The 2014 draft of The Dark Tower is still very flawed, but much, much better than the final film even while using the same plot structure, and actually could have been followed by a few sequels that adapt the book series relatively faithfully starting with book 2. It just needed another pass to pare down Roland’s dialogue to the bare minimum and tame some of the fish out of water B.S. in New York.

The film we got was a travesty that did away with it being the first part of a story in favor of trying to give the movie a more upbeat ending without being married to anything from the later books in a theoretical sequel, crippled Roland’s character, and catered to every lowest common denominator checklist the studio could come up with.