With production of ‘The Dark Tower‘ in full swing, Matthew McConaughey has opened up a little about both his role as The Man in Black. While it is fun to picture McConaughey in the role for those familiar with the books, it is sad that we won’t seem him straight out playing the Randall Flagg iteration that was in ‘The Stand’ as I feel he fits that realm’s version of the villain more than the main one.
For those that haven’t read the books, most of Stephen King‘s works are interconnected and Flagg is a villain in quite a few of them. Sadly, movie rights keep the character separate even though King’s work would have been the perfect set of films to give us an interconnected cinematic universe.
How much of a villain is The Man in Black? Through the Gunslinger’s eyes, he is horrid though through his own eyes McConaughey gives us a different perspective:
“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.”
Of course, he also knows that the character he is playing isn’t good:
“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.”
The novel opens with “the man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed” and while Idris Elba as Roland might be thinking that he is hunting Walter, wouldn’t the Devil be tempting him to do his bidding? While The Gunslinger may hate Walter, the Man in Black doesn’t return that feeling:
“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.”
This is a tale of good vs evil in many forms. It is of a good man fighting an evil man and good trying to save the universe from evil and how these two balance one another. King has slipped quite a few layers into his series and the more we’re hearing about the film, the more it seems that those layers will be shining through on the big screen.
Are you looking forward to ‘The Dark Tower’? Do you feel that Matthew McConaughey is going to nail his role as The Man in Black? Share your thoughts below!
‘The Dark Tower’ is set to open its doors in theaters everywhere on February 17th, 2017.
Source: Entertainment Weekly.
Stuart Conover is an author, blogger, and all around geek. When not busy being a father and husband he tries to spend as much time as possible immersed in comic books, science fiction, and horror! Would you like to know more? Follow him on Twitter!
