Die-hard fans of Stephen King's eponymous The Dark Tower series have been waiting patiently for our first official trip into Mid-World, where we'd journey with the legendary Roland of Deschain on his doomed journey to the building of the title. The cinematic journey begins in August when Nikolaj Arcel's The Dark Tower hits theaters, and we have the first real trailer for you right now:
Idris Elba plays the last Gunslinger, Roland Deschain of Gilead. Essentially a long line of warrior protectors akin to the Knights of the Round Table, the Gunslingers have all died as the world has moved on. Roland's the last of his kind, and he's on a mission. A vendetta. He must reach The Dark Tower -- but he needs help.
Matthew McConaughey plays the mysterious Man in Black, a timeless force who stands in Roland's way every step of the journey. But in this first film, we see that Roland will recruit one of his assistants: Jake Chambers (Tom Taylor), a boy from our world who is pulled into Roland's hostile environments.
This first trailer serves two purposes. For starters, it's an informative introduction to this world, these characters and Stephen King's story, laying out that Matthew McConaughey's Man in Black is worse than Satan, an evil that has been around longer than the Devil, himself. It establishes Roland as a guardian of the Tower (a tweak from the books), and puts Jake on Roland's path along the Beam, or the tie that binds us all.
But for rabid King and Dark Tower fans, the trailer also shows all of the bold choices that director Nikolaj Arcel made in this adaptation, the changes that could upset the applecart that would be a tradition telling of The Dark Tower. This trailer shows off a LOT more action than was ever seen in The Gunslinger, the first book in what ended up being Stephen King's seven-book series. Roland (Idris Elba) and Jake (Tom Taylor) face creatures, hooded adversaries, and more physical threats than ever happened in the first book of the series, meaning that we might not even be heading to The Drawing of the Three if a sequel to this movie were to happen.
The way that Roland ends up in our world also looks significantly different from the book. I think we, the readers of The Dark Tower novels just have to get used to the fact that we'll be saying that a lot when talking about this movie. It's not what we know, and it won't necessarily BE what we know. But can it get close enough to King's true vision to really call itself The Dark Tower?
The journey to The Dark Tower begins on August 4, when the movie opens in theaters after numerous delays. Will this be the beginning of an epic saga? Or a one-and-done attempt to get an extremely beloved Stephen King property off of the ground? We'll find out soon enough.
