In the 2017 film, Jake Chambers (Tom Taylor) starts off living in a modern day, 2017 version of New York City. In the books, meanwhile, 11-year-old Jake is living in the ’70s. The time Jake grows up in is reflected in his personality, the slang he uses, his perspective on the world, and it gives him an opportunity to interact with a younger version of key character Eddie (who we first meet as an adult in the ’87) in the third book, “The Waste Lands.”
Updating the source material to modern times is hardly a new thing. Both of the recent “It” movies moved the story forward a generation, so the kids would meet up in the ’80s and reunite in the audience’s modern day. There are ups and downs to this approach, but for “The Dark Tower” series it would be mostly downs.
Yes, having Jake be introduced in the modern day would make him slightly more relatable to modern viewers, but for him and Eddie and Susannah, the specific decades they come from are major, unavoidable aspects of their characters. One of the best parts of the books is how much the writing embraces the period each character grows up in, with their storylines reflecting details of historical fiction even when the character is someone like Eddie, whose timeline the initial audience’s modern day in “The Drawing of the Three.”
“The Dark Tower” series doesn’t need to be 100% faithful to be a good show, but it’d be disappointing if they didn’t have Jake, Eddie, and Susannah start off living in the ’70s, ’80s and ’60s respectively. Let’s hope the show trusts its audience to still be capable of connecting with their characters, even if these characters still don’t know what the internet is.
#Mike #Flanagans #Dark #Tower #Adaptation
