Not doubting you, it's just been awhile since I read The Mist. How was that one connected to The Dark Tower Series?
It's been a while since I read the page version of The Mist- but there are a few connections and the movie piled them on even more.
The most noticable aspect of it is that the creatures are those from the Dark Tower world. The flying pteranodon like creatures are seen along with a wealth of other insane organisms near the end of the Dark Tower 3: The Wastelands.
The most important aspect of it, though, is that of the multiple endless dimensions all linked together through The Dark Tower. In the Dark Tower, Roland gains access to different dimensions through actual doorways, though it's clear there are many other ways to bridge the dimensions. This is what happens in the Mist. Like the soldier explains and Carmody says after- they tried to create a window, but what if it was a door? The Mist is indeed a doorway, branching the main world of the Dark Tower universe with that of one of the other countless worlds- a world much closer to our own.
There were other little things here and there. I got a real "thinny" vibe from the tentacles, and the thinny is a massive indescribable being with a bunch of tentacles that makes an appearance in Wastlelands alongside all the other creatures and kills an assload of people in DT4: Wizard & Glass.
Also tied together with another DT connected book, From A Buick 8. Thinking about it now, From A Buick 8 is basically the same exact story as The Mist, but longer and not as good. In it, a car is left behind by one of the agents of the Dark Tower, and this car also serves as a doorway between the main DT world and again, a world not different from our own. From this car creatures pop out(in fact, I'm pretty sure one of the pterodactyl things makes an appearance here as well), characters react differently to it, crazy stuff happens. But the biggest CONNECTION from it is that WHEN the creatures come out into our world and die, they fizzle into nothing just like the dead severed tentacle did... thus leaving no proof to those skepticle.
My favorite connection was the Wizard of Oz line. It works on it's own in context to the film- they are basically transported just like Dorothy into another world in The Mist(through a doorway no less, but for Dorothy it's a Tornado, for the Buick guys it's a car, for Roland and the Dark Tower fellows it's an actual door, and for David and the supermarket patrons it's The Mist). But any Dark Tower reader knows the importance of the Wizard of Oz in Wizard & Glass, my favorite book of the series.
And finally this all culminates in the inclusion of the painting at the beginning- the tip of the hat acknowledging just how much it all really is connected, and that this entire film is about a doorway, about one of the endless stories that can be told when ordinary people are faced with extradorinary circumstances, and how they break down when coming in contact with something out of this world.
In a perfect land, everyone who made a King story would put in these little details- but outside of a soup kitchen in the recent Salem's Lot miniseries and the same types of soda in Kingdom Hospital, people just don't seem to care. Damn shame... could you imagine how great Hearts in Atlantis would have been if they had stuck to the damn book? Talk about a sense of wonder. Of course, in a perfect world, Frank Daranbont would be the only man making King stories, and we'd all live forever until he finished the whole damn thing.
