Film: King’s Dark materials are laid waste
The Dark Tower plays out like an extended pilot episode for a generic television series
Cinema
The Dark Tower: Directed by Nikolaj Arcel, Nationwide, 12A,Rating:*
Song to Song: Directed by Terrence Malick, IFI, no cert,Rating: *
Thirty-five years ago, novelist Stephen King published his first fantasy novel The Gunslinger that would eventually –over eight books and various short stories and graphic novels – stretch to a 5,000-page series that incorporates themes from multiple genres including science fiction, horror, crime, Westerns and Arthurian legend. A massive, meta-reflexive opus (it features “Stephen King” as a character), the books have a devoted following, parsed and analysed by a legion of readers. Nikolaj Arcel’s adaptation ofThe Dark Tower is an ungainly, half-finished mess that delivers cheap blockbuster spectacle with dutiful efficiency. This is a fantasy that never comes close to being fantastic.
