10 Things Hollywood Must Get Right With The Dark Tower Movie

8. Don't Try To Take Shortcuts (Because It Won't Work)

There's a tendency with novel adaptations to cut down the material or try to skim over certain plot points in order to streamline the narrative. In a lot of ways, it's understandable: a book takes days to read, whilst a film adaptation has about two hours to tell the same story. Really, it's impossible to leave everything in because the two mediums are very, very different. That said, any attempt to cut down or simplify The Dark Tower's story is sure to end in disaster. Not only because the fans will hate it, but because it won't work. Whilst there are singular aspects, scenes and moments that can probably be removed without harming the overall narrative arc too much, taking full-on shortcuts with regards to the fundamental story that King wrote will almost certainly end in disaster - there's no way to "strip it down." There's a really good reason why Hollywood has stumbled in its attempts to adapt The Dark Tower thus far, after all: the narrative is incredibly dense and complicated, with countless subplots intertwined to the point where it's hard to remove any of them without triggering a domino effect of sorts - if you take out one part, the rest of the story comes crashing down. And what will Hollywood make of the saga's late-stage meta twist, in which Stephen King himself turns out to be a character? This is an aspect of the story that the studio will likely try to avoid out of fear of alienating audiences unfamiliar with the source material, and yet to remove this plot point would be to kill part of what makes The Dark Tower so special. it's important, then, that the studio puts its faith in modern audiences; trust that they can handle whatever The Dark Tower throws at them. Don't simplify, don't patronise and don't rewrite any of the plot threads. And for God's sake, don't skip out any of the books!