Standing on the horizon of this otherworldly landscape is Idris Elba’s Roland Deschain — The Gunslinger — a frontier version of a medieval knight who is thirsting for revenge and haunted by visions of a tower that is surrounded by a field of dusky pink roses. He doesn’t fully understand what it means. No one does.
“When we meet Roland he’s a bit lost,” says Elba, sitting in the sun during a break from one of the movie’s dungeon-like sets. “He’s been walking around for a long time, so he definitely feels like a man who’s… coiled.”
In the parlance of King’s books, Roland “has forgotten the face of his father.” “That’s a sense of, ‘You’ve forgotten your purpose,’” Elba says. At the start of the film, Roland is driven by rage, but deep down he is something else. “He’s a protector,” Elba says. He just needs something to reawaken that part of himself.
Off in the distance is his quarry: Matthew McConaughey’s Walter, a.k.a. The Man in Black, a charismatic warlock who decimated Mid-World, is responsible for destroying everyone Roland loved, and is looking for more worlds to end. Bringing down the Tower is one way to end them all at once.
