The wait for our first look at a big-screen take on Stephen King’s The Dark Tower has been almost as epic as the books themselves, but with the release of the movie’s first trailer today, that wait came to an end in spectacular fashion.
If you thought adapting an 8-novel fantasy epic was too ambitious of a task, you’d be correct. Nikolaj Arcel’s movie isn’t actually a straight adaptation of King’s work. Instead, it serves as more of a sequel to the sprawling books that see the Gunslinger on a quest to discover the Dark Tower that’s rumored to connect multiple universes. The movie, however, shows us what happens in the wake of those events….
The trailer kicks off with young Jake being told that his visions of another world are nothing but dreams, but as those of us who have read the book (and anybody else who has ever seen a movie) know, that’s not quite the case. Before long, Jake is face to face with Idris Elba’s Gunslinger in another dimension known as the Mid-World. There, we learn that Matthew McConaughey’s Man in Black is worse than the devil, and he’s got grand designs of destruction for both the Mid-World and all of humankind.
Much of the trailer’s action centers around increasingly creative ways to reload a gun, but somehow it still manages to work. McConaughey shows he can play the bad guys just as well as the charismatic good guy, and Idris Elba looks as though he’ll once more prove that he is adept at fronting a major action blockbuster.
For the eagle-eyed of you out there, the trailer also contains a few neat easter eggs that reference other Stephen King properties. Keep your eyes peeled for references to The Shining and It.
The Dark Tower is slated for release on August 4th, but staying true to its source material, the storytelling won’t end there. In the coming months, work is expected to start on an accompanying TV series which will continue to expand on King’s Dark Tower universe.
