The Cutprice Guignol

To expand on all that Stephen King goodness (and badness) here on the Guignol, I have tapped in my co-writer, fellow lover of King’s work, Dark Tower obsessive, and most importantly the biggest Mike Fan-agan out there to talk about Flanagan’s upcoming adaptation of The Dark Tower series!

This is exactly what I wanted – Mike Flanagan adapting Stephen King’s mammoth fantasy series, The Dark Tower. Not only is the former my favourite horror director, the latter is the first grown-up writer I ever read. Thanks to the awful attempt at a movie series released to howls of pain and fury (mostly from myself in the nearly-empty theatre), Flanagan and King are the only people with a hope in hell of rebooting such a disaster: King, because he’s always profitable, and Flanagan because he has made two of the best King adaptations, Gerald’s Game and Doctor Sleep (having four brilliant Netflix horror series doesn’t exactly hurt, either).

“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”

It’s one of the most iconic lines in all of literature – but the 2017 movie spent all of two seconds with this chase before cramming seven books’ worth of details down our filmic throats, whether they were relevant or not. And, somehow, that did not even flavour a bland adventure movie that felt like it was made by committee. Mike Flanagan is the opposite of this approach as a filmmaker – throughout his filmography, and especially his King work, he stays to the true spirit of the story he’s telling, changing and adapting things that will enhance the work rather than pad it.

Obviously, we have to begin at the beginning (and end) – which means The Gunslinger: a story that is so terrifying to previous filmmakers that they try to avoid everything that makes it important. The Gunslinger is a mean little book that introduces Roland Deschain, the titular Gunslinger, his quest to reach the Dark Tower, and the horrible things he is willing to do to get there, introducing us to the Mid-World in the process. The Gunslinger would make a perfect two-hour premiere episode, an introduction to the harsher aspects of King’s story that offers a chance to set Roland up as a complex character who might even be hard to like – at least, at first. Embracing this moral uncertainty and giving us a lead who’s not entirely easy to sympathize with might seem like a tricky place to start – but there are plenty other ways into this story than via the protagonist.

One of the main reasons the 2017 movie forgot the face of its father is because it opted not to give even a hint of Roland’s companions throughout his journey: the heart of the books and the reason obsessives like me keep reading thousands upon thousands of pages. Eddie, Susannah (though her plot needs some tweaking, to put it mildly), Jake, and Oy (don’t forget Oy – that little fluff ball could be a merchandising goldmine), this merry band are introduced in the second and third books of the series, and, as characters from our own world, offer an audience surrogate option to allow us Pre-Mid-Worldies someone to relate to.

Because The Dark Tower is full of extraordinary characters, imagery, set pieces, and some downright weird shit – and the weirdness is what I think is most crucial to a new adaptation. The 2017 movie tried to swipe a few bits here and there from all eight books and slot them untidily into a sanitized version of The Gunslinger. What should have been an awe-inspiring world looked like B-roll from The Hobbit trilogy – what Mike Flanagan has to do is bring the series’ sense of singularity back, and embrace the oddness at the heart of this meticulous story and world at large.

If you’re a Dark Tower fan as dissapointed in the 2017 movie as I was, I would love to hear what you think this new adaptation calls for in order to do justice to King’s iconic series. Let me know in the comments (and read some more of my Flanagan fanaticism here).

By Kevin Boyle