Yes, it has characters named after characters from the books. Yes, there is a Tower and a villain and a boy. And that's where ANY resemblance ends.
I could rant and rave about the total lack of Eddie, Susannah, or Oy. I could complain about the total change of the dynamic between the last of the line of Eld and the boy who said "Go, then. There are other worlds than these." I could mention the skipping of ALL the books and picking up at the beginning of the end (which isn't an end at all). All of that and more.
But I'd be wasting my breath.
Instead, I'll ignore the source material - just like the screenwriters did, apparently - and say the action scenes were rushed, the acting was flatter than flat, and the amount of deus ex machina displayed in every possible scene was breathtakingly arrogant. Can't think of a good way to resolve a conflict? Easy-peasy, a gateway or two with strobe lights!
I don't expect anyone to take seven books' worth of storyline and pack it into a single movie. But to completely ignore all source material and just cobble something unrelated together is unforgivable, especially with a story as fan-driven and notoriously complex as this one.
King fans are never going to settle for a halfway attempt when it comes to his opus - and this didn't even try to get halfway. The vague hints (a talking racoon commercial instead of Oy? Really?) and nods ("thankee-sai") aren't going to appease us, they're going to enrage us. And by the way, they're totally lost on anyone who isn't enraged.
As criminal as it is to slap the DT label on this thing and then tell people that it's just another iteration of the story, it is equally criminal to put Idris in a role for which he is a total mismatch; equally criminal to put McConn in one where he's limited to slithery evil one-liners and big grins. Both of these men have SO much more potential than is shown here, and the lack of story kept them on painfully short leashes.
Watching this was like lighting the fuse on an M-80 and tossing it in a garbage can... only to have it fizzle out. There's a wee bang, a puff of acrid smoke, and that's it. No glorious explosions and light shows. Just... disappointment and the sharp smell of defeat, and a hole in your wallet where your money used to be.
