Just to get this out of the way, I have not read any of Stephen King’s “Dark Tower” novels prior to seeing the film. I tend to avoid reading the source material for an upcoming film so I can see the film with an unbiased perspective. With that also being said, let me get the positives out of the way for what is going to be a review with many negative thoughts towards Sony’s, “The Dark Tower”. As someone who hasn’t read the critically acclaimed novels I do think this movie did a good enough job in pushing someone like me over the edge to dive deep into the world of “The Dark Tower”. I saw lots of imagery in this movie that had me saying, “I want to learn more about that”. In that regard I do have to give the movie it’s due for taking someone like me and making them relatively interested in the source material that inspired Sony to tackle it. Leading man Idris Elba as Roland Deschain/The Gunslinger brings his A game once again. He has a great charm and screen presence that almost goes unmatched these days and I desperately wish he can lead a franchise before he gets too old to lead one. Other than these two diamonds in the rough, “The Dark Tower” is a whole slew of bad decisions, bad acting, bad writing, bad direction, thus equating to one of the worst movies of the Summer. Coming hot off of a stellar month of July it felt too good to be true to keep that streak running into a month of August that doesn’t look to be too kind to it’s audiences. The first mistake Sony made in approaching this movie was that they tried to make it work as a sequel to other movies that don’t exist. It’d be like starting “The Lord of the Rings” films with it’s third entry in “Return of the King”. It’s such an awkward approach that does no service to audiences who are here to see the material they love fully realized on the big screen. I could only assume that it was infuriating to my peers who couldn’t wait to see the The Gunslinger take on The Man in Black in a visualized form. Speaking of The Man in Black, I could not believe how terrible and hilariously awful Matthew McConaughey was. Matthew should and will be nominated for a Razzie, and as it stands on August the 3rd of 2017, should and will win the award for Worst Actor in a Supporting Role. It’s baffling considering that McConaughey just won an Oscar recently and then he puts out a performance like this where someone else could have done better. There is no effort from director Nikolaj Arcel to yank a performance out of Matthew and I think that Arcel lacks any sort of comprehensible direction overall. “The Dark Tower” is every issue modern day Hollywood has from a big budget studio produced standpoint. It’s one of these wannabe franchise starters with the most talked about leading actors, it’s based off of an acclaimed source material, and it feels ripe for the big screen treatment. For a movie that is based off of books that many consider to be some of the best fantasy stories ever conceived, “The Dark Tower” feels wholly unoriginal and uncreative. It hits every familiar beat and even ends with the promise for a bunch of sequels that no one really wants or asked for considering the “pilot” was a heaping pile of cinematic trash. There really isn’t much else to say about this movie when everything presented is just the textbook definition of “bad”. I’m not one for just blurting out blanket statements to get the point across, but it’s migraine inducing just to find a place to begin on how and where to fix this movie. How to make it better? I have no clue. Extending the runtime may have helped (because there is so much presented in this film) but I’m honestly happy I got in and out of the theater just so I wouldn’t have to watch another hour of bad filmmaking. From the screenplay, down to the boom operator, Sony’s “The Dark Tower” is one of 2017’s darkest 90 minutes yet. You know how Stephen King is notorious for hating what Stanley Kubrick did with “The Shining”? I could not begin to imagine how he feels about this film. He honestly may acquire a gun for hire just to take out Sony and Nikolaj Arcel for forgetting the face of their fathers. “The Dark Tower” gets a 16/100