Stephen King's best work, gets a watered down adaption. That feels like the director and screenwriter, both never even read the books. Roland (Idris Elba) in the books is obsessed with getting to the Tower. Here he only cares about revenge on the Man in Black (Matthew McConaughey) who killed his father.
While Jake's (Tom Taylor) backstory is a bit tampered with too. I am pretty sure in the book, he got to Roland's world by being shoved in front of a car by a mad man. I am sure Jake being obsessed with drawing Roland and his world is from like the 2nd or 3rd book.
The books were quite violent and graphic. With a Western like feel to them. There's not much screenwriter Akiva Goldsman got right. The plot is a incoherent mess that doesn't feel like any of the books. While none of the books are close to PG-13.
The best things about this movie is the Idris Elba and Tom Taylor chemistry. As well as the humor of when Roland tries hotdogs or Soda for the first time.
McConaughey tries hard to play a cold hearted bastard and succeeds on some levels. Maybe because his character does some evil things. Otherwise I think they needed someone like Willem Dafoe who could play evil in his sleep.
All in all, Sony and Akiva Goldsman are where this adaption went wrong. As well as being too short. King's prized possession shouldn't be in the hands of the studio that brought us the Ghostbusters reboot and the Emoji movie.
While Goldsman hasn't adapted one book well. The screenwriter of Batman & Robin shouldn't be allowed near anything Stephen King. Especially The Dark Tower. Adapting the Dark Tower, proved he shouldn't have been near it. What a mess with so much potential to be more.
I enjoyed this movie. It's subtle. I found it to be beautiful and thought provoking. How does one deal with waking up to find that they and their lover are the only two people left in the world? There comes a time in many young people’s lives when they begin to question the meaning of life and their place in the world as they attempt to reconcile their religious upbringing with the reality of the world. This can be a very stressful time both emotionally and psychologically resulting in a possible existential crisis. The young man, Riley, has apparently previously dealt with such matters as he takes a somewhat surprisingly Zen-like approach to their situation thus avoiding such crisis or perhaps he is just not given to such thoughts. After all, why spend time contemplating things for which there are no answers? Unfortunately for the young woman, Jenai, finding themselves in the most bizarre and inexplicable situation imaginable seems to bring her to question, quite possibly for the first time, God’s will, even the very existence of God, and the validity of everything she’s been taught. We watch her struggle with a deep existential crisis for which their present situation obviously only exacerbates. Riley loves the stark beauty of Iceland and seems genuinely content to live out his days there. Jenai, on the other hand, appears to feel trapped as they are now essentially stranded in a strange land far from home (they appear to be American). She misses her home, her family, and her book that she describes as more of a log book than a journal. Riley makes constant attempts to help Jenai through her crisis. He attempts to show her the beauty of their new world and how they can have a wonderful life there together. "We have the world at our feet." They stop at a random cabin on a lake in the woods for a relaxing retreat outside the city. There they come across an old man who has gone without food and water for too long. He had gone there to die. They, of course, give him food and water and share his cabin with him that evening. Jenai discusses the philosophical issues of their situation with him by the fire in the hearth. The old man passes away in his sleep and is found dead in the morning. Surely if there is one then there could be others. They make a renewed search driven by Jenai but find no one else. Electricity and Internet service is still available. Jenai holds on to hope that there is someone back at home. She keeps her computer on and monitors it daily for any messages or other signs of humanity out there. As Riley makes continued attempts to help Jenai come to accept their situation, she seems to improve, but then when a message notification sounds on her computer, it apparently becomes 'the straw that broke the camel’s back'. In this movie, as in life, there are no answers. Perhaps it is best to accept things as they come rather than try to reason in vain as to why.
Denis Villenueve. A solid lineup. A different take on first contact. I loved Sicario but went in expecting a cerebral epic sci-fi.
That was a mistake.
Good things:
- Some really nice visual scenes
- Interesting aliens Calligraphy aliens!
- Clear theme of communication is omnipresent
- A neat score that might be awesome in a different movie
Bad things:
- The acting
- The lack of emotional reaction to ALIENS! The students asking to turn on the TV, all of the main characters
- Lack of useful characters Only the aliens and Louise actually did anything the entire movie.
- Supporting characters are very stupid in an attempt to foil the main character slightly
- Very clumsy exposition. Genre-typical news reports, voice-overs, dumb characters asking stupid questions.
- Very slow pacing. This worked in parts of Sicario, but didn't work in this movie because there was no tension. The main characters never seemed remotely threatened.
- Lousie showing up at school thinking everyone will be there after aliens arrive and there's a state of emergency
- Why can't you translate alien language like you can translate Farsi. This is a paraphrase but in the spirit of what Colonel Weber was saying.
- Useless love interest when the costars have no chemistry.
- Ultrasecure military base lets someone steal a ton of explosives and put it in an ALIEN SPACECRAFT without anyone noticing.
- Many unbelievable plot points
- Poor dialogue Let's make a baby - real quote
- Poor handling of the major plot points Looking through time seems to undermine the fact that the aliens need help. Why did one have to die if they could see the future? Why did only one die when they were right next to each other?
- Very heavy handed moral messaging that didn't align with the rest of the movie.
- Why couldn't Ian also see into the future as he studied the language, or any of the others?
Overall extremely disappointing. I'm honestly surprised critics or general moviegoers like this. The premise was very good. It's a real shame the execution failed so miserably.
Such a mess of a movie.
I didn' t expect much and haven't watched the trailer before but apparently this movie is focusing on the younger audience only and not on the people who watched the first movie back in the day. It's one of these moments when you realize you get old.
Way too young cast, a dumb plot, so no-one needs to think about anything, degrading this movie to a shut-your-brain-off popcorn flick/time waster you forget instantly after leaving the cinema, clichès as far as the eyes can see, cringe dialogues, incredibly studid decisions by humans and aliens.
Liam Hemsworth is the actor to draw in the young audience and a total miscast for this kind of movie but he fits in with all the other young actors who are out of place as well. But that also means he will be the more or less tragic or cool hero and "win" a gorgeous woman at the end of the movie. How could it be different?
Hemsworth's literally horny sidekick is annoying the moment he appears, throughout the whole movie and is the deliberate comic relief and simply hateable as his character is written so blatantly obvious and without any care. You instantly know what trope his character is and what role he will have the rest of the movie.
You are in the alien ship and he carelessly jumpscares you: haha, how funny!
He's talking loudly, called out on it to be quiet and keeps going being loud, endangering all of them: haha, how funny!
He is fawning over the beautiful, "unreachable" daughter of the chief in command on the moonbase we all know he will get later anyway for no reason other than "we went through this sh*t together": soo original.
Liam Hemsworth is peeing in front of the aliens to distract them: haha, how funny and mature.
...and the aliens even fall for that crap.
The whole movie could only happen in its entirety because of the first major decision that was made for no other reason than plot.
Levinson is some kind of an authority when it comes to aliens but he is ignored to enable the movie when he says not to fire at that spherical spaceship, that looks so difficult to the others and behaves totally different as well. That appearance wasn't even foreshadowing, it was an obvious spoiler to how they would be able to win this time against the aliens and took out any kind of suspense there could have been from the get go.
The movie is predictable all the time and doesn't even try to avoid (or hide) it, ultimately leading to me not being entertained at all.
Recurring actors were all a total waste, except perhaps for Goldblum.
Brent Spiner, who plays Dr. Okun, was additionally unbelievable and simply unnecessary.
Using a poweroff button as sign for the resistance against the aliens was preeeetty lazy as well in the design department.
Easy cash grab movie. I have no doubt the next ID movie will be even worse. Here goes my hope for a good Stargate reboot down the drain. I hoped it would give the franchise a possibility to relaunch a series or so but I heavily doubt that now.
But to not only say negative things about this movie: the CGI effects weren't bad.
