Pratique du Shadowing: The Confusing History of The Dark Tower - Apprendre l'anglais à l'oral avec la vidéo
Choisissez un mode d'entraînement
Chaque mode ouvre une salle d'entraînement en plein écran.
608 phrases
Si les phrases sont trop courtes ou trop longues, cliquez sur Edit pour les ajuster.
1
It is downright wild to look at where fantasy is today.
2
What used to be a weird, fringe corner of culture for, let's be honest, not the most popular,
3
has been sanitized, standardized, and, you could argue, ground down into a corporate template.
4
There is an algorithmic checklist for what high fantasy is supposed to be.
5
I mean, look, if I asked you right now to picture fantasy,
6
I think I might just be a mind reader because I can see exactly what you are thinking.
7
Elves, dark lords, and glowing magic swords, yada yada yada.
8
Now, what your brain almost certainly did not picture was a cross-dimensional Arthurian gunslinger western mixing in heroin drug mule runs,
9
giant cyborg bears with parasites, and a very, very evil Charlie the Choo Choo Train, as well as frequent descriptions of urination,
10
all set to the tune of Hey Jude.
11
That is, of course, unless you're one of the brave few who made the journey to the Dark Tower.
12
Some call it Stephen King's magnum opus, others call it a mess, and both are probably right.
13
You would be hard-pressed to find a fantasy series more controversial
14
and just generally confusing with a reading order that is famously as convoluted as humanly possible.
15
So today I'm going to try to do my best, and the key word there is try, to explain what this series even is,
16
break down the stuttering decades-long publication history and its, shall we say, divisive adaptations, and finally where everything stands today.
17
So aim with your heart and let's remember the face of our fathers as we explore whatever happened to the Dark Tower.
18
Hi everyone, my name is Otto and welcome to Exit's Examined.
19
In this channel we'll be exploring series, franchises, and more after their prime time has seemingly come to an end.
20
If that sounds good to you, there's a like and subscribe button below
21
and I want to give an enormous shout out to my patrons who keep this channel alive.
22
Thank you.
23
So The Dark Tower is a book series by Stephen King starting in 1978 and it's one of the most disorienting,
24
fascinating, surreal, and very possibly insane series ever written.
25
And immediately you'll hit a wall just trying to define what this thing even is.
26
Is it fantasy?
27
Science fantasy?
28
Spaghetti western?
29
Neo western?
30
Horror?
31
The answer is yes.
32
All of the above turned up to 11 mashed together, overblown and blown up to a hundred bajillion.
33
Every genre, every trope and every character is pushed past the point of sanity with gruesome scenes
34
that are straight up nightmare fuel.
35
I mean to give you a quick taste of the sheer madness in here.
36
This is a series that features wolves armed with lightsabers,
37
psychic vampires, and one of the most disturbing birth scenes ever conceived in literature.
38
And, of course, my personal favorite, although probably not the main characters, Lobstrosities.
39
It's an epic quest with massive stakes, maybe the largest stakes possible,
40
set in this sprawling genre-bending fever dream told with equal parts Biblical weight and manic,
41
some might say cocaine-bender energy.
42
Now I know that is all very broad strokes, but if one thing should be apparent to you right off the bat,
43
it's that you best believe this is not a series that can be pinned down in a single sentence.
44
But if you were to try, I think the one that would most likely sum it up happens to be the most famous line in the series,
45
as well as the very first one.
46
The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.
47
Now, that sentence is a great little encapsulation of the series, because on a first read, the meaning seems so obvious.
48
The hero pursues the villain.
49
You have read that story a hundred times.
50
But the further you get into it, as with just about everything in this series, it spirals and spirals.
51
Because nothing in that sentence, the man in black, the desert, and least of all, the gunslinger, can be easily explained.
52
So take that word, gunslinger.
53
You're probably picturing some desperado, maybe a gritty Clint Eastwood type.
54
And to be fair, our gunslinger and hero, question mark, is gritty.
55
But it's clear from the moment we meet him that gunslinger in this world means something far larger.
56
More a title or honor, something more akin to a knight.
57
And his abilities go way beyond what could be considered normal.
58
He's got skills.
59
He is inhumanly fast with his guns and equally as impressive with diplomacy and knowledge of the world.
60
Rollins, as he's known with his striking bombardier blue eyes, is easily one of the most interesting characters in all of fantasy.
61
But he's also one of the most bizarre because he's so utterly and completely one-dimensional,
62
but at the same time almost bottomless in his complexity.
63
And look, I get that sentence probably makes no sense, so let me try to explain.
64
What I mean is that throughout the series, we're constantly seeing these cryptic glimpses into his extraordinarily lengthy,
65
tragic, and nightmarish past, Just with these little snippets, the fall of his home Gilead,
66
his father's death, and the fact that Roland killed his own mother.
67
But these gargantuan reveals are thrown out almost like byproducts and often left completely unexplained.
68
You get the feeling that Roland himself doesn't have the imagination or the desire to dwell on them.
69
And you get the sense that the only two things that really matter to him are one, the pursuit of his journey,
70
and two, simply, that he is a gunslinger, the last of his kind.
71
But if you're expecting a noble, moral knight, some chivalric protector of a fallen world, well, Roland is not that.
72
He's actually kind of a piece of shit precisely because he is so ruthlessly obsessed with his quest.
73
And in the first book alone, he commits some outright heinous, disgusting acts.
74
Actually, from the very first moment we meet him, Roland isn't portrayed as heroic or cool, but rather dizzy and disoriented.
75
He barely seems to know what he's doing or why he's even doing it.
76
But despite that, he pushes forward with this kind of mule-ish stubbornness.
77
And to really hammer that point home, his steed isn't some like grand warhorse.
78
It's literally a mule.
79
He's described as the kind of man who might straighten bad pictures in strange hotel rooms.
80
And while that drive is probably his greatest strength, to quote another character describing Roland, it goes beyond steel into madness.
81
There's this distinct feeling that he's going to keep going and keep going until time immemorial, which actually might just be the case.
82
But it's not just the gunslinger who feels worn and tired, but still slogging forward.
83
Because the world itself is described in much the same way.
84
Now, it isn't anything as dramatic or sexy as post-apocalyptic, just the simple and arguably far more devastating phrase,
85
the world had moved on.
86
Quote, The desert was the apotheosis of all deserts, huge, standing to the sky for what looked like eternity in all directions.
87
It was white and blinding and waterless and without features, save for the faint cloudy haze of the mountains which sketched themselves on the horizon.
88
And the devil grass which brought sweet dreams, nightmares, death.
89
An occasional tombstone sign pointed the way.
90
For once, the drifted track that cut its way through the thick crust of alkali had been a highway.
91
End quote.
92
And so, this is a grim world, and a grim series where characters will suffer and death is never far off.
93
The world feels like it's been coming apart at the seams for an eternity while inside of a fever dream.
94
So in that manner, everything feels completely out of time and place.
95
And so, what I mean by that is that there are these weird parallels to our own world, like our own modern earth.
96
Jesus is here, but known as Man Jesus.
97
And in a particularly strange twist, Hey Jude by the Beatles is heard playing in saloons of almost American old western towns.
98
And even the language used in this world reflects this strange analogous reality, and is also by far one of the most iconic parts of the series,
99
known as high speech.
100
So you'll see these phrases thrown around constantly, and honestly they're just really fun and distinct.
101
So let's run through high speech 101, shall we?
102
So if you want to greet someone, you can say long days and pleasant nights with the traditional response being and may you have twice the number.
103
If you want to say thanks, that would be thank you, sigh.
104
And if you agree with someone, you could say say true.
105
And conversations or negotiations are referred to as a palaver.
106
Since one of the first things people like to learn in a foreign language is how to insult people,
107
saying someone has forgotten the face of his father is the ultimate dishonor in this world.
108
So if you really want to call out your ex or co-worker for messing up, now you know what to say.
109
It kind of feels almost like ye olde English mixed with Western American
110
and is probably best shown by Roland and the gunslinger's almost religious code.
111
Quote, I do not aim with my hands.
112
He who aims with his hands has forgotten the face of his father.
113
I aim with my eye.
114
I do not I shoot with my hands.
115
He who shoots with his hand has forgotten the face of his father.
116
I shoot with my mind.
117
I do not kill with my gun.
118
He who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father.
119
I kill with my heart." Now,
120
even though the language and setting have these distorted parallels to our own world that seem familiar enough to understand,
121
the world building also has some things that are just straight up fantasy.
122
But again, it's not like run of the mill what would typically come to your mind when you think of fantasy.
123
Take the Man in Black, for instance.
124
Remember him from the very first sentence of the book?
125
He's introduced as a sorcerer.
126
But his magic is deeply, deeply strange.
127
There's this vignette early on where he wanders into an old western town, and the sequence is surreal.
128
He brings a dead man back to life through this vulgar, almost slapdash display, I guess,
129
spitting on him while the entire tavern gets caught in some collective manic trance and the barmaid starts touching herself.
130
It all just feels profaned and wrong.
131
And you get the sense
132
that magic in the Dark Tower is more like a radioactive element of the universe
133
that you just kind of have to coexist with.
134
And you get some freakish stuff like succubus, seer demons that will tell you the future if you bang them hard enough.
135
Now actually even Roland has his own kind of magic and he can put people into a trance with his bullets.
136
And then of course, there is Ka, Roland's favorite word and mantra, and you can think of it as this all-encompassing force,
137
sort of like fate, but crucially, it's cast as a turning wheel.
138
Now, that might make you think of something sacred or religious, like, I don't know, the force from Star Wars, but the way it's used here is,
139
shall we say, is not so chivalrous, and it's kind of hilarious how Roland uses it.
140
People will die in horrific ways
141
or he'll find himself forced into crazy situations like having to hook up with a barmaid for information
142
and he'll just be like, well, that's Ka.
143
Best get on with it.
144
And the reason Roland is so down with Ka is because whatever Ka is, it's dragging Roland relentlessly toward his immovable,
145
single-minded, burn the world goal, the Dark Tower.
146
Now, like I said earlier, there are two ultimate defining characteristics of Roland.
147
One half is the gunslinger, but the other half is an absolute grade A tower junkie.
148
And so what you ask is the Dark Tower?
149
Well, it's one of those concepts that might just go beyond human comprehension.
150
It could take different forms depending on who or what is even looking at it,
151
But maybe the best way you and I can understand it is that the Dark Tower is the center of all creation,
152
kind of the nexus point of time, space, and every existing universe in reality.
153
And that right there, my friend, is a huge chunk of why this series is so, so, so confusing.
154
Because the Dark Tower series is fundamentally a multi-dimensional reality-spanning road trip.
155
So, for example, the setting of the first book is known as Midworld.
156
But there are countless other worlds and realities stacked alongside it,
157
including our own worlds as well as infinite parallel variations.
158
And in this way, all of these parallel worlds are constantly echoing through one another.
159
It's why you'll hear Hey Jude playing in a mid-world saloon or stumble across strange, warped allusions to things from our very own pop culture,
160
like the Rolling Stones' Painted Black and iconic stories like The Wizard of Oz
161
or even children's books like Charlie the Choo Choo Train.
162
Parts of them could appear in every reality and in some worlds they could even be reality.
163
Although they might not be happy versions of it.
164
And I'm looking at you Charlie the Choo Choo.
165
And on top of that you have these reoccurring motifs and elements that pop up over and over again.
166
It could be specific numbers like 19 or 99
167
or the concept of twins because we have to remember
168
that Ka is a wheel and everything becomes connected in this spider web of realities
169
and you'll be like a quarter of a way through the series
170
and suddenly looking like Charlie with his conspiracy boards trying to connect everything.
171
And this is what I mean when I say the scope of the story is truly titanic,
172
literally layering story upon story upon story stacked on top of each other, blended into one massive, unpredictable series.
173
So, in one book, you could go from 20th century New York City to the tragic history of Roland's lost homeland,
174
who themselves have parallels and connections to Arthurian legends, and all of these somehow loop back and correlate to one another.
175
And I want to check, are you doing okay?
176
Are you following?
177
Do you need some water?
178
Well, we might not have water, but we do have another liquid in abundance.
179
Because, if all of this might sound a bit meta, crucially it never feels pretentious.
180
Probably because Stephen King, if you aren't aware, is a relentlessly, uh, visceral author,
181
you could say, who loves digging into the grimy mundanity of human existence and basic biological needs.
182
Seriously, there is so much ejaculating and urination in these books characters are constantly peeing themselves.
183
So, uh, that's there.
184
Now look, if all that sounds like a fever dream, that's okay.
185
It's okay to be confused.
186
Or maybe I'm just saying that to reassure myself here.
187
But the good news is that on a high level, the actual plot of The Dark Tower isn't actually that hard.
188
Sort of.
189
And on that note, heads up, there will be heavy spoilers here, and I cannot explain enough how best it is to read these books spoiler free.
190
So basically, you could sum up the whole story as a night cowboy adopts a recovering heroin addict, a woman in a wheelchair with split personalities, a kid who really hates people,
191
and a dog raccoon, and they go on a long-winded multi-dimensional road trip to fix the universe's Wi-Fi.
192
Okay, fine, fine, it is a bit more nuanced than that.
193
Now, as we've already established, the world is completely messed up.
194
And the reason everything is unraveling is because the dark tower is anchored
195
and held upright by six massive beams that stretch across existence, with a saying in mid-worlds that all things serve the beam.
196
But those beams are slowly becoming undone, and if the beams snap, the tower falls.
197
And if the dark tower falls, well, God only knows what will happen.
198
But you can bet it would probably be bad news bears for reality itself.
199
But why is this happening?
200
Well, because of the Crimson King, based on, why not, the real world song.
201
Now, the Crimson King wants to destroy the beams, trigger the collapse of the Dark Tower, and plunge all of reality into a state of primal chaos known as Discordia.
202
He believes that not only that he can survive the death of the multiverse, but that he can rule over it.
203
You know, basically just classic bad guy stuff. And
204
so, the bulk of the Dark Tower series is the journey
205
of Roland going on a multiversal trip to get to the Dark Tower and hopefully along the way, fix the beams and save all of reality.
206
So yeah, pretty high stakes.
207
But fortunately, not just for the universe, but also Roland himself, he is not alone.
208
Roland has a crew known as the Contet of 1999, which come on, that is a sick squad day.
209
In high speech, a Contet essentially means one made for me, a group brought together by the irresistible pull of fate.
210
And this is effectively the Dark Towers version of the Fellowship of the Ring, except it's pound for pound probably the most peculiar,
211
mismatched bunch of misfits to form any fantasy squad, and that is not a bad thing.
212
So here's who we got.
213
Eddie, a 23-year-old wisecracking heroin addict from our own 1980s New York City.
214
Susanna, a civil rights activist from the 1960s who uses a wheelchair after losing her legs
215
and also happens to suffer from severe, violently conflicting split personalities.
216
Jake, an 11-year-old kid from 1970s Manhattan who possesses powerful psychic abilities.
217
And finally, Oi, a Billy Bumbler, which is essentially a cross between a raccoon, woodchuck, and dash hound.
218
He's the best.
219
Now, the way this group interacts and evolves across the books is really the core of the series.
220
Roland, who himself is traumatized, takes these other traumatized people from our world and trains them until,
221
with the exception and a boy who needs no training to be great, they all become formidable gunslingers in their own right.
222
And this katet is the most important element of Roland's arc.
223
For a man who started his journey cold, detached, and willing to sacrifice anyone to reach his goal, it's not just him teaching his katet,
224
but the other way around.
225
And the katet really becomes his heart.
226
Now, you're probably wondering how on earth did a gunslinger in a desert end up building a squad out of an addict, an activist in a wheelchair,
227
and a kid from three different decades of New York?
228
Well, that is a good question.
229
And to answer that, we have to run through the pretty convoluted story of the Dark Tower series.
230
So buckle up and try to stay with me, because things are about to move very fast with a lot of different names and concepts.
231
So let's plaver you and I.
232
Now, we already talked a bit about the first book, which is this bleak, surreal, dark fantasy Western.
233
Roland is relentlessly pursuing the Man in Black across the desert
234
and along the way he massacres an entire town that's been corrupted by the Man in Black
235
and eventually stumbles upon Jake who dropped in from 1970s New York
236
and somehow woke up in mid-world after being run over by a car in his own universe.
237
Now Roland eventually grows to love the boy but during a grueling trek through a mutant infested underground mountain pass, which is very Fallout vibes,
238
Roland is faced with a choice.
239
Save Jake or let him fall to his death so Roland can catch the man in black.
240
And Roland, true to his single-minded tower junkie addiction, lets the boy ball.
241
With Jake's final words, go then, there are other worlds than this, haunting Roland for the rest of his life.
242
And when Roland finally corners the man in black, instead of this grand, heroic duel,
243
they sit down for this almost hallucinogenic cosmic conversation about the nature of reality and the dark tower.
244
And Roland falls asleep.
245
And when he wakes up, the man in black is a decayed skeleton and Roland has inexplicably aged 10 years overnight.
246
So yeah, a fever dream of a ride.
247
And then the next book takes that entire vibe, throws it out the window, sets it on fire.
248
Roland wakes up on a beach, gets ambushed by giant carnivorous lobstrocities that bite off two of his fingers and a toe,
249
and he ends up on death's door with blood poisoning.
250
To survive, he steps through this multi-dimensional door that leads into 20th century New York City,
251
where he recruits Eddie, who just so happens to be in the middle of a high-stakes drug smuggling run,
252
as well as Susanna, a wealthy activist dealing with violent split personality.
253
And all of a sudden, the story transforms into more of this gritty urban crime thriller,
254
with tons of pop culture references and the majority of it taking place in New York City, and it feels like we're just reading an entirely different series.
255
Then, book three jumps back around yet again into more of a classic fantasy journey.
256
The Kotet crosses Midworld, fights a giant cybernetic bear with a parasitic computer brain.
257
Roland starts going insane because of parallel timeline shenanigans created by Jake's death.
258
It gets confusing, but to make a long story short,
259
this all culminates with the current group pulling Jake back into Midworld along with Oi the Billy Bumbler.
260
And this is the formation of the Kotet.
261
And in celebration, the group quickly gets captured by Blaine the Mono,
262
a hyper-intelligent AI train with parallels to our own world story of Charlie the Choo Choo Train,
263
which is an insane sentence when I say it out loud.
264
I mean, I mean, this series is so crazy.
265
Okay, so Blaine kidnaps the Kottet and threatens to kill them unless they can defeat him in a game of riddles.
266
And how do they beat a godlike trained supercomputer?
267
Well, Eddie defeats Blaine by bombarding him with nonsensical,
268
dumb, wisecracking, trash talk jokes until Blaine literally short-circuits from the stupidity of it all.
269
With my favorite being, why did the dead baby cross the road?
270
Because it was stapled to the chicken.
271
Did I mention that this series is insane?
272
Now, book four pivots again, which big shocker, right? with the majority of the book being this extended flashback to Roland's youth in the fallen kingdom of Gilead.
273
We meet Roland's original childhood quartet, the tragic story of his first love, and the origins of his quest.
274
Now, we'll talk about why this happens later, but after book four, things take a steep turn and things ramp up very quickly toward an ending.
275
With book five functioning kind of like fantasy version of the Magnificent Seven, or to the more cultured among you Seven Samurai,
276
where the Kothent defends a small village from a reoccurring horde of wolves, who turn out to be robots dressed like Doctor Doom,
277
armed with lightsabers and exploding grenades styled after the golden snitch from Harry Potter.
278
Did I mention that this series is insane?
279
And from there, you can believe that things get even more completely off the rails somehow.
280
Susan is possessed by a demon, leading to one of the most disturbing sequences in fantasy,
281
the birth of Mordred, a shape-shifting human-spider hybrid who is technically the biological child of Roland and Susanna, despite the two never having sex.
282
Now, Mordred is delivered in a room full of demon worshippers and enters the world with a raging erection.
283
Did I mention that this series is insane?
284
Now, raise yourself, my content, and remember the face of your father,
285
because we haven't even gotten to the most heart-wrenching and polarizing part of the entire saga.
286
The ending of the Dark Tower is a titanic can of worms.
287
And look, I know I mentioned spoilers, but I really want to stress again huge spoilers here
288
because things truly come to a head and the emotional toll is brutal.
289
First, Eddie dies during the battle against the Beam Breakers.
290
Then comes Jake's, with Jake actually dying,
291
saving none other than Stephen King himself Because why not let's throw fourth wall breaks in the series too.
292
With Jake throwing himself in front of a minivan to push King out of the way.
293
Now this wall break is something people still argue about and is pretty controversial.
294
But either way Jake's death is an absolute punch to the gut.
295
Now I get that Ka is a wheel
296
but why did King have to kill this poor kid so many times in a series.
297
And if that's not enough for you then oy dies.
298
Like come on how much can one reader take.
299
But despite all of this unimaginable loss, their sacrifices aren't in vain.
300
Without diving into a 20-minute tangent on the exact mechanics of the Dark Tower's magic system, the short version is that they win.
301
The beams are saved and reality is stabilized.
302
And can you believe it?
303
This is where the story gets, shall we say, even more contentious for a lot of people.
304
To start with, the final showdown with the series' main villains are, well, let's just say they leave a bit to be desired.
305
If you're expecting a monolithic Wheel of Time style final battle that takes up an entire book, you will be disappointed.
306
Because the Crimson King himself is essentially reduced to a crazy old man trapped on a balcony outside the tower,
307
throwing weaponized Harry Potter snitches at Roland until he's casually and quite literally erased from existence,
308
which is very low-key given the pretty monumental buildup of this dude across the series.
309
Now, that would all be one thing, but then we still have yet to get to the very end.
310
After taking you on what can only be described as a titanic journey, Roland finally reaches the Dark Tower,
311
and King himself actually knew what he was writing here would make people furious.
312
And I've never seen anything else like this, but he actually wrote a warning to the reader right there before the final chapter to stop reading.
313
But like, come on, did anyone ever actually stop there.
314
Okay, so deep breath.
315
What happens is that Roland's memories are completely wiped
316
and he's thrown right back to where book one began standing
317
in the middle of the desert with the entire series ending with the exact line it started with.
318
The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed.
319
So yeah, the whole thing is a time loop and a lot of people hated it.
320
And you can understand why.
321
After we spent decades walking alongside Roland, watching his friends suffer and die, only to be told that the journey they just read was simply an iteration is a lot.
322
But it does have to be said that some people love it.
323
After all, remember that Ka is a wheel.
324
And if you go back and reread the series, it's hinted that this loop isn't an exact copy of the last one.
325
In the final chapter, Roland finds himself with the Horn of Eld, an artifact from his youth that he dropped on the previous iteration.
326
So reading between the lines, some people think that this means that this new iteration will be the one Roland finally gets right.
327
Now woof.
328
If you managed to get through all that, pat yourself on the back.
329
But also, I cannot overstate how much I greatly, greatly simplify things.
330
I haven't mentioned so, so many wild things in here.
331
Like the Great Old Ones for instance.
332
hyper-advanced society that's referenced throughout the series.
333
Or Merlin's Rainbow, these colored glass orbs with terrifying powers.
334
And of course, Gan, the ultimate supreme deity of King's universe.
335
And the Dark Tower itself is said to literally be Gan's physical body.
336
So much of the Dark Tower is deliberately left open-ended, packed with weird side tangents and unexplained history.
337
But the ambiguity is kind of the whole beauty here.
338
King is definitely not giving you a clean textbook encyclopedia
339
and instead he trusts you and your imagination to fill in the gaps,
340
which arguably makes everything feel way larger and more mysterious than anything he could ever write.
341
Speaking of writing, all of that insanity is wrapped in some truly exquisite, just entertaining and fun writing.
342
And the style itself mimics this crazy, genre-blending nature of the story,
343
merging this dense, archaic, mythic prose with coarse street-level slang spoken by a recovering heroin addict from 1980s New York,
344
with some beautiful, to-the-point, strong quotes thrown in throughout it, like, quote, first comes smiles,
345
then lies, last is gunfire.
346
Or, a coward judges all he sees by what he is.
347
End quote.
348
And of course, maybe the most important and haunting line, quote, go then, there are other worlds than these.
349
End quote.
350
Speaking of endless sprawling worlds like Roland's mid-worlds, if you're spending hours at your desk reading lore,
351
writing campaigns, or gaming, your setup deserves to look less like a barren wasteland and is a lot more atmospheric.
352
Which brings me, of course, to ArcaLoot.
353
ArcaLoot makes premium desk pads designed specifically for gamers,
354
readers, and fantasy fans who want some high-tier artwork on their desk.
355
They sent me two of their standouts, the Crimson Shadow and Eternal Harmony, and the quality of these is incredible.
356
We're talking about edge-to-edge, full-color prints with ultra-vivid details, anti-fray stitched edges so they don't fall apart after months of heavy use,
357
and a non-slip rubber base that stays locked in place no matter how chaotic things get.
358
They're also completely water-resistant.
359
Spill a drink during a long session, and the liquid just beads right up on top for an easy wipe down instead of soaking in and ruining everything.
360
Whether you're looking for dark, gothic vibes or clean, Japanese-inspired aesthetic art, Arcalute has a massive collection with pretty much everything.
361
Plus, they come in full-size mouse pads like Large and XL, and these things are seriously big, giving your mouse plenty of room to glide.
362
So if you want to upgrade your setup, check out Arcalute using the link down in the description below to get 20% off your order.
363
Massive thanks to Arcalute for sponsoring today's video and supporting the channel.
364
Okay, so taking a step back, we should probably look at how a series this utterly unique ever came about.
365
Because if you somehow don't know anything about Stephen King, the guy is regarded as the king of horror.
366
So a genre-bending, high-fantasy epic is a bit out of left field, right?
367
Well, sort of.
368
For a series that reads like a fever dream, you might guess that its inspirations were equally chaotic.
369
And you'd be absolutely right.
370
King was pulling from wildly different corners of culture from American Western, Spaghetti Western, the Bible, and The Seven Samurai.
371
But some loom larger than others, with the good, the bad, and the ugly, with Clint Eastwood being an enormous inspiration.
372
Quote, before the film was even half over, I realized that what I wanted to write was a novel that contained Tolkien's sense of quest and magic,
373
but set against an absurdly majestic western backdrop.
374
And that brings us to another pillar, or beam if you will, of the Dark Tower, which is of course Tolkien.
375
King wanted his own fellowship, or quartet, and a lot of the world building was directly inspired from Middle-earth,
376
with the naming styles like mid-worlds, and even his own constructed language in high speech.
377
plus, you know, Tolkien literally had a dark tower or two of his own.
378
Probably the largest spark of inspiration actually came from the 1855
379
narrative poem Child Roland to the Dark Tower came by Robert Browning,
380
which King read and apparently just sent his imagination into overdrive.
381
Quote, still nobody knows what the Dark Tower is.
382
And so I started off wondering, what is this tower?
383
What does it mean?
384
And I decided that everybody has some sort of a dark tower in their lives that they want to find.
385
And they know it's destructive and will probably mean the end of them.
386
So I thought, maybe it's different things to different people.
387
And I can play with that a little bit.
388
End quote.
389
Now, the actual writing of the gunslinger started in 1970 while King was still at university.
390
While he was apparently working at the library
391
and he found this ream of bright green heavy-duty paper
392
that someone left behind and simply couldn't stand the sight of a blank sheet of paper.
393
Now, it was not written all in one go.
394
Far from it.
395
He would write it in starts and stops throughout the years, with the first book, The Gunslinger, being something of an evolving work.
396
And when The Gunslinger finally made its way into the world, it didn't exactly arrive with a trumpet blast, but more of a whimper.
397
It actually trickled out in pieces serialized in the magazine of fantasy
398
and science fiction starting in 1978 because King basically didn't think anyone would actually want to read the thing.
399
It wasn't until years later in 1982 it was finally released in limited edition
400
and even then it wasn't exactly static because King went back
401
and reworked the gunslinger extensively and a few times over the years saying
402
that the original was written by a very young and pretentious man.
403
So if you're picking up a version of The Gunslinger today, it's very likely it's a version that has been revised by King.
404
Fortunately, once the series started going, it became slightly less spasmodic.
405
And on the bare-bones surface, it's actually refreshingly straightforward.
406
With the main line consisting of The Gunslinger in 1982, The Drawling of the Three in 1987,
407
The Wastelands in 1991, Wizard and Glass in 1998, Wolves of the Kala in 2003, Song of Susanna in 2004,
408
and finally The Dark Tower in 2004.
409
So if you were paying attention to the publication release dates, you'll immediately notice some pretty interesting patterns.
410
Because the series spans much of King's career, and this goes a long way of explaining why the series feels
411
so incredibly tonal different throughout each book because the first four were written a bit meanderingly, I guess you could say,
412
in fits and starts through the 80s and 90s at a grueling slow pace.
413
It wasn't really until after Stephen King's famous car accident almost
414
killed him where he got letters from fans on death row
415
or who were terminally ill begging him to tell them how the series would end.
416
And so with this catalyst, King got to work and pumped out the final few volumes.
417
But it does have to be said
418
that one of the most common critiques of The Dark Tower is that the pacing is completely all over the place, with the latter half moving at a breakneck,
419
almost frantic pace, and with King dropping in some of the kookier elements like the fourth wall breaks
420
and those Harry Potter references.
421
But if the main series isn't your cup of tea, there are actually other stories that make up the series.
422
The Little Sisters of Luria in 1998, which is a prequel.
423
Then, a bit unexpectedly, a full eight years after the main series wrapped up, King returned in 2012 with The Wind Through the Keyhole,
424
which was kind of book 4.5 between Wizard and Glass and Wolves of the Calla.
425
Now, one other cool thing about the publication history that's quite cool
426
and unique is that every book in the main series was published with a set of illustrations,
427
with each individual book having its own illustrator for the whole thing, from Michael Whelan all the way to Jay Lee,
428
and some of these are gorgeous and I've been putting a lot of them on screen.
429
Speaking of the screen, I know some of you are probably screaming at it, spittle flying directly onto the channel's logo.
430
Because we're probably, what, halfway through the video, and we haven't even talked about arguably one of the most interesting,
431
intimidating, and confusing aspects of the Dark Tower, which is, of course, its connection to Stephen King's broader universe.
432
So because of the multiverse shenanigans in the series, it overtly, and covertly I guess, connects to pretty much all of King's works.
433
Although the degree of the connection does kind of vary wildly, and it's something people can absolutely lose their minds over.
434
So if you're familiar with modern shared universes like Sanderson's Cosmere, it's actually a lot more closer to Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion multiverse.
435
Everything is vaguely connected, sometimes through major character crossovers, sometimes with a subtle, wait, is this what I think it is?
436
And sometimes stories aren't even linked directly to the tower, but rather connected through a second book's connection to it.
437
And so on one end of the spectrum, you have heavy hitting primary tie-ins.
438
The Stand, Insomnia, and Salem's Lot features major characters in the series.
439
Then something like the Eyes of the Dragon takes place directly within Midworld.
440
Actually, Salem's Lot is a real book in the Dark Tower series, and King himself said
441
that pretty much everything he was writing in the 90s was connected to the Dark Tower in some way.
442
But again, not all are created equal, because on the other end of the spectrum, you have minor echoes and subtle universe bleed-ins.
443
Now, sure, you could look at all of this and just dismiss it as cocaine-bender logic.
444
But the impressive thing about the meta-interconnected nature of the Dark Tower universe is how real-world stories like The Wizard of Oz,
445
Arthurian Legend, or Charlie the Choo Choo exist as actual tangible realities across its worlds.
446
And in the same way, it makes total sense that King's stories would also be real and echo throughout his worlds.
447
And because the Dark Tower is the center of the universe, of course, the Dark Tower series would stand at the center of King's work.
448
And in that way, it's kind of brilliant.
449
Quote, I have written enough novels and short stories to fill a solar system of the imagination, But Roland's story is my Jupiter,
450
a planet that dwarfs all the others.
451
Dwarfs the others, did I say?
452
I think there's more to it than that, actually." Now, that sounds great, but this does present a bit of a problem,
453
because does this mean that you need to read a bajillion King books just to understand the Dark Tower?
454
Well, not necessarily, but maybe.
455
And if you have, I salute you, and you get your very own Billy Bumbler.
456
But the core series does stand on its own.
457
However, reading ancillary books will definitely enrich your experience.
458
But there's a few different ways to do this on how extreme you want to go.
459
If you just want the original straightforward experience, you can simply pick up the main books and read them in order.
460
Easy, right?
461
But if you want to brave the full brain-melting rabbit hole of reading every single King book that touches the beam,
462
creators like James Van Fleet made incredible videos breaking down exactly how these various parallel worlds crisscross into Romalist's narrative.
463
I've also linked a few incredible comprehensive community guides and reading orders in the description below to help you navigate the madness.
464
And if you choose to take that path, may Ka guide you, my friend.
465
Ants, if all of that somehow still is not enough Dark Tower content for you, you greedy little ca sausage,
466
we're actually still not done.
467
The series has spawned several companion books, like Robin Furst, The Dark Tower,
468
A Concordance, which is an encyclopedia-style reference guide that was actually put together as a database for King's personal use.
469
Then you have The Road to the Dark Tower and The Dark Tower Companion by Bev Vincent, and actually the Love of Reading YouTube channel has a great interview with Vincent,
470
which I'll link below.
471
Finally, in a kind of hilarious piece of meta-publishing, there is an actual real-life release of Charlie the Choo-Choo in 2016 that is featured in the Dark Tower series.
472
And true to the original story, the picture book is pretty unsettling with these gorgeous but deeply eerie illustrations.
473
So speaking of other media, if your first thought on the Dark Tower is how on earth would you ever put this on screen, well, you don't.
474
And that's why, famously and a bit sadly, there were never any adaptations of The Dark Tower and definitely no movie.
475
Oh, what's that?
476
I see someone in the back screaming and pointing to what? That?
477
Oh, you mean that Dark Tower movie?
478
Uh, are you sure you want to talk about that?
479
All right, if you insist, we can palaver about it.
480
All right, jokes aside, The Dark Tower movie actually did have a pretty fascinating decade-long history.
481
Now, this started back in 2007, and fresh off the massive success of Lost, everyone's favorite, J.J.
482
Abrams, optioned the rights from King for a symbolic $19, which is a neat little nod to the book's lore.
483
King was a huge fan of Lost, and it seemed like the perfect fit.
484
But after two years of staring into the narrative abyss that is the Dark Tower, Abrams backed away in 2009, admitting that the project was just too massive and tricky to tackle.
485
So, round two.
486
In 2010, Ron Howard announced a massive plan, including a trilogy of films separated by two seasons of a tie-in TV series to bridge the gaps,
487
which sounded incredible on paper, but yeah, obviously that was way too ambitious for its own good.
488
And the thing bounced around getting trimmed and rewritten.
489
But interestingly enough, actors like Aaron Paul and Liam Neeson were rumored for roles like Eddie Dean and Roland, which I would have loved to see, But nothing came of it.
490
Now, third time's the charm, though.
491
And finally, in 2015, Sony picked up the pieces and fast-tracked a heavily reworked script.
492
And it got off the ground.
493
But whether this was for better or worse, well...
494
By the time the cameras actually started to roll, the production was plagued by too many cooks in the content syndrome.
495
You had Sony execs, Howard and King, all holding creative leverage
496
and test screens were reportedly so disastrous that they led to $6 million in last-minute reshoots.
497
And the studio also made the decision to squeeze a dark, gruesome fantasy epic into a sanitized 95-minute PG-13 movie.
498
Not to mention, when Elbow was cast as Roland, there was the predictable wave of backlash from people upset at
499
a traditionally white character who was being played by a black actor, with King's response being, quote, I didn't care what color he was, as long as he could command the screen,
500
draw fast, and shoot straight.
501
You know what's weirder than that?
502
You see the show Game of Thrones?
503
They're all British.
504
Westeros is basically England, and nobody ever questions that.
505
So, I mean, to me, the idea that a black man would play Roland is minor to that.
506
So, how was the film actually?
507
Well, the good?
508
What came out the other side does have some good in here.
509
The Gunslinger scenes are genuinely great
510
and Tom Taylor does solid work as Jake for a kid actor
511
and Elba and McConaughey Play off each other is just fun casting bad is
512
that the entire thing it feels like someone tried to blend the entire series into a blender
513
and it's basically a mashup of all of the different Dark Tower books crammed into one very confusing story with
514
most of the content
515
and other downright crucial scenes omitted on top of some outright insane pacing with no time to explain what
516
or why any of this is happening.
517
And the ugly?
518
Well, the reviews.
519
But at the start, the movie actually opened at number one, pulling in about 19.5 million on its first week, which again, 19.
520
But the reviews were bad, like really bad.
521
And it's currently at 16% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is rough.
522
Now, to be fair, I don't think it's quite as bad as that would lead you to believe, but either way, word of mouth killed it fast,
523
with nowhere near the franchise launching numbers that Sony clearly wanted.
524
Now, the original plan alongside the film was a companion TV series, but when the movie crashed and burned about as hard as possible,
525
the idea got reworked into a standalone prequel series, and amazingly enough, a pilot was actually shot,
526
but Amazon passed on it in 2000, reportedly because it didn't measure up to their other big fantasy swings like The Lord of the Rings
527
and The Wheel of Time, which is a bit ironic considering what happened to The Wheel of Time.
528
As for King himself, he said that he regretted signing off on the PG-13 rating
529
and thought that that was a major mistake to dilute the books, and that he would want any sequel to go R-rated, Roland to get his hat, and finally bring in the lobstrocities.
530
Now, although that's all pretty grim news, turns out we actually did get one incredible adaptation.
531
Marvel published a long-running Dark Tower comic line starting in 2007 with Jay Lee and Richard Eisenoff handling the art,
532
written by Robin Firth, who wrote some of the reference books and King himself serving as creative director.
533
So this was not a small thing.
534
The first arc covers Roland's early life, and it's fascinating to see things that were only hinted at in the books,
535
like in-depth looks at Gilead and even gorgeous maps.
536
The art itself starts in this glossy early 2000s style
537
and tips into this fever dream aesthetic that matches the tone of the series perfectly.
538
It's manic, unsettling, and uncompromisingly grip.
539
And this wasn't a one and done cash-in either.
540
This thing ran for a decade from 2007 to 2017.
541
This is a pretty massive body of work.
542
Content-wise, it's not messing around either with the fall of Gilead, the battle of Jericho Hill,
543
real dark and brutal stuff that leans into the desperation and hopelessness baked into the books.
544
Basically, if the movie is the adaptation that forgot the face of its father, comics are the one that actually remembered, and I would highly recommend them if you're a fan.
545
And given how much of this world feels like it should have spawned a dozen video games by now, after all, it's about a multiversal gunslinger fighting cyborg bears,
546
the actual output is very slim.
547
There was actually only one real attempt in Discordia, which was a browser game on Kingsite in 2009.
548
It was a point and click adventure using Flash and even had brief shooting gallery segments.
549
Sadly, if you try to play it today, you'll just hit a dead end and a glorious 404 page.
550
It's largely lost to time and the death of Flash, but if someone does have a working link or way to play this, please let me know and I'll drop it in the description.
551
And all of that is a shame because a real Dark Tower game would be amazing.
552
And hey, I'll even take a Red Dead Redemption mod at this point.
553
So where does the Dark Tower stand now?
554
And are we ever going to get another book?
555
Well, it depends on what you consider a Dark Tower book.
556
Recent additions to the Kingsverse that are connected to the Dark Tower like the Gwendy trilogy.
557
And in 1984, King co-wrote The Talisman with Peter Straub.
558
And King later made it clear that the parallel dimension in those books was Midworld.
559
Sadly, Straub passed away.
560
But before then, he sent King a long letter laying out a core idea for a final installment.
561
And that novel, Other Worlds Than These, is set to release in 2026.
562
Outside of that, I couldn't find any other news of King planning any other books, at least according to his site.
563
So after that, the jury is out.
564
But he's already surprised us a lot throughout the years with prequels, so I don't know.
565
It's King, anything is possible.
566
As for screen adaptations, well, we might actually not be done.
567
Because The Torch has been passed to director Mike Flanagan, who has worked on other King films.
568
In 2022, Flanagan announced he had carved out the rights to adapt The Dark Tower into a multi-season TV series,
569
followed by two standalone feature films.
570
And King gave the pilot script his personal seal of approval.
571
Now, that sounds great, but Flanagan has admitted
572
that getting a green light on a project of this scale is one of the most complicated processes of his entire career.
573
And the last news I heard of this project is that it's honestly not looking so hot.
574
But in this era of reboots, I would not be surprised at all if The Dark Tower finally got another chance to shine.
575
But even if Hollywood stumbles, you can bet that the fandom isn't going anywhere.
576
You can hop onto the Dark Tower subreddit and find people carving custom-held keys,
577
showing off high-speech tattoos, and theory-crafting obscure lore connections.
578
Even more beautifully, one of my favorite projects that's been done is this fan-made old-school JRPG
579
that is faithfully recreating the books and looks incredible.
580
And for those curious, I'll link it below.
581
Speaking of fan projects, there's also some really incredible podcasts out there,
582
including Kingslingers, which does an excellent job going into more detail about the series, and beat-by-beat book analysis, which again, I'll link below.
583
So, all of that being said, trying to tie a neat conclusion onto the Dark Tower is practically impossible.
584
There is just too much chaos in here to summarize.
585
But it's that exact, surreal,
586
outlandish coagulation of genres that makes this series so special.
587
Love it or hate it, King pushed the envelope of what fantasy could be.
588
And in a world and time where fantasy feels more codified and boxed in by the day,
589
I personally think we need stories that refuse to play by those rules.
590
Fantasy, by definition, ought to be boundless in imagination.
591
And say what you will, but the Dark Tower is about as boundless as it gets.
592
And so, to my brave and lovely content, I wish you long days and pleasant nights.
593
No matter what path you're on walking toward your own Dark Tower, remember to never forget the face of your fathers.
594
Thank you so much for watching.
595
I want to give a huge shout out to Gunther Heyer for helping me fact check.
596
And another shout out to Quack Atomic for helping me fact check as well.
597
Of course, no shout out is ever complete without shouting out my incredible patrons.
598
Thank you to my top ones Marshall Rather Daishan Skyflakes John B.
599
Minuteman Shifting Eras CdnShota87 Phillip O.
600
Dr. Beryl
601
Retsamu Ten Benjamin Levine Psych Link Shantanu David Lindsey Leitner Alex
602
McGuffey Kana Bellflower Katie Dunn Time Travel Master Stonehenge Hurricane Cobra Panic Rhett Roster and Kezdrix Again,
603
you patrons are awesome.
604
I could not do this without you.
605
If you want to find out more ways to join and support the channel, you can find them in the link below.
606
As always, if you ever have any suggestions about what you want me to cover next, please drop a comment.
607
I really appreciate the help and support, and it means a lot to me if you watch the entire video.
608
I really hope you have a fantastic and incredible day, and I'll see you next time.
Télécharger l'application
Tout pour parler couramment
Prononciation IAChaque phrase notée
Phonétique (IPA)Maîtrisez chaque son
VocabulaireEnrichissez votre lexique
Jeu de vocabulaireApprenez en jouant
FOR YOU
Vidéo recommandée
B21
447 phrases
I read Stephen King for the first time... while home alone 😳
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B23
98 phrases
Vaulter rejects Waystar's billion dollar offer – Succession (2018)
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B21
365 phrases
7 Weird Weapons (and how to use them!) with Historia Normannis Hereford
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B21
122 phrases
Tolkien Said He Would Have Refused to Go
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B24
132 phrases
Are we heading to an era of stagnation or innovation?
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B21
365 phrases
Rick's ENTIRE Story Explained
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B252 phrases
Recommending Mistborn in 3 Minutes
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B21
167 phrases
This Train Game Is Pure MADNESS... - Ep 2
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B22
28 phrases
#ZFold8 Has A Big Problem, it Isn't #iPhoneDuo #appleiphoneduo #samsungvsapple #iphoneduovszfold8
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
C11
835 phrases
Ep529 - Michael Connelly - How to Write Every Day
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B21
373 phrases
I built my dream podcast studio in Austin.
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B21
15 phrases
Tristan Tate ~ After Dark edit
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
Vocabulaire et conseils d’expression pour cette leçon
Cette leçon d’expression orale de niveau B2 s’appuie sur la vidéo « The Confusing History of The Dark Tower ». Les mots qui reviennent le plus souvent : tower, dark, king, Roland. Cette vidéo contient 608 phrases et 8783 mots à répéter en shadowing. La partie parlée dure 53:09. Le locuteur parle à un rythme naturel d’environ 165 mots par minute, proche d’une conversation courante. Seuls 80 % des mots font partie des 3 000 mots les plus courants en anglais, le vocabulaire est donc exigeant.
Vocabulaire clé de cette vidéo
Les 15 mots les plus avancés de la vidéo, avec leur prononciation et leur sens :
| Mot | Prononciation | Sens |
|---|---|---|
| gunslinger nom | as de la gâchette | |
| beam nom | /ˈbiːm/ | madrier |
| confuse verbe | /kənˈfjuːz/ | rendre perplexe, confondre |
| adaptation nom | /ˌæd.æpˈteɪ.ʃən/ | adaptation |
| dimensional adjectif | /daɪˈmɛn.ʃə.nəl/ | dimensionnel, de dimension |
| heroine nom | /ˈhɪɹoʊɪn/ | héroïne |
| surreal adjectif | /səˈɹiː(.ə)l/ | surréel |
| addict nom | /ˈæd.ɪkt/ | dépendant, dépendante |
| shout verbe | /ʃaʊt/ | crier |
| stake nom | /steɪk/ | pieu, pal |
| genre nom | /ˈ(d)ʒɑnɹə/ | genre |
| fascinate verbe | /ˈfæsɪneɪt/ | fasciner |
| gritty adjectif | /ˈɡɹɪti/ | graveleux |
| iteration nom | /ˌɪt.əˈɹeɪ.ʃən/ | itération |
| manic adjectif | /ˈmænɪk/ | maniaque, allumé |
Les verbes à particule que vous entendrez
| Mot | Prononciation | Sens |
|---|---|---|
| pick up verbe | soulever | |
| break down verbe | tomber en panne | |
| get off verbe | descendre, faire descendre | |
| mess up verbe | gâcher | |
| call out verbe | préciser, spécifier | |
| check out verbe | mater, regarder | |
| come out verbe | /ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/ | sortir |
| end up verbe | se terminer, se finir |
Des phrases à répéter
Des phrases courtes et complètes de la vidéo, à réutiliser dans la conversation de tous les jours :
- Do you need some water?
- Did I mention that this series is insane?
- Dwarfs the others, did I say?
- I see someone in the back screaming and pointing to what?
- You know what's weirder than that?
La grammaire de cette vidéo
Les structures que le locuteur utilise le plus, avec les mots exacts de la vidéo :
| Structure | Dans la vidéo |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continu have/has been + -ing — une action commencée avant et toujours en cours | it's been coming · I've been putting |
| Present perfect have/has + participe passé — une action passée qui compte encore maintenant | has been sanitized · have read · has forgotten |
| Voix passive be + participe passé — l’accent est mis sur ce qui arrive, pas sur qui le fait | has been sanitized · is pushed · can be pinned |
| Propositions relatives who / which + proposition — une précision sur une personne ou une chose | man who might · kid who really · Bumbler, which is |
Prononciation à surveiller
Le locuteur utilise 73 contractions et formes réduites, comme you're, isn't, don't. Prononcez-les sous leur forme courte, telles que vous les entendez.
- Les sons « sh » et « zh »: adaptation /ˌæd.æpˈteɪ.ʃən/, dimensional /daɪˈmɛn.ʃə.nəl/, shout /ʃaʊt/, genre /ˈ(d)ʒɑnɹə/, iteration /ˌɪt.əˈɹeɪ.ʃən/
- Mots longs — placez bien l’accent: adaptation /ˌæd.æpˈteɪ.ʃən/, dimensional /daɪˈmɛn.ʃə.nəl/, iteration /ˌɪt.əˈɹeɪ.ʃən/, relentlessly /ɹɪˈlɛntləsli/, convoluted /ˌkɑnvəˈlutəd/
Les sons difficiles pour les francophones :
- /h/ — il se souffle, il n’est pas muet: heroine /ˈhɪɹoʊɪn/, wheelchair /ˈ(h)wilt͡ʃɛɹ/, haunt /hɔnt/, heroic /hɪˈɹoʊ.ɪk/, hint /hɪnt/
- /tʃ/ et /dʒ/ — à ne pas adoucir en « ch » et « j »: wheelchair /ˈ(h)wilt͡ʃɛɹ/, tragic /ˈtɹæd͡ʒɪk/, trilogy /ˈtɹɪləd͡ʒi/, fortunately /ˈfɔɹ.t͡ʃə.nɪt.li/
- /r/ anglais — langue recourbée, sans frotter la gorge: heroine /ˈhɪɹoʊɪn/, surreal /səˈɹiː(.ə)l/, genre /ˈ(d)ʒɑnɹə/, gritty /ˈɡɹɪti/, iteration /ˌɪt.əˈɹeɪ.ʃən/
Comment s’entraîner avec cette vidéo
- Écoutez la vidéo en entier une fois sans parler et notez les mots que vous ne connaissez pas.
- Commencez à la vitesse 0,75×, répétez phrase par phrase, puis revenez à la vitesse normale quand cela devient facile.
- Enregistrez-vous et comparez avec l’original, en faisant attention à des mots comme gunslinger, beam, confuse.
Qu'est-ce que la technique du Shadowing ?
Le Shadowing est une technique d'apprentissage des langues fondée sur la science, développée à l'origine pour la formation des interprètes professionnels. Le principe est simple mais puissant : vous écoutez de l'anglais natif et le répétez immédiatement à voix haute — comme une ombre suivant le locuteur avec un décalage de 1 à 2 secondes. Les recherches montrent une amélioration significative de la précision de la prononciation, de l'intonation, du rythme, des liaisons, de la compréhension orale et de la fluidité.