person

magnum opus - the most important piece of work done by a writer or artist

epic – a film, poem, or book that is long and contains a lot of action