Idris Elba's Dark Tower Movie Deserves Redemption With a Sequel

Few stars in Hollywood are quite as bankable as Idris Elba. The English actor's raw charisma and undeniable screen presence make him an all-time great who can turn mediocre scripts into pure gold. Elba's best films make him the coolest person in the room, and that's what makes him such a star.

Unfortunately, there are times when even Elba's charms aren't enough to save a project, and that was undeniably the case with 2017's The Dark Tower movie.

The Dark Tower Was Nothing Short of an Unmitigated Disaster

Commonly ranked among Stephen King's worst adaptations, The Dark Tower was critically and commercially panned. It currently has an abysmally low rating of 16% on Rotten Tomatoes, and though its audience rating is a slightly cheerier 44%, that didn't quite translate to box office magic.

The Dark Tower Doesn't Give Its Actors Enough to Do

While Elba's performance as Roland Deschain was consistently praised, critics and audiences agreed that he wasn't given enough focus.

Conversely, though Matthew McConaughey is a beloved actor who can be just as enthralling as Elba, none of that is on display in The Dark Tower. McConaughey, at his best, can give any character a roguish charm, but that's totally lost here.

With a short runtime that fails to capture the magic of Stephen King's world and writing, it's clear why the movie had such a hard time succeeding.

Still, as surprising as it is, The Dark Tower had one ardent defender: Stephen King himself.

Stephen King is The Dark Tower's Biggest Defender

Despite the critical thrashing The Dark Tower received, King himself seemed to hold some fondness for the film.

In a 2017 interview with Vulture, King specifically praised the movie's screenwriter, Akiva Goldsman.

I thought Akiva Goldsman did a terrific job in taking a central part of the book and turning it into what I thought was a pretty good movie.

King actually seems to have a higher opinion of the movie than the film's actual makers. Producer Ron Howard expressed regret over a few creative decisions made with The Dark Tower. Meanwhile, Goldsman said in a Hollywood Reporter interview that he could have translated his love of the books better.

I have a lot of regret about the parts of that that didn't work out. Our best version of that existed well before television-movie crossovers and streaming were a thing.

While casual fans might have simply seen that the movie flopped and let the matter rest, the truth is that The Dark Tower's failure had profound repercussions beyond that one movie.

The Dark Tower's Failure Killed a Potentially Massive Franchise

Before The Dark Tower movie released in 2017, there were talks of turning it into a much bigger franchise.

A Dark Tower television series was announced in 2016 and set for a 2018 release date. A sequel to the film was also frequently cited by cast and crew as a distinct possibility, with the original Dark Tower novel's sequel, The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three being cited as a potential source of inspiration.

Unfortunately, The Dark Tower's poor reception killed those hopes before they could manifest.

Amazon purchased the rights to a Dark Tower TV series in 2018, but didn't move forward with the pilot, leading to the series existing in a sort of pop-culture purgatory at the moment.

Despite The Dark Tower's Numerous Failures, It Absolutely Deserves a Sequel

The Dark Tower is a critically flawed movie with solid bones.

Regardless of how their performances in The Dark Tower panned out, both Elba and McConaughey are more than capable of embodying the roles given to them in the film.

Elba undeniably has the kind of rugged charm that Roland Deschain exudes, while McConaughey could be an off-putting but strangely likable Man in Black.

The Dark Tower's Behind-the-Scenes Crew Was Stacked

The Dark Tower's director was Nikolaj Arcel, a filmmaker most famous for his work as the screenwriter for 2009's original The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo film.

Arcel also wrote and directed A Royal Affair in 2012, earning him a nomination for best international foreign film from the Oscars.

Similarly, screenwriter Akiva Goldsman also won an Academy Award for best screenplay with 2001's A Beautiful Mind.

Given the all-star cast and crew, it seems more than possible that this team could create a truly great Dark Tower movie if given another go.

What The Dark Tower's Sequel Would Need to Get Right

The biggest element that would need correcting for a hypothetical The Dark Tower sequel would be a bigger focus on Elba's Roland Deschain. He's the main character of the books, and Elba is compelling as the hero, so giving him more to do would help the film be more enjoyable.

The other big thing would be for the next Dark Tower project to get a little more into the weirder side of Stephen King's book series. Dark Tower is King at his most experimental and strange, so adding in more of the horror elements of the original book series would add a lot of flavor.

The last necessary element would be an R rating. Dark Tower gets incredibly dark in places, as one would expect from King's work, and not allowing the film to depict that hamstrung its ability to accurately adapt the series.

Unfortunately, The Dark Tower Is Probably On Hold For a Good While

While a sequel to The Dark Tower might sound enticing, it doesn't seem particularly likely any time soon, given the original's poor reception.

Still, King is the most famous horror writer of all time, and Dark Tower is often considered his magnum opus. When The Dark Tower does rise again, fans can only hope that Idris Elba is involved in some way.