Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. EW's big Comic-Con issue has a lot of cool stuff in it, but one of the biggest pic dumps comes from one of my most anticipated movies currently in production: Dark Tower.
We've seen all kinds of set images from the New York City shoot, but these stills give an idea of what the movie might actually look like. There's 10 pics and I'm going to run them down for you guys and talk about each one individually. Let's go!
Roland Deschain, our complicated hero gunslinger, as played by Idris Elba, looking appropriately stern and grumpy here. Love the good look at his guns. They look a bit more grand here than in the NYC spy pics.
Roland in profile, with his duster blowing in the wind and looking pretty righteous. I know Elba's casting has befuddled many fans, but the color of his skin doesn't matter much to me. As someone who has been addicted to this world since I was in middle school all I want is a Roland who is both regal and dangerous. Elba can nail that.
This BTS shot shows director Nikolaj Arcel talking to Roland and Jake (Tom Taylor). It's pretty standard harmless BTS material except for that little Horn of Eld sticking out of Roland's bag. They knew what they were doing sneaking that tiny detail in there for us hardcore fans. Told ya' they were bringing in the Horn.
This is Jake's room here on Keystone Earth (one of the many universes and realities the Dark Tower holds together which we would just call our own). In the early draft I read Jake's been seeing visions/nightmares of Mid-World (Roland's plane of existence) and of the gunslinger himself and has been drawing them out. Looks like they've kept that angle.
What's interesting here is that if you look closely at the drawings you can see the Dark Tower itself represented more than a few times as well as what appears to be a floating door illustration in the upper left, which will come into play big time if they get to make a sequel.
This is Jake in the “haunted house” that is Dutch Hill Mansion, a building that conceals the doorway from his world to Roland's. Either that or they accidentally slipped in a childhood photo of Gareth Edwards. One of those two things is right.
As you can imagine Jake is going to make it to Mid-World eventually. Here's a shot to show you how barren and “moved on” it is. Very post-apocalyptic look here. It's not the traditional western desert I always pictured while reading, but I dig it.
The heart of this story is going to be Jake's relationship with the hardened gunslinger. As a Dark Tower nerd the image of Jake and Roland walking through Mid-World gives me a little chill, even if the pic itself isn't all that grand or interesting.
One thing of note is that in the text below this pic at EW they have a quote from Arcel saying that Roland has “fast healing abilities,” which is a bit odd. I don't remember him being Wolverine in the books. In fact much of the drama around the second book is focused on him searching for medicine because he's dying from an infection. Curious.
In the books Roland enters into New York multiple times. The most notable of which is when he's sick and needs medicine, which was the impetus of the trip in the early draft of the script. He doesn't look particularly sick in any of the spy pics or these stills (and still has all his fingers... in the book he loses some fingers in an attack with lobster creatures and the infection from their bite is what is slowly killing him).
The Man In Black (Matthew McConaughey) is the face of the bad guys in this story even though he's working for the mysterious Crimson King (who I hear will make some sort of appearance in the film, FYI). Both of their goals are to destroy the Dark Tower (which will in turn theoretically destroy all realities as well). Here he is on Earth in front of the Dixie Pig, a hang out of bad guys, most loyal to the Crimson King. His mark is that eye-looking thing up top.
So, so, so curious to see this thing come together. It won't be the picture I had in my mind while reading, no matter how good or bad it ends up being, but that's not a bad thing. Them making it a sort of sequel of sorts absolves them of having to adhere religiously to King's text and any Dark Tower fan worth his or her salt should nod approvingly at that choice.
The real test will be in how well they capture the tone and intent of the books. If they can do that and make me fall in love with the Ka-tet as it forms (that's Roland's posse if you haven't read the books) then I'll be happy.
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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