MovieChat Forums > The Dark Tower (2017) Discussion > Why did they name The Man in Black Walte...

Why did they name The Man in Black Walter?


He's Randall Flagg, isn't he?

Oh well, I was really looking forward to this one, but with such horrible reviews, I'll wait for it on Red Box. And I usually don't put a lot of stock in RT, but even my standby critics don't like it.

Also, isn't there a TV series coming also...hopefully it will be much better.

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King did not originally envision Flagg and The Man in Black as the same character, but he eventually decided that Flagg was just one of TMIB's many aliases. TMIB is commonly called Walter in the books (again, when not assuming some other guise), and the last book gives him a back story that establishes that as his birth name.

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From Wikipedia:

He first appears as Walter o'Dim, chased across the desert by Roland. In flashbacks Flagg assumes the identity of Marten Broadcloak, a wizard who conspires with the Crimson Kingto cause the fall of the Dark Tower. In the original edition of the first novel Marten is a separate person from Walter, who is also not known to be Flagg, but Marten and Walter are ret-conned into one character in the revised version. [

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I do believe that a television series was considered,but this motion picture was the final result.

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The book series is too in-depth to create a 90 minute movie adaptation.

It's like the reverse of The Hobbit, where they converted 300 pages into 12 hours in 3 movies. Whereas here we get 3000 pages into 90 minutes. And basically lose 2500 pages of backstory and several main characters.

I would rather see this as a 10 episode miniseries, like Band of Brothers. Or at least 3 movies:

Movie 1: Gunslinger, Drawing, Wastelands
Movie 2: Wizard, Wolves, Song
Movie 3: The Dark Tower

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