When I was a kid, I was
extremely skittish about scary things (mostly as a result of a seriously violent graphic novel version of Frankenstein that gave me a month-long series of nightmares that still are still recurring), and as a result, I basically missed out on Stephen King. I'm getting braver, and have been working on upping my tolerance since I graduated from college, but I still need to outsource my opinions on the Kingverse to other, less fraidy-cat people. Like BabylonSista, who
breaks down the risk and rewards inherent in the coming multi-media adaptation of
The Dark Tower:
With such an intricately woven narrative, this project may have been in better hands with its previous custodian, J.J. Abrams. With Lostproducers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof, the project could have been created with the same mix of wild abandon and fetish for meticulous detail as their island series. Howard and Goldsman, both Academy Award winners, are no lightweights--Ron Howard directed both A Beautiful Mind and the fantasy classic Willow. Goldsman wrote the adapted screenplay for A Beautiful Mind, so he can be good...but I don't know that I can get over the script for Batman and Robin. Sure, he didn't have anything to do with the nipply batsuit, but he wrote the awful words spoken from said costume. And Deep Blue Sea...yeah.
Here are the positives: both Howard and Goldsman have had success with their with fantasy and science fiction projects, strong elements of the Dark Tower plot structure. Howard's films Splash and Cocoondemonstrate his attention to detail, imperative in creating a true representation of the novels. And the very fact that a film/TV combination has never been done before is encouraging--network TV constraints not withstanding, this arrangement gives the story the room it needs to unfold. I do wonder if the novels and stories closely connected to the DT canon will be explored as well, though just the material from the seven novels is more than enough.
I do like the idea, particularly in our mega-series prone popular culture today, of big bridge adaptations that combine television, movies, and web series. The closest anyone really gets these days is having different directors for different movies in a series, and going long. But, for example, to suggest that the first, slimmed, and most limited in perspective an emotion entry in the Harry Potter series can unfold in essentially the same form as something like Deathly Hallows has always struck me as a mistake. A world where the adaptation of that series began with a movie and commenced over a tense six-year series with a pre-set plan and artistic vision and a pre-determined end point makes more sense, and would avoid sacrificing key scenes and allow for additions of details that J.K. Rowling's revealed in extra-canonical material and speeches. A movie's just a three-hour television special, and can always be rebroadcast to reintroduce a series, after all. Not everything deserves that sort of treatment, of course. But there are works for which it's good business and good art, to give audiences more than movies. We'll have to see how this one goes, to see if the combination has a future.