Matthew McConaughey Talks About His Take on The Man in Black in THE DARK TOWER
"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."
That's the iconic opening line to Stephen King's The Gunslinger, the first book in his long-running The Dark Tower series that's finally getting a film adaptation early next year. Idris Elba is playing the gunslinger, and Matthew McConaughey is playing the conniving Man in Black, who aims to take down The Dark Tower, a multidimensional nexus. EW has been slowly releasing information about the movie all day today, and now they've put out the second part of their set visit, which focuses on McConaughey's character (the best quotes from their piece about Elba's character are here).
The Man in Black is also known as Walter in this film, but King readers know he's also Randall Flagg, the same villain that appears in the novel The Stand. That project is being made into a movie at Warner Bros., and McConaughey was reportedly choosing between the two parts and ultimately ended up going with this one when it was revealed this would shoot first. However, the Man in Black apparently won't be referred to as Flagg in this movie because of rights issues, which presumably leaves the idea of a Stephen King Cinematic Universe sort of up in the air.
Below, I've taken the best quotes from McConaughey as he talks about the Man in Black, who reportedly won't be referred to as The Stand villain Randall Flagg because of rights issues.
“Well, he is a man, actually. They wanted to go very human and grounded with this. Obviously there are mythical proportions of good and evil in Walter. But we didn’t want to go overly fantastic. That would drop the humanity. So Walter, for me, is a man who exposes hypocrisies.”
“You know, he’s not literally the Devil, but I sure as hell think about him like the Devil. I think like the Devil would. There’s a great Black Sabbath line that fits the guy very well: 'Follow me now / and you will not regret / leaving the life you led / before we met.'"
While Elba's Roland hates Walter's character because of all of the chaos and destruction he's rained upon his life, McConaughey says Walter feels exactly the opposite about Roland:
“I revere him. He’s really the only true adversary I have. I expose hypocrisies, and he’s the closest to pure there is. It’s his persistent, resilience to be good and altruistic. He’s very precious to me. I almost don’t want to see him go.
“So many times I’m just pumping him up, through sorcery, almost like the man in the corner of the ring for a boxer,” McConaughey says, breaking into a whisper: “’Come on … you can do this … stay in the game,’ because I want to keep him, I want to keep his vengeance to find me. I want to keep that very vital, you know? My want, my need, my mission is to bring down the Tower. My love, my adoration, my muse, my shadow, is Roland.”
“Once I bring the Tower down, and take a seat next to the Crimson King, I’ve got my own plans from there as well."
“This is great news!” McConaughey says [about discovering young Jake Chambers, who has the power of The Shine to "break down the trans-dimensional beams that keep the Tower strong"]. "One, this is what I need to get the job done. Two, it’s a field trip for me. I haven’t been down there in a long time. The Devil likes New York. Let’s go sing and dance and do some detective work and find the boy with The Shine and bring him back and use him!”
Looks like Jake is in trouble, and he can only hope Roland will be able to save him. For much more, read the full article here.
The Dark Tower hits theaters on February 17, 2017.