Stephen King has described his multi-book series “The Dark Tower” as his magnum opus, an attempt to create a world and a mythology much like “The Lord of the Rings.” This complex epic includes eight main novels that tie back to several other books by King, and the attempt to make an initial feature film out of all this unwieldy material was clearly going to be difficult. The film as it stands was definitely not able to surmount this difficulty.
The film begins with a title card explaining that a dark tower stands at the center of the universe, or something along those lines, and that the mind of a child could bring it down.