High Plains Drifter

After Years In Development Hell, Stephen King’S Literary Gunslinger Roland Deschain Finally Makes It To The Big Screen In The Dark Tower. Starburst Goes On A Quest To Uncover A Modern-Day Mythology…

- Michael Coldwell

Stephen King’s reputation as America’s greatest writer of horror fiction masks the fact that he has frequently spread his literary wings across pulp noir, classic western, epic fantasy and Arthurian legend. His Dark Tower series of novels embraced all of these diverse genres into an epic fantasy quest, expanding upon King’s fabled ‘multiverse’ (to which it has many links) while occupying a distinctive territory all its own.

Perhaps that enigmatic profile is why it has taken over three decades for the books to make it to the big screen. The first in a planned movie and TV franchise, Sony’s The Dark Tower sees the wandering knight of the Old West Roland Deschain (Idris Elba) and his young sidekick Jake Chalmers (Tom Taylor) face off against Matthew McConaughey’s fiendish sorcerer Walter Padick, aka ‘The Man in Black’, in a mythic battle across the dimensions.

It’s the stuff of legend, alright. Inspired by his love of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Dark Tower book series began life as five short stories published in a magazine, which were then compiled into the first novel in the series, The Gunslinger, in 1982. This established Deschain as the last of the ancient order of gunslingers and his quest to discover the Dark Tower, a fabled monolith said to be at the nexus of every plain of existence. The setting of the book was a magical realm called Mid-World, a post-apocalyptic take on the American Old West. In creating Deschain’s nemesis Padick, King mined his own fictional legacy, the character having first appeared in 1978 opus The Stand in the guise of demonic havoc-wreaker Randall Flagg.