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"The war is over, gunslinger," says the Man in Black -- a purrier-than-usual Matthew McConaughey in this case -- and thus begins the first footage ever seen from Sony Pictures' adaptation of the Stephen King saga The Dark Tower.

But really, it looks more like a war is just beginning.

Many years in development, this first look came Monday during Cinemacon, the annual gathering of cinema owners from around the globe and Hollywood studios who come to Las Vegas to show their wares.

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The two minutes or so played like a trailer, showing scenes from the epic, era-spanning post-apocalyptic story that King began in the early 1980s. McConaughey plays the Man in Black, a timeless villain who seems in the film version to have ... the Force?

Wearing a simple black shirt and pants, the Man in Black's abilities include stopping bullets between his fingers without looking, moving fallen shards of glass out of his umbra and other telekinetic abilities that would impress Yoda himself. Even if he was just trying.

And then there's Roland the Gunslinger, played by Idris Elba, the last of an ancient order of protectors who roam the wasteland. We first met Roland in The Gunslinger, and like the books, his abilities lie mostly in the chambers of two heavy six-shooters.

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"I kill with my heart," Elba says in voiceover, as we see him traversing a world now littered with the junk and rubble of a war gone by. The Gunslinger is seeking the Tower -- and we get a few glimpses of the tower itself in various stages of disrepair -- and though he's not sure what he's going to do when he gets there, he knows his quest requires it.

Along the way he meets a cast of random characters who will aid him in various ways, the first of whom is Jake (Tom Taylor), a roughly 9-year-old boy who starts his journey in our world and time. Back home he sees (and also draws) visions of the tower, the Gunslinger and an old, abandoned house -- which we see him find, enter and finally slide through a portal into that other world.

Once there, he shows Roland his Gunslinger drawing -- it's a spitting image -- and an alliance is formed.

We see Jake and Roland walking in front of the wreckage of war, and at one point, during the chaos of some kind of raid, Jake is being stolen away by one of the Man in Black's goons. Roland looks to the ground and takes along pause, raising his pistol of to some unseen target, waiting until his instincts tell him to fire. The bullet whizzes through various points in time, then finds its mark -- Jake's kidnapper is dropped to the ground and the boy is ostensibly saved in a single shot.

Other visions we glimpsed: The tower falling (!!!) and its reverberations rippling through time, giant moons eclipsing on the horizon in the Gunslinger's realm, a wall with the phrase "All Hail the Crimson King!" scrawled in red as the Man in Black walks past (True Detectivevibes, anyone?), and a major showdown between Roland and Black in an abandoned building.

That's where we see the Main in Black's Force-like powers are on full display, something that's not necessarily in The Gunslingerbook -- but then, in a time-jumping tale like this one, you can bet the first installment will be borrowing ideas from all across the eight-book saga written over 22 years.

The Dark Towerarrives in theaters on July 28.

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TopicsStephen King

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