SPOILERS abound for folks who aren’t caught up on The Dark Tower movie or the books.

With The Dark Tower now in theaters, you’re going to see a lot of headlines and hear a lot of conversations about how the movie compares to the vast mythology chronicled in Stephen King‘s novels. That’s certainly worthy of conversation since the Nikolaj Arcel-directed film draws inspiration from across the broad spectrum of King’s stories but doesn’t delve too deeply into any one of them. Some elements are altered almost beyond recognition, others are tempered to fit a PG-13 rating, and still more are, bafflingly, made darker than the pitch-black source material.

So it’s with a fine-toothed cinematic comb that we picked apart The Dark Tower to sort the movie’s mythology from that of the books. (It would have been much easier just to write about the things that each medium shared, but such is my ka.) If Sony plans on going ahead with eventual sequels and TV series, then their new turn of the great wheel is likely going to be based on this movie. That’s certainly going to ruffle some feathers of book-readers, but if you’re not one of them, you’ll have to continue reading below to find out what’s missing on the big screen.

Here’s the synopsis for The Dark Tower movie:

There are other worlds than these. Stephen King’s The Dark Tower, the ambitious and expansive story from one of the world’s most celebrated authors, makes its launch to the big screen. The last Gunslinger, Roland Deschain (Idris Elba), has been locked in an eternal battle with Walter O’Dim, also known as the Man in Black (Matthew McConaughey), determined to prevent him from toppling the Dark Tower, which holds the universe together. With the fate of the worlds at stake, good and evil will collide in the ultimate battle as only Roland can defend the Tower from the Man in Black.

For more on The Dark Tower, be sure to take a look at our recent write-ups below: