The 2017 film · Columbia / MRC · 95 minutes

The Dark Tower (2017)

A gunslinger, a boy, a man in black, and a machine that fires children at the Tower. About 3,000 pages, in 95 minutes.

The Dark Tower was directed by Nikolaj Arcel from a screenplay credited to Akiva Goldsman & Jeff Pinkner and Anders Thomas Jensen & Nikolaj Arcel, and released by Sony Pictures (a Columbia Pictures and MRC production) on August 4, 2017, after a premiere at MoMA on July 31. It runs 95 minutes and is rated PG-13. It cost about $60–66 million, opened at number one with $19.15 million on the slowest weekend of the summer, fell 59 percent the next weekend, and finished with $50.7 million domestic and about $113 million worldwide. Rotten Tomatoes settled at 16 percent, Metacritic at 34, CinemaScore at B. The Rotten Tomatoes consensus: “Go then, there are other Stephen King adaptations than these.”

It is not an adaptation of Book I, and its director said as much. Goldsman proposed to King that Roland already carry the Horn of Eld, the object the last page of Book VII hands him for the next turn of the wheel, so that the film would be the next time around rather than the first. King agreed, and on May 19, 2016 tweeted a photo of the horn lying in ash, captioned “LAST TIME AROUND”: “Soon Roland will raise the Horn of Eld. And blow.” Arcel called the result “a canon continuation.” The film itself never says the word loop; the horn is in Roland’s gear in set photos and the marketing, and whether it can be made out on screen is uncertain: one careful reviewer thought he glimpsed it and was not sure.

What it does with the books is take one element from each of several and bolt them onto a single chase: an eleven-year-old from New York (Books I and III), a plaster demon in a Brooklyn house (III), a restaurant of vampires (VI–VII), a machine that breaks the Tower with captive minds (VII), the creed and the opening line (I). The ka-tet, Mejis, Blaine, Mordred, the Crimson King as anything but graffiti, and the Tower as a destination are all gone. After three October 2016 test screenings in which audiences struggled with the mythology, about $6 million of reshoots went to backstory for Roland’s hatred of Walter and to orienting the audience in Mid-World. Below, the film as it plays.

Act 1

The Horn and the Boy

A white card on black: a Tower stands at the center of the universe, protecting us from darkness, and “It Is Said The Mind Of A Child Can Bring It Down.” Then sunlight. On a flat-topped butte above a brown wasteland sits a suburb too clean to be real: lawns, swings, children in 1950s colours, two small girls in blue chanting for someone to come and play. Adults with faces that sit slightly wrong watch from the edges. Wristbands beep, a siren sounds, and the chosen children file into a black stepped pyramid. Inside, a girl is strapped into a chair whose metal plates close around her skull. Her “shine” is drawn out of her as light and fired into the sky. The Man in Black watches it go. Far off, a slim dark spire with six pale beams radiating from it like spokes takes the hit, cracks, and burns in red smoke; over a city, a red tear opens in the air, and something is glimpsed behind it.

Jake Chambers, eleven, wakes in a New York apartment as an earthquake shakes the building. The one thing that falls is a photograph of him with his father, a fireman killed a year earlier. His mother Laurie comes to check on him. Jake draws what he dreams, and his wall is papered with it: the Tower, the man in black, a gunslinger with two guns, doors, a rose, nineteen and nineteen again. At school a bully grabs the sketchbook and Jake beats him until he is pulled off. A therapist whose desk carries a framed photograph of the Overlook Hotel assures him the quakes are quakes. Leaving the clinic he sees one of the dream’s creatures across the street, in a man’s skin; a homeless man tells him they take the special ones. He runs for a bus.

The dreams sharpen. A smoking battlefield the film never names, bodies in the ash; the Man in Black, whistling, crouches beside a dying man, tells him there is nothing on the other side, and sets him alight with a gesture. Then a misted wood and two gunslingers, father and son, reciting their creed together against a voice that answers from everywhere. Walter tells the father to “Stop breathing,” and Steven Deschain suffocates in his son’s arms. Roland alone shrugs off the magic; he fires, and Walter catches the bullet behind his back. Over the last of the dream a voice says the oldest line in the saga:

The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

The dream ends on a boarded white house behind a black iron fence.

Jake posts a drawing of the house to a forum; a reply places it in Brooklyn. At Lon’s urging, two workers from a clinic upstate come to collect him. Jake sees cracked, twitching hands and a stitched seam behind the driver’s ear. His mother will not listen; Lon says he goes willingly or by force. Jake asks for his toothbrush, climbs out the bathroom window onto the roof, and the driver, hauling himself after him, tears his skin open on a pipe: grey rat fur underneath. Jake loses them in the subway and finds the house. Inside, the house itself heaves up out of its own walls and floor, plank and plaster, to stop him. Beyond it is a sterile room of steel and glass with a keypad and a doorway full of light. He enters the code, nineteen-nineteen, and steps through.

A slim dark spire rising through cloud over an empty plain, six pale beams radiating from it. — **Film · 1 The Tower and Six Beams** The film opens on a card, then on this: a slim dark spire at the center of the universe with six pale beams radiating from it like the spokes of a wheel. It is the only Tower the film has. There is no rose field, no door, and nobody walking toward it. The card says a child’s mind can bring it down, and the next ninety minutes are about which child.

Children on swings and lawns atop a desert butte, a black pyramid behind them, adults watching from the edges. — **Film · 2 The Playground on the Mesa** A 1950s suburb on a butte above a wasteland, lawns and swings and children in bright colours, two girls in blue chanting for a playmate. The adults watching from the edges wear human faces that are not theirs. Wristbands beep, a siren sounds, and the chosen file into the black pyramid. This is the film’s Devar-Toi: Book VII’s Breaker campus, with the Breakers made into children.

A column of light shoots from the apex of a black pyramid across the sky toward a distant spire wrapped in red smoke. — **Film · 3 A Child’s Mind, Fired** Inside the pyramid a girl’s shine is drawn out of her as light and fired from the apex across the sky. Far off, the Tower takes it, cracks, and burns in red smoke; over a city, a red tear opens in the air. The opening sequence states the whole plot in a minute: a weapon, a target, and the Man in Black watching the levels.

A boy kneels in his bedroom at dawn to pick up a fallen photograph, the wall above him covered in pencil drawings. — **Film · 4 The Wall of Drawings** Jake Chambers, eleven, after the earthquake that opens his story. The one thing that fell was a photograph of him with his father, a fireman dead a year. His wall is papered with what he dreams: the Tower, the man in black, a gunslinger with two guns, doors, a rose, the number nineteen. Everyone who sees it calls it grief. The film’s Jake is Book I’s boy with Book III’s visions, and no Way Station.

A boy at a kitchen table with his sketchbook while his mother watches from the counter and his stepfather leans in the doorway. — **Film · 5 Breakfast, Mother, Stepfather** The Chambers kitchen: Laurie worried, Lon out of patience, Jake and the sketchbook between them. There is no Elmer Chambers and no Greta Shaw here; the film gives Jake a dead fireman for a father and a stepfather who wants him sent to a clinic upstate. The quarrel over that clinic is what Walter’s people will use to get through the door.

A man in a black coat crouches beside a dying man on a smoking battlefield at dusk, one hand raised. — **Film · 6 The Battlefield Dream** Jake dreams a smoking field of the dead, a battle the film never names. The Man in Black, whistling, crouches by a dying man, tells him there is nothing on the other side, and burns him with a gesture. It is the film’s first look at Walter’s magic, and the nearest it comes to the fall of the gunslingers, which the books end at Jericho Hill.

Two gunslingers stand back to back with revolvers drawn in a misty wood while a dark figure watches from the trees. — **Film · 7 The Last Two Gunslingers** Roland and his father Steven, back to back in the mist, reciting the gunslinger’s creed against a voice that comes from everywhere. Walter steps out and says “Stop breathing,” and Steven does. Roland alone resists the magic; he fires, and Walter catches the bullet behind his back. The reshoots after the test screenings went to backstory for this feud. In the books Steven dies off the page; only the comics show it, and not at Walter’s hand.

Two smiling visitors with clipboards stand at an apartment door while a boy in the hallway stares at the seam behind one’s ear. — **Film · 8 The Clinic Men** Two workers from a clinic upstate, sent at Lon’s urging. Jake sees what his mother cannot: cracked, twitching hands, and a stitched seam behind the driver’s ear where a human face is fastened on. Book VII’s can-toi, the low men in living masks, arrive in the film as clinic staff with a driver. His mother tells him it is for his own good.

A boy scrambles across a Brooklyn rooftop while a man climbing after him shows grey fur through torn skin. — **Film · 9 Rat Fur on the Roof** Jake asks for a toothbrush, goes out the bathroom window, and runs. The driver, hauling himself after him, tears his skin open on a pipe, and grey rat fur shows through the man underneath. It is the film’s first unmasking: the creatures are rats in people. Jake ducks into one subway entrance and out another, and heads for Brooklyn.

A boy stands at the iron gate of a boarded white house on a Brooklyn street in late afternoon. — **Film · 10 The House From the Dream** A boarded white house behind a black iron fence, exactly as Jake drew it after the dream; a reply on a forum placed it in Brooklyn. This is Book III’s Dutch Hill mansion, where Jake Chambers comes back into Mid-World. In the book he needs a key; in the film he needs an address and a code.

A giant figure of planks and plaster rears out of a derelict hallway as a boy runs beneath it toward a lit doorway. — **Film · 11 The House Is the Demon** Inside, the house assembles itself into a demon of plank and plaster to stop him, as Book III’s plaster-man doorkeeper does. Beyond it, where the book has a magic door, the film has a lit steel-and-glass portal room with a keypad. Jake enters nineteen-nineteen and steps through. From here on, the magic is machinery.

Act 2

Mid-World

White hardpan under a white sky. This is the Mohaine Desert, and it is the boy who crosses it, not the gunslinger; there is no Tull and no Way Station. Near collapse from thirst, he sees at dusk a fire on a far hill. In the woods beyond it a sleeping man comes up off the ground in one motion with a huge engraved revolver in his face. Roland Deschain, last of the gunslingers, takes him for Walter’s trick, at one point dangling him over a cliff edge, until the drawings persuade him. By the fire he explains what the drawings mean: the Tower holds the dark out; Walter is feeding it children with shine; he himself hunts the man who killed his father, and wants nothing else. Roland asks whether they have guns and bullets in the boy’s world. “You’re gonna like Earth. A lot.”

At his base, Walter learns from his man Sayre that the Dutch Hill portal has been used, and that the boy who used it has pure shine, enough on his own to bring the Tower down.

The walk takes them through a fog-bound forest where a rusting amusement park stands among the trees. That night Jake hears his father calling from the dark. A thing wearing the father’s shape leads him toward the treeline before it shows itself; it tries Steven’s face on Roland, who is not fooled and shoots it. When a second creature comes, Jake picks up a gun and fires. Roland explains: every strike on the Tower tears the fabric between worlds, and things get through.

Walter, meanwhile, walks into New York past graffiti hailing the Crimson King. He lets himself into the Chambers apartment and is eating chicken at the kitchen table when Laurie and Lon come home. He kills Lon with a word, makes Laurie show him her son’s drawings, and burns her. On his way out he leaves a smiley face.

Roland brings Jake to a village of seers in a green valley, the film’s Manni. The seer Arra puts her hands on the boy and sees the machine: six months on foot, but reachable through Walter’s own portals from his base in New York. That night Walter’s trackers hit the village, and with their human masks off they are rats walking upright. Roland kills them one at a time and takes a round in the shoulder. One carries Jake off into the dark; Roland steadies, breathes, and drops it at long range. They leave Mid-World through a village portal, and Jake is told to remember its code as the way back.

A small boy walks alone across a white salt flat toward a distant hill where a single fire burns at dusk. — **Film · 12 A Boy Crosses the Mohaine** White hardpan to every horizon: the Mohaine Desert of Book I, crossed here by the boy rather than the gunslinger. No Tull, no Way Station, no man in black ahead. Jake is near collapse from thirst when, at dusk, he sees a fire on a far hill. The film keeps the desert and the opening line; it just sends the boy across.

A gunslinger risen onto one knee at dawn points a revolver at a frozen boy clutching a sketchbook. — **Film · 13 The Gunslinger Wakes** A sleeping man comes off the ground in one motion with a revolver in Jake’s face. Roland Deschain, last of the gunslingers, takes the boy for one of Walter’s tricks and at one point dangles him over a cliff. The drawings change his mind. The film’s Roland is hatless, whole-handed and heavier than the book’s, and this is his entrance: at gunpoint, suspicious of a child.

A gunslinger and a boy face each other across a night campfire with drawings spread on the ground between them. — **Film · 14 Two Faces Across the Fire** The palaver by the fire. Roland explains the Tower that holds the dark out, the children with shine who are being used to break it, and his own hunt for the man who killed his father, which is the only thing he still wants. Roland asks whether they have guns and bullets in the boy’s world. “You’re gonna like Earth. A lot.”

A boy steps toward a dark figure holding out its hand at the edge of firelight while a gunslinger rises behind him with both guns. — **Film · 15 The Thing Wearing His Father** Night. Jake hears his father calling from the trees, and a figure wearing the dead man’s shape holds out its hand. It is a demon, and when it shows itself it tries Steven’s face on Roland, who is not fooled and shoots it. A second one comes and Jake picks up a gun and fires. Every strike on the Tower tears the fabric, Roland says, and things get through.

A man in black sits eating at a kitchen table, smiling at a woman and a man who have stopped in the doorway. — **Film · 16 A Visitor in the Kitchen** Walter has let himself into the Chambers apartment and is eating chicken at the table when Laurie and Lon come home. The moment before: he smiles, they stop in the doorway. In the next minute Lon is dead at a word, and Laurie is made to show him the drawings and is burned. Book III’s Laurie Chambers survives her son’s story; the film’s does not.

A robed seer presses her palms to a boy’s temples in a village circle while a gunslinger watches from outside it. — **Film · 17 The Seer Reads the Boy** A village of seers in a green valley, the film’s version of the Manni. Arra, a name borrowed from the Marvel comics, puts her hands on Jake and sees the machine: six months on foot, but reachable through Walter’s own portals from his base in New York. It is the plan for the rest of the film. Roland watches from outside the circle.

A gunslinger with a bloodied shoulder aims one revolver down a burning village at a distant rat-headed figure carrying a boy. — **Film · 18 The Long Shot** Walter’s trackers hit the village at night with their masks off: rats walking upright. Roland kills them one at a time and takes a round in the shoulder. One carries Jake off into the dark. Roland steadies, breathes, and drops it at long range. It is the film’s first clean statement of what a gunslinger is, and the wound that sends them to a New York hospital.

Act 3

New York

An emergency room on the New York side, in the world the books call Keystone Earth; reviewers used the name for the film’s New York, and whether anyone says it aloud on screen is unconfirmed. A doctor dresses the shoulder. Roland pays with a coin, pockets the painkillers, and swallows them on a city bus with a Coke. A raccoon in a commercial prompts him to ask whether the animals here still speak; two drunk girls who flirt with him are told they have forgotten the faces of their fathers. The homeless man from Jake’s first day tells Jake where the skin-men take the children: a restaurant called the Dixie Pig.

Then the apartment. Lon is dead on the living-room floor. In Jake’s bedroom a scorched hole has been burned through the boards, and Jake sees, in a flash, what happened to his mother. He breaks down. Roland vows to kill Walter, and teaches the boy the words he has not spoken aloud since his own father died, Cort’s catechism from the books: “I do not aim with my hand ... I aim with my eye.” “I do not kill with my gun ... I kill with my heart.” He puts a revolver in Jake’s hands and shows him how to hold it. It is the film’s one sustained use of King’s language, and it is spent well: the boy will say it back at the moment it matters.

A gun shop. Roland buys ammunition beneath a Rita Hayworth poster, and Walter walks in behind him. He turns the clerk’s gun on the gunslinger and hurls him around the shop without touching him. “Darkness is your weapon, guns are mine.” Outside, Walter’s people take Jake. Roland goes to the Dixie Pig alone: a dim blue-lit room hung with bones, low men and vampires in the booths, Books VI and VII’s restaurant kept nearly intact and made Walter’s New York base. He comes through the door with both revolvers up and shoots his way to the portal at the back. The code he needs arrives in his head, sent by Jake from the far side.

A gunslinger sits on a hospital gurney having his shoulder dressed while a boy waits in a plastic chair. — **Film · 19 The Emergency Room** A hospital on the New York side, in the world the books call Keystone Earth. A doctor dresses the shoulder; Roland pays with a coin, pockets the painkillers, and will swallow them on a bus with a Coke. He asks whether the animals here still speak, and tells two drunk girls they have forgotten the faces of their fathers. The fish-out-of-water passage is kept short.

A gunslinger kneels before a weeping boy in a bedroom, holding out a revolver on his palms, a scorched hole in the floor behind them. — **Film · 20 The Creed, Taught** Lon is dead in the living room; a scorched hole in the bedroom floor tells Jake what happened to his mother. Roland vows to kill Walter and teaches the boy the words he has not said since his own father died: “I do not aim with my hand ... I aim with my eye.” It is the catechism of Books I and IV, and the film’s one real piece of King’s language.

A gunslinger loads cartridges into his belt at a gun shop counter as a man in black steps smiling through the door behind him. — **Film · 21 Darkness Is Your Weapon** Roland buys ammunition under a Rita Hayworth poster, and Walter walks in behind him. He turns the clerk’s gun on the gunslinger and throws him about the shop without a touch. “Darkness is your weapon, guns are mine.” Outside, Walter’s people take Jake. In the books Walter is a talker who runs; the film makes him a telekinetic who fights, and this is the first round.

A gunslinger fires both revolvers inside a dim restaurant hung with bones as pale patrons rise from the booths. — **Film · 22 Shooting Through the Dixie Pig** Books VI and VII’s restaurant of low men and vampires, kept nearly intact: dim, blue-lit, hung with bones, and now Walter’s New York base. Roland comes through the door with both guns up and shoots his way to the portal at the back. Jake, already strapped in on the far side, has sent him the code he needs to follow.

Act 4

The Devar-Toi and the Duel

Walter brings Jake through to the pyramid and a woman technician straps him into the chair. The plates close; the beam fires. In New York the ground shakes and the sky turns red. Then the technicians’ levels plateau: the kid is fighting the machine from inside it, and holding the portal open. Roland comes through and clears the facility room by room, Sayre and the technicians and the rat-faced guards.

With the machine failing, Walter returns to the street outside his New York base, and Roland follows. The duel is the one piece of the climax with no counterpart in the novels, where Walter never fights Roland at all and is eaten by Mordred in Book VII. Walter brings masonry down with a raised hand, throws Roland into the rubble, and deflects every bullet. “Everyone who walks with you dies.” “No more.” In the chair, Jake recites the creed into Roland’s mind. Roland fires, then fires a second round into the first to bend its path around Walter’s catching hand; it takes him in the chest, and a head shot finishes him. Arcel later allowed that, for him, Walter did not die. Roland shoots out the machine. The pyramid blows apart, the children are freed, the sky clears.

Under a theater marquee, Jake hands Roland a hot dog. “Savages. What breed?” Roland must go back to his own world. He offers the boy a place at his side, and Jake, who has no one left, takes it. The two step through the portal for Mid-World. There is nothing after the credits but a whistle at the very end of them.

What the film is doing, finally, is the one thing the continuation idea was good for: a gunslinger who, this time around, does not let the boy drop. It never says so, and it never shows the Tower as anywhere a person might walk to; but the shape is there, under the keypads and the hot dog.

A boy strains against the wrist straps of a metal chair while a technician tightens them and a man in black watches. — **Film · 23 Strapped Into the Chair** Walter brings Jake through the Dixie Pig portal to the machine, and a woman technician straps him in. The plates will close around his skull and his shine will be fired at the Tower. Sayre has told Walter the boy has pure shine, enough on his own to bring it down. Book VII’s Breakers are adults who are coaxed; the film’s are children who are strapped.

Technicians at glowing consoles in a dark control room, a boy in a metal chair at its center with light pouring up out of it. — **Film · 24 The Control Room** Screens, consoles, technicians in dark uniforms, Walter above it all. The beam fires; in New York the ground shakes and the sky goes red. Then the levels plateau. Jake is fighting the machine from inside it and holding the portal open for Roland. The Devar-Toi of Book VII is a pleasant campus where minds are turned against the Beams; the film’s is a gun.

The dark spire fills the frame, wrapped in red smoke, shards flaking from its side where a beam of light strikes it. — **Film · 25 The Tower Struck** The beam lands. The spire is wrapped in red-orange smoke, shards flake from its flank, the six beams gutter. This is as close as the film gets to the Tower: a target seen on screens and from a great distance, under attack and then under repair. Nobody in this story is traveling toward it, which is the largest single departure from the books.

A man in black walks down a red-lit street with one hand raised as a building front streams apart toward a gunslinger in the rubble. — **Film · 26 Masonry Falls on Roland** With the machine failing, Walter returns to the street outside his New York base, and Roland follows. Walter brings masonry down with a raised hand, hurls the gunslinger into the rubble and deflects every bullet. “Everyone who walks with you dies.” “No more.” The duel has no counterpart in the novels, where Walter never fights Roland and is eaten by Mordred in Book VII.

Close on a gunslinger’s hands, one revolver’s cylinder swung open and six brass cartridges hanging in the air above it. — **Film · 27 The Reload** Between volleys, the film’s gunslinger reloads by tossing a six-round clip of cartridges into the air and catching it in the swung-out cylinder, a flourish the books never describe. The revolvers are engraved Remington-pattern pieces with light wood grips, fired double-action, one in each hand; the books’ are sandalwood-gripped and forged from Arthur Eld’s sword. Both hands whole: no lobstrosity has reached this Roland.

A gunslinger fires both revolvers down a red-lit street at a man in black who stands with one hand raised to catch the shot. — **Film · 28 Two Bullets, One Path** Jake, in the chair, recites the creed into Roland’s mind. Roland fires, then fires a second round into the first to bend its path around Walter’s catching hand. It takes him in the chest; a head shot finishes him. “I do not kill with my gun ... I kill with my heart.” The director later allowed that, for him, Walter did not die. The sequel never came to test it.

A gunslinger studies a hot dog with suspicion beside a boy eating his on an evening sidewalk, a glowing doorway at the end of the block. — **Film · 29 Hot Dogs, Then the Door** The sky is clear, the children freed, the machine in pieces. Under a theater marquee Jake hands Roland a hot dog: “Savages. What breed?” Roland must return to his world and offers the boy a place at his side; Jake, with no one left, takes it, and the two step through the portal for Mid-World. In Book I the gunslinger lets the boy fall. This time around, he does not.

What it took from the books

The opening line (Book I). “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed” is spoken as narration over Jake’s dream; King insisted on it.
The creed (Book I; recited as Cort’s catechism in Book IV). Roland and Steven say it together, Roland teaches it to Jake in the apartment, and Jake says it back into his mind in the duel. It is the film’s main use of King’s language.
The Mohaine Desert (Book I). Walked by Jake, not Roland; no Tull, no Way Station, nobody fleeing ahead.
Jake Chambers (Book I’s boy at the Way Station; the Brooklyn crossing is Book III’s). He walks through a door alive instead of dying into Mid-World, so there is no sacrifice under the mountains to undo.
The Dutch Hill house and its doorkeeper (Book III). The plaster demon survives; the magic door it guards becomes a technological portal with a keypad.
Walter Padick (the birth name is from Book VII). Used openly, with “Walter o’Dim”; no Flagg, no Marten.
The Breakers and the Devar-Toi (Book VII), merged with the Calla’s harvested children (Book V): adult telepaths on a pampered campus become kidnapped children strapped into a machine.
The Dixie Pig (Books VI–VII). Still a restaurant of low men and vampires with a door to somewhere else; now Walter’s New York base.
Taheen and can-toi (Book VII, with V–VI). The film calls its creatures taheen but gives them the can-toi’s living human mask with its seam behind the ear and rat fur beneath.
Sayre, Pimli and Tirana (Books V–VII). The Sombra executive, the Devar-Toi warden and a Dixie Pig low woman lend their names to Walter’s enforcer and two technicians.
The Manni and a seer called Arra (Books V–VI for the Manni; Arra Champignon is a Manni wife from the Marvel comics).
Nineteen (the series’ recurring number, thickest in Books V–VII). On Jake’s wall, on his dartboard, and as the portal code.
The Horn of Eld (Book VII’s coda). In Roland’s gear from the first set photos, and the entire basis of the “continuation” framing.
The Beams (Book III onward). Six pale spokes radiating from the Tower, which is the only way the film draws the structure the books spend seven volumes walking toward.

What it changed or dropped

Eddie Dean and Susannah Dean are absent. Both were promised for a Drawing of the Three sequel that was never made.
Oy is absent. A raccoon in a television commercial gets the “do the animals here still speak” beat instead.
Blaine the Mono and the riddling are absent.
Mejis, Susan Delgado, Cort, Cuthbert, Alain and the fall of Gilead are absent. All the film shows of Roland’s past is an unnamed battlefield and the death of his father.
The Crimson King is graffiti and an unseen master. Mordred, Father Callahan, the Calla, Patrick Danville and Stephen King as a character do not appear.
Roland’s right hand is whole. No beach, no lobstrosities. King and Arcel both wanted the beach for the sequel.
No hat. King said the studio believed hatted Westerns underperform.
Roland’s look and guns. Heavier, dark-eyed, close-bearded; the revolvers are engraved Remington-pattern pieces with light wood grips, with no Excalibur origin stated on screen.
Jake’s family. His father is a fireman dead a year; there is a stepfather, Lon; his mother is killed by Walter. No Elmer Chambers, no Greta Shaw.
Steven Deschain dies on screen at Walter’s word. In the books his death is off the page; only the Marvel comics show it, and not at Walter’s hand.
Walter dies by Roland’s gun in a street duel. In Book VII, Mordred eats him.
The ending. Roland keeps the boy instead of letting him fall; the pair leave New York for Mid-World, not End-World; the Tower is never a destination, only a distant spire under attack and then under repair.

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