The Gunslinger pursued The Man in Black all the way to Las Vegas, where the first footage of The Dark Tower screened at CinemaCon Monday.
No trailer has yet been released of the film, so anticipation for a first look was high. (Plans for a trailer release in October 2016 didn’t materialize, and in November the film was pushed from February to July of this year.)
The Dark Tower, an adaptation of Stephen King’s popular fantasy series of books, stars Idris Elba as the Gunslinger Roland Deschain, a man on a quest to save Mid-World. Matthew McConaughey stars as the antagonist The Man in Black, while Tom Taylor plays the young boy Jake, who lives in New York but has dreams of Roland’s world.
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In footage shown Monday, there’s plenty to see from all three characters.
The footage opens with a look at a door frame standing free in the middle of a barren landscape. It then it cuts to Roland in the desert as the famous opening line to King’s The Gunslinger, the first volume in the series, is displayed on screen: “The Man in Black fled across the Desert, and the Gunslinger followed.”
The footage gives a strong idea of just what The Man in Black is capable of, and it’s scarily creepy. Roland and The Man in Black then square off, with Roland telling the villain, “I do not kill with my gun, I kill with my heart.” He fires at The Man in Black, who catches the bullet from behind his back.
The footage then cuts to the young boy Jake, who lives in New York but has dreams of Roland and a Dark Tower that must stay standing or else billions will die. Jake’s therapist tried to tell him it’s a dream, but Jake doesn’t believe it. Soon, he is shown exploring an abandoned building, where he discovers a portal that takes him to Roland’s world.
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Soon, he presents Roland with one of the drawings the boy made of him from his dreams, and Roland explains that as long as The Man in Black is out there, the Tower will fall and Hell will follow.
There are slow-mo shots, including a big fight between the Gunslinger and The Man in Black, as well as an extended look at Roland’s prowess with his guns: when Jake is kidnapped, Roland shoots the man who did it from hundreds of yards away, simply by listening to where the bad guy is.
Quite a shot.
The Columbia Pictures film is directed by Nikolaj Arcel and produced by Sony, Media Rights Capital, Imagine Entertainment and Weed Road Pictures, with Sony and MRC co-financing. It opens July 28.
