The ‘Elden Ring’ film is to be directed by Alex Garland
FromSoftware, Inc
The A24 film adaptation of Elden Ring is officially moving forward with Alex Garland as writer/director, and the announcement was met with mixed responses on the internet.
For some, the prospect of an Elden Ring film doesn’t make sense in the first place, while others expressed doubt that Garland was the right man for the job.
What Is ‘Elden Ring’ About?
Elden Ring, the gargantuan, open-world entry in the FromSoft game catalog, is famous for invoking a mood rather than telling a coherent story.
That’s not to say there is no story in the game—there is, but the game isn’t particularly concerned with communicating it clearly to the player.
Elden Ring (and the Dark Souls trilogy) are more about vibes—themes of decay, insatiable greed and the terrible, destructive efforts of maintaining an empire in the face of entropy, but the exact details of how these civilizations turned to ruin are often hiding in the shadows.
These games do contain strong characters, rich settings, and detailed lore within item descriptions, as well as contextual clues in the landscape.
While game franchises such as Grand Theft Auto and The Last Of Us use cinematic cutscenes to tell their stories, Elden Ring uses the strength of the medium, trusting that players will understand something about the story from their experiences.
However, players will never really see the full picture, and that’s by design.
Alex Garland Is A Good Choice For The ‘Elden Ring’ Movie
The general online reaction to Garland writing and directing the Elden Ring movie was mixed, but FromSoft fans are likely judging him too harshly.
Many film buffs turned on Garland after his misogyny-themed horror film Men proved something of a misfire, while reactions to his most recent film, Civil War, were mixed.
Garland may have stumbled here and there, but the man is a gifted storyteller—Garland’s first novel was The Beach, a compelling book, remarkable for a first novel.
Notably, The Beach tells the story of a failed attempt to build a utopia, a concept that Elden Ring also explores. In fact, several of Garland’s films show thematic similarities to FromSoft games.
Garland wrote (but did not direct) 28 Days Later and Sunshine, the former depicting an undead apocalypse, and the latter a space crew that flies too close to the sun, leading to madness, delusion and violence.
Ex Machina warns against playing God, depicting the dehumanization of a conscious machine by a Silicon Valley sociopath, ending with bloody rebellion.
Annihilation tells the story of an alien life that melds itself into the surroundings, tainting everything it touches and merging the boundaries between human, plant, animal and alien entity.
Thematically and visually, Annihilation resembles the strange atmosphere of Elden Ring, which contains many hostile landscapes, grotesque human-animal hybrids and otherworldly gods that drive the hapless inhabitants of The Lands Between insane.
Garland has talked about how much he loves the Dark Souls games (which are very similar to Elden Ring), and seems to understand why players find them so compelling.
However, many FromSoft fans fear that Elden Ring just can’t be adapted into a film without losing the elements that make it such a unique experience. There’s probably truth to that—these games aren’t about protagonists, but Elden Ring is more of a hero’s journey than Dark Souls is.
It should be noted that legendary game director Hidetaka Miyazaki, who is credited with the success of Dark Souls and Elden Ring, has spoken positively about a potential film adaptation in the past.
“I don’t see any reason to deny another interpretation or adaptation of Elden Ring, a movie for example,” Miyazaki told The Guardian.
“But I don’t think myself, or FromSoftware, have the knowledge or ability to produce something in a different medium. So that’s where a very strong partner would come into play.”
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