I'm a fan of Stephen King's Gunslinger series. There are many of us. For years and years we've waited for the movie industry to begin putting this franchise onto the silver screen. And now they're finally doing it.
And they're totally going to screw it up.
Now stick with me here; this isn't a racist rant. I'm quite the lefty, but what's happening here really bothers me.
Roland Deschain is the main character of the series. King describes Roland several times as looking something similar to Clint Eastwood with "blue bombardier's eyes."
So who's going to play Roland?
DeCaprio might have been able to pull it off.
If Tom Hanks were younger, he could have done it. Same with Jeff Bridges (and Clint Eastwood obviously)
If only Heath Ledger was still alive.
Joseph Gordon Levitt? A little out there, but the guy is talented.
Matt Damon? Hmm. He could probably pull it off. Definitely.
Ben Affleck? It's a risk, but with the right direction and cast around him, he would have been a possibility.
Jude Law? Definitely, because Roland's background is similar to the Arthurian legend and so a Roland with a British accent is well within the boundaries of the role.
Christian Bale? Yes! M'f'ing Christian Bale would have killed in the role of Roland.
But who did the studio choose instead of all the above to make what could have been a franchise of 3+ movies (at least 3 movies)?
Idris Alba.
Yes, that Idris Alba; the black, kinda chubby actor from The Wire.
If you've read The Gunslinger series, in whole or in part, you understand how untenable this is. Roland Deschain is not a black guy. His ethnicity was never up for interpretation and you never wondered, "Is Roland a black guy?" That's because King describes him as a white guy, and in the illustrated books, Roland is always a white guy. And a big part of the series is the tension between a black female character, her alter ego, and the other members of Roland's ka-tet.
This is such a monumentally bad idea, that it's hard to believe it's happened. I refuse to go see these movies and I'm in the midst of a nerd meltdown about it. I don't pay the whole "politically correct" stuff much mind for various reasons, but this is just that, run totally amok. Some Hollywood tools came up with the idea that they'd put their own spin on this epic series: "Hey, let's turn this thing on its head and make Roland a black guy!"
No, you dummies.
Peter Jackson didn't do that with the LOTR. Fans would have crapped cats if Jackson would have had Kevin Hart in the role of Frodo Baggins and Morgan Freeman as Gandalf. Sorry, it just doesn't work because Tolkien didn't write those characters as having those characteristics.
And King, being a what even I will say is a d-bag liberal, didn't have the nads to stand up and say, "You're not doing that to my greatest work!!!" Instead he thinks it's great (he's either lying or has his head stuck so far up his own backside that he doesn't realize what a gigantic middle finger this is to the fans of the series).
This just blows. Sorry for the rant.