Hey, so Roland, the last gunslinger, is coming to the moves and will have a tv series. Little Ronnie Howard as Opie will be directing the first movie as well as the first tv series. I have read these massive books many times over and I have always loved the world(s) that Stephen King created. Link to story below. What do the rest of my fellow escapists think about this? Has anyone else read all 7 of the behemoth (sp) books?
http://tv.ign.com/articles/111/1119037p1.html
Edit: Please don't be in 3D. I feel that would cheapen the experience. i also wonder how they are going to portray all of the kinky stuff from the books
i've read all of them...multiple times, and i've been following the news about the movies and tv show, and while i am excited, i'm also wary..because bringing those books to life on any size screen will be extremely risky with the size and scope of the world within...i really hope they can capture the true epic feel, but if they mess up...oh damn...they're gonna be nailed to the wall by a LOT of people
I loved the books, I've read them several times over. Very imaginative and entertaining.
(...Been reading the comic books lately, have you checked those out...?)
Gah... I dunno, I don't have a whole lot of faith in the movie industry to do the series justice. The setup with the TV series supplimenting the movies sounds interesting in theory, but I'm not sure how well it's all going to work out.
Books don't get translated to movies/TV very well. This isn't to say that movies/TV based on books can't be good, but if whether they are or not they almost always butcher their source material. ...It can't be helped, they're two different mediums.
Hey, so Roland, the last gunslinger, is coming to the moves and will have a tv series. Little Ronnie Howard as Opie will be directing the first movie as well as the first tv series. I have read these massive books many times over and I have always loved the world(s) that Stephen King created. Link to story below. What do the rest of my fellow escapists think about this? Has anyone else read all 7 of the behemoth (sp) books?
http://tv.ign.com/articles/111/1119037p1.html
Edit: Please don't be in 3D. I feel that would cheapen the experience. i also wonder how they are going to portray all of the kinky stuff from the books
I have. the fourth was my favorite, and I bought all of them except seven as paperbacks. The small ones. But I had to get the seventh as the big paper back, just cause the pics in it were awesome.
Now, sadly, the movie will suck. You cant do everything that was in the movies, and no one will take the chance becuase readers will critique it, and people who come see it are going to say westerns are dead. A big budget company and movie will destroy this series, becuase the charm of it is the hopelessness you get while you know there is a path of redemption. and of course it will be in 3d.
plus, they already did this before, once, in the 80s. it was either a series or a movie, or a tv movie, i forget what, but i know they did atleast hte first book in the 80s on film or tv.
Well Stephen King usually gets directly involved when ever one of his works gets transferred to the big screen, so there's a good chance that won't happen.
As for me, I only made it 3/4 of the way through the first book. I've always meant to go back and finish it. As for the other books, I've only been able to find books 2 & 3 (and 1 obviously), I can't seem to find the rest.
I just hope they manage to rewrite the ending into something a little less terrible.
Well not the END exactly, that I have no problem with.
Pretty much the entire encounter before the last chapter needs to be reworked.
The way it's handled now would be akin to having Frodo and Samwise meet up with some brain dead gnome right before they get to Mt. Doom and then the Gnome just wishes the Ring away.
Hooray! Evil is vanquished and nobody had to have any meaningful confrontations or closure to their struggles.
It might work as a trilogy but even then they'll have to take a cleaver to certain parts just to keep it under five hours per movie. I also wonder what they'll do for the ending...
if they rework it to where he actually ascends to the top of the tower instead of just an infinite loop it might go over better and with King being no stranger to screenplays it might work. King can say that the journey is the most important part all he wants but after 5,000 pages I want some fucking closure
I've always wanted to read these books. I've read other Stephen King books like Green Mile, Duma Key etc but I've never gotten round to these. I'm gonna have to pick them up starting right now, so I can read at least some of them before the films come out
I'm in the 'unfilmable' camp myself but what the hell, dream casting anyone?
My personal list:
Roland Deschain: Viggo Mortensen
He really is perfect for the role. Absolutely perfect. I've actually always said this but The Road confirmed it. He's at this point just rightly grizzled for the role. Plus he's got the blue blue eyes!
Eddie Dean: Shia La-naw just kidding. Umm... Jamie Bell. UPDATE: SCRATCH THAT! JOSEPH GORDON-LEVITT!
If you've seen Jumper Jamie Bell was the sidekick feller. Not the best movie ever, but I could see him pulling off Eddie Dean really well. Mind you I'm shooting for 'right age right now' which is why I don't have Roland being played by Eastwood in his prime. If I were casting anyone as Eddie Dean I'd probably shoot for a younger Sam Rockwell (Moon, Choke). Both of these actors look like they could pass for heroin addicts. Sam Rockwell would've been perfect twenty or even ten years ago!!!! UPDATE: I'm pulling for Joseph Gordon-Levitt (you may remember him from extraction, various other things throughout the years). He's a little older than Eddie but he can play young, he's a little too healthy looking but I'm sure he can diet and look like a heroin junkie in no time. Plus once you get him back to his normal weight and muscle mass n stuff he's perfect for the role! Plus he can play funny!!!
Detta/Odetta/Susannah Dean: Jasika Nicole
You may have seen her playing the role of Astrid in Fringe. I must confess, part of the reason why I'd cast her is that she's freakin' gorgeous and I'm sort of in love. My only hesitation is how well she could play 'badass'. If I was casting anyone regardless of age it would've probably been a younger Khandi Alexander. She's more or less who I've always pictured with picturing Susannah, plus she could've pulled off the badass quality really well.
Jake Chambers: ???
Alright, I really don't keep up on my child actors so this one's tough. A young Cameron Bright would've been perfect but he's heading into his later teenage and "i'm a tool" years at this point so... you got me.
Man in Black/Walter/Randall Flagg: Sam Rockwell.
I don't believe any two people view this dude the same way. Partially because King sorta runs the gamut when describing him in different books. Actually I'm gonna go back to Sam Rockwell on this one! He's a little too old for Eddie Dean but he's sorta perfect for the man in black.
The Crimson King: ???
Could really go anywhere with this one, just please don't stick with the latter book's interpretation of the character. Deranged Santa throwing sneetches, jumping up and down and screaming? Really King? This is how you wanna end this fantastic series? SIDE NOTE: Really writers, feel free to scrap most of if not all of the entire last book and make your own ending. I don't know what the fuck King was on when he wrote that. I'm gonna get a little in-depth so spoiler warning:
I actually didn't mind the fate of Roland. It was quite fitting actually, on many levels. For one, this was an extremely 'meta' series in many ways. If we were to look at Roland as a literary character, what is his fate? The same as any other literary character, to be doomed to the same motions, the same actions again and again for as long as people are reading his stories.
Also we knew this was a tragic character, with tragic flaws and he's made tragic choices. But by the end he was welcoming death finally coming to him, where's the tragedy in that? Instead he sorta gets what's coming to him. An eternity of making these same motions again and again till he makes the right choices (I'm convinced that his one huge mistake was not saving Jake. Few reasons: He was supposed to confront and defeat Flagg at the Tower. This had been hinted at from (I believe) the first book. By letting Jake die, he later has to rescue him from the doorway demon, giving it his seed. This seed results in Roland's progeny, who kills Flagg (an unceremonious and kinda lame death of a great character, but if you see what I'm saying that was sorta the point. That wasn't how things were supposed to roll)! The Tower rejects him and condemns him to the beginning of his path because things didn't go 'the right way'. Fitting that Roland's biggest act of callous behavior sealed his fate. In real life, you can make mistakes but then grow and change. But that doesn't mean that those mistakes you made won't still follow you.
And the final reason why I think the ending fit the book? Again, on a very meta level Roland and the reader are on the same level. Roland is told that his job is done and he can stop his journey at one point, and if he continues his journey he may not like what he finds. We are given the same warning by King, going so far as to exit the story and tell us directly that maybe we should stop here. But like Roland, we have a singular compulsion to reach the tower, see where the steps in that tower lead. We can't stop ourselves, Roland can't stop himself. The journey is the most important part of it all, but that fact escapes Roland, you and me. We are damned by our determination. We (you, me, Roland) had it coming.
Still doesn't excuse some elements. Flagg's lame death fit things in the story with my interpretation, doesn't make it not lame as shit. We've been waiting forever for this confrontation but oh, Flagg is killed by a spider-baby, which goes on to attack Roland and get fucked right quick. The Crazy santa lookin' ************ on top of the tower throwing harry potter balls at Roland? Lame as shit. Roland taking care of The Crimson King by having his Deus Ex Machina buddy erase him out of existence? Lame. And exactly where the fuck was Jack Sawyer this whole time? Any Talisman/Black House fans remember that at the end of Black House he was destined to help Roland in some way. Did King just forget about the big plot element he set up just four years earlier (Black House cam out in 2001, Dark Tower 7 came out 2005)?
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