In a career known for Going Big, Stephen King’s Dark Tower series still stands apart. Beginning as an enigmatic, college-written mashup between Sergio Leone and Tolkien, it developed over the decades into a gloriously overstuffed, wildly imaginative mix of authorial insertions, ties to King’s other works, and metaphysical hooey. Even when it seems to occasionally forget the main plot (hello, book six), King never stops swinging for the fences.
The long-gestating feature film adaptation is also a mess—but for far less interesting reasons, flattening out the saga’s copious highs and lows into a humdrum, flavorless experience. Yes, it’s unlikely a 95-minute movie could ever capture the gargantuan scope of the source material. But, jeez, couldn’t it at least try?