Who better to get the latest insight on the upcoming epic than from the director, producer/writer, and one of the stars of the film?
Stephen King’s epic story, The Dark Tower, is finally being brought to life, thankfully, at the hands of several masters. Akiva Goldsman, who produced and wrote this film, has been the driving force behind dozens of amazing movies throughout the years. Especially considering the fact that he’s a devote fan of the franchise and Stephen King and also a key writer on the film, it’s safe to say the film is in good hands. Along with him is Nikolaj Arcel, the director of this epic. You might not have heard of his name, but you definitely know his work. He’s a director who takes a very visceral look at things and considering the story he’s adapting for the screen, he may be one of the best men for the job. Bringing to life the famed villain of this series is Matthew McConaughey, who’s always brilliant to see on the screen. Luckily, we got a chance to speak to each of them about the film and get their insights on the stories, themes, characters and more. Nikolaj even mentioned the strong possibility of sequels. Check out our interviews with them below.
Nikolaj Arcel:
What attracted you to this film?
Nikolaj: I’m a huge fan of the books. Basically, I read the first novel when I was a teenager and I’ve been following the novels for 25 years so it was a pretty clear attraction.
This series encompasses a massive universe in the Stephen King Universe. What are some of the difficulties of bringing that to life on screen?
Nikolaj: It’s very difficult but the way we sort of solved it was to only tell the beginning of the story in this film. We didn’t try to make the whole journey or all the elements of all the books, we were only trying to introduce in a cool and fun way the characters in the world and then if it works out well, we can start telling the rest of the story.
So, you would say there are possible sequels?
Nikolaj: Yes I would say so.
What are some of the movies that inspired the film?
Nikolaj: My greatest inspiration is weirdly Close Encounters of the Third Kind cause it’s about a man who strongly believes in something that nobody else believes. In the beginning of this film, Jake, the kid, strongly believes there’s a gunslinger in another world but nobody else believes. I had a little bit of that feeling.
One of the things that makes the Game of Thrones series so great is that there is no true good and there is no true evil. I also saw this film was based off the good the bad and the ugly which has good, bad, and something in the middle. How’d you mesh the lines of what’s good and what’s evil in this film?
Nikolaj: Roland in the beginning of the film, our hero, is not really just a good guy. He’s really darkened. He purely wants revenge. He doesn’t care about the world or about anybody. Then he meets the kid, Jake, and he may or may not change. But that’s where we’re going and even in like the further stories, there’s a lot of grey areas as to what’s good and what’s evil but I would say it’s still a very classic story about good versus evil.
How was working with Matthew and Idris?
Nikolaj: It was pretty damn cool. They’re both amazing guys. They’re both down to earth, they’re both passionate, they’re both the perfect embodiment of the characters that they played and it’s just a great pleasure.
Akiva:
The Dark Tower is a very interesting series. What attracted you to it and why do you want to make this movie?
Akiva: I loved it from the time it came out. What’s unique about this particular quarter of Stephen’s work is not only that it intersects all of his other pieces, but also because it’s about family. it’s about the creation of family. Who do we hold true, where does our fidelity lie. I think that’s a really interesting question, especially today.
Are there any other stories that inspired this film?
Akiva: A lot of Stephen’s other stuff sort of intersects it narratively but it also does emotionally. So you can sort of feel the sort of familial pressure of The Shining in Jake’s familial situation. The sort of loneliness of Roland I hearken back to Stu from The Stand. There’s a lot of Stephen-esque themes. There’s a unifying emotional tenor.
It’s a massive universe you attempt to bring to the screen. What are some of the difficulties of making that a reality?
Akiva: We’ve been trying to get that going for many years and the script has taken many different forms. It other forms it was larger. It had Eddie and Suzana and all these characters that are a part of the original content if you know the books. What we ended up doing is boiling it down so it’s essentially a two man story. It is really Jake and Roland..
Would you say Roland and The Man In Black are two sides of the same coin?
Akiva: It’s interesting that you say that. No, I don’t think so. I think they are forces of nature and are fundamentally opposed.
How was working with Matthew McConaughey and Idris Elba?
Akiva: I’ve known Matthew for a long time. Idris I’ve known for a while too. Delightful. One is very lucky to get to know two people like that.
Matthew McConaughey:
With the movie coming out, what are you excited for fans to see about this story?
Matthew: There’s millions of fans that are obsessed with these novels. I hope we did the essence of what Stephen King put on the page. Myself, I never read a page until I read the script and I remember reading the script and going, this is worth making a movie about. It stands on it’s on that way as well. True fans are going to see we left a lot of nuggets in there for them to see that they’ll know about and at the same time, if you never read a page, you’ll still have a great ride.
The Man In Black is worse than the devil, as the movie says, how much fun was it playing such an evil character?
Matthew: There’s so much freedom in that. The Devil’s in the Yes’s, not the no’s. The infinite Yes’s. That was fun to throw your conscious to the side and let’s just imagine here.
What made you want to play a bad guy this point in your career?
Matthew: The bad guy’s fun. It’s like I said, the freedom of it. It’s much harder to define the hero today than it is to define the bad guy. I was looking for a guy that went through a big arc. I was looking for a guy who was like a lightning bolt of evil and just stick with that.
Did you try to make him less one-dimensional in any way?
Matthew: No, the script was there and what Stephen wrote. It was what I tried to get.
