The Dark Tower Parent Guide

Jake Chambers (Tom Taylor) is the classic “Chosen One” in The Dark Tower, but parents don’t assume a teen protagonist equals a movie suitable for all your kids. First clue: It’s based on a Stephen King novel… an author known for thriller and horror stories, not fun family romps.

This sci-fi has a kill rate that’s right up there with R-raters. It just doesn’t have as much blood or explicit details. And, to be fair, we’ve seen Star Wars episodes with as many dropped bodies. It’s just that this one uses guns (seems they are effective population limiters on other planets besides ours) and it glamorizes the ability to shoot countless bullets to accomplish the classic cinematic justification of violence: saving the universe.

Our young hero has this tough task. His serial nightmares feature a messed-up sorcerer, known as the Man in Black (Matthew McConaughey), who is strapping kids to a funky chair and sucking their mental powers to send energy impulses toward a dark tower with the goal of eventually knocking it down. (I’m guessing they were out of TNT at the local dynamite shop…) Fighting back is a guy known as The Gunslinger (Idris Elba), a cool dude whose pistol loading techniques even left me wanting to play with guns.

When morning comes, Jake heads to school where he’s picked on for his mental anguish. At home, the guy who lives with mom (a tragedy took his dad’s life a few years back), wants him sent to a mental institution.

His mother is torn between experts’ opinions, the bullying brute she lives with and her son’s pleas for compassion. When the classic social worker and tough minion arrive to take the boy to crazy-land, Jake immediately recognizes their strange physical characteristics—they are from his nightmares. Managing to escape into New York’s urban maze, he uses clues from his nightly adventures to discover a portal that opens into his dreamscape. Inside he meets the star players of his overnight distractions.

Even though I haven’t read the book (which is part of a series), it’s obvious there are pieces missing in this puzzle. So, I wonder, will we get more context in the almost-certain sequel? Or did these bits of information, like the Man in Black’s motivation to destroy all life, get shot down in the process of stuffing a novel into a barely-over 90-minute film?

To be fair, The Dark Tower intrigued me enough to want to know what will happen next. Another plus is this bid-to-save-all-life-from-extermination is a serious tale and leaves no time for sexual soirées. Other than some references to deity and a couple of scatological curses, there’s little else for parental concern (except for those many bullets).

I’m sensing there may be a positive moral message coming in the next episode, but will it also offer some glue to hold the plot together? If not, this tower could fall without the help of a madman.

About author

Rod Gustafson

Rod Gustafson has worked in various media industries since 1977. He founded Parent Previews in 1993, and today continues to write and broadcast the reviews in newspapers, on radio and (of course) on the Internet. His efforts also include writing and researching media in all its forms and observing how it effects society and culture. He and his wife Donna have four children.