Now worrisomely near to their film’s August 4 debut, Sony has finally put out the first trailer for The Dark Tower. The long-developing Stephen King adaptation sees Idris Elba in the iconic role of knightly gunslinger Roland Deschain, with Matthew McConaughey playing the villainous Man in Black, whose nail-on-the-head moniker rightly suggests he’s the villain. That kind of broadly-painted stroke seems to be the baseline for this take on the story, which has condensed King’s decades-long epic into something generically palatable enough to feel like an already-forgotten failed tentpole—something that surely must have competed at the box office against Vin Diesel’s The Last Witch Hunter. Though, if we’re being specific, this is more like Last Action Hero Cowboy by way of Disney’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and a CGI-driven Annie Oakley exhibition. Dark Tower die-hards, you’ve been warned.
