I still think Jason Isaacs is a better actor...and IMHO, is closer to the physical Roland that King paints. He can be both baronial and ruthless...
... and does the stubble thing pretty well.
Posted on 05/16/2013 5:34:17 PM PDT by OddLane
Ron Howard and Brian Grazer‘s original plan for adapting Stephen King‘s The Dark Tower series was to do it as a series of movies bridged by a few seasons of TV. It always struck me as ambitious to the point of arrogance, while also rich in potential and, actually, quite exciting. But I wasn’t surprised when both Universal and Warner Bros. turned them down.
Since then, they managed to lock a deal with MRC to produce a single film, with the possibility of more if it turns out to be a hit. That’s the way these things usually go, of course. In that deal, Russell Crowe has been attached to star as The Gunslinger, Roland Deschain.
But according to Grazer, speaking to Deadline, there is another option. A new plan that’s much the same as the original plan.
(Excerpt) Read more at bleedingcool.com ...
There are so many amazing characters and scenes in that novel.
I'd love to see how Rhea of the Coos is portrayed.
To effectively make the movie they would have to include Wizard and Glass. Then you have to cast Roland as a teenager along with Arthur, Cuthbert, and Susan. (Not to mention the big coffin hunters)
Personally I think it should only be made as a series of movies.
That’s the likely scenario. I think I might possibly cast Tony Curran as Flagg.
I still think Jason Isaacs is a better actor...and IMHO, is closer to the physical Roland that King paints. He can be both baronial and ruthless...
... and does the stubble thing pretty well.
You shouldn’t have any problem with Crowe as a cowboy if you’ve seen 3:10 to Yuma.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVyTEGGp3Z0
or ‘The Quick and The Dead’.
But Roland isn’t really a cowboy in a traditional sense.
Kind of a mixture of cowboy and knight.
I think either Crowe or Mortensen would do OK with the part; I just think Isaacs would be better. By King’s own acknowledgement, the character and original storyline were born when he was watching Eastwood spaghetti westerns so it’s hard to argue against Clint as the archetype. However, in the subsequent books he gets increasingly descriptive in the physical details of Roland to include thick black hair (which later takes on some gray) and his, “bombardier blue eyes.” Roland was also high born and grew up in something of a courtly environ, although being turned over to Cort Andrus for rigorous training as a child, then grew to learn the ways of the road and a more knight-errant type existence, so he has a rough hewn exterior with a nobility at his core that is the result of nature and nurture...
Roland is also far from heroic in his ruthless willingness to kill and let those closest to him die in his lust for the tower. After all he allowed Jake to die. “Go then, there are other worlds than these.”
After all, the very first book started with him walking away from the desert town were he killed every living thing.
Probably one of the more complex characters I’ve read about.
I’m a big Russell Crowe fan. Go for it, Russ.
Right below The Proposition.
I’ve read just about everything King ever wrote, at least twice. But I’ve never gotten around to the Gunslinger series, though I’ve meant to for a long time. I really need to do it.
Letting Jake die the first time, or depopulating Tull, isn't even the worst of it.
I don’t think the reader is supposed to love Roland. The reader is supposed to get hooked on the tower and want to follow the path of the beam.
The Dark Tower series is truly his best work although I must admit that I really enjoyed “Insomnia” despite treating pro lifers as villains. (Only one really was and he was a victim of Atropos)
I highly recommend it, but I warn you that the first volume, though not without its own weird charms, is the weakest. It gets much better with "The Drawing of the Three" and keeps getting progressively better (and weirder) as it goes on.
I posted my comment before I read yours, but we agree on that. I like vol. 1 (I first read it as a series of separate novelettes published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1979-80 or thereabouts), but it becomes a very different work once the other characters come in (and Roland's world impinges on ours). Then it takes another leap a few volumes later when Steven King becomes a character in his own work...
Personally, I think it's an improvement upon the original. However, I still think that it doesn't really lift off until the second book.
I just got a friend of mine to start reading the series-with The Drawing of the Three-and she's hooked.
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