Alex Garland's Elden Ring movie should feel like a fantasy war

If you could hire any director to make an Elden Ring movie, who would you choose?

You might choose a fantasy heavyweight like Peter Jackson or Guillermo del Toro, or you might slap Miguel Sapochnik, the biggest battle in the game of Thrones that brings you many of the powers, including the Battle of Hardhome and Bastards. If you're looking for something more edgy, you can even choose Robert Eggers (Nosferatu), Yorgos Lanthimos (poor stuff) or Bong Joon Ho (Mickey 17) – filmmakers who like Elden Ring ring fromsoftware, enjoy super surreal, cragrall, Cryptic and Uncancy and Uncancy.

Most likely, you won't choose Alex Garland. The British writer and director is known for taking root, burning slow sci-fi dramas and annihilation, as well as the famous war films Civil War and War – none of them were noticeably derived from works derived from Sophomore. However, Garland is the film studio A24 that chose Hidetaka, which is adapted to Hayao Miyazaki's Magnum Opus For large screens. Considering that Garland (and is also ready to write a script in addition to the director) is not about making a multi-digit check and calling it, you have to wonder how he will try to do the job.

It's clear at a glance that Garland and Elden Ring really look like a weird game. Despite his experience in science fiction, Garland hasn't tried to try his own hands on Hardcore Fantasy, which is a tricky genre in itself, even more tricky when dealing with video game adaptations. Most importantly, his style doesn't have much in common with FrofSoftware. The narratives of Ex Machina and Annihilation are rooted in plot, dialogue and representation, while games like Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring tell their stories in large part indirectly through project descriptions and environmental design. (The civil war set in the United States tomorrow has been widely criticized for its lack of deep background).

But just because Garland never made a fantasy movie, it doesn't mean he can't. He reinvented himself and broke into new boundaries in new boundaries – Civil War and War are completely different from former machinery and annihilation, which itself is different from the film he wrote before executing the director – so who wouldn't say he would do it again?

In fact, making Elden Ring movies does not constitute exactly the unknown territory of Garland. Many people – including his own fans – don't know this, but he's actually an avid gamer. His experience playing the Resident Evil game clearly inspired his script 28 days later in the 2002 horror movie, while the 2000 film The Beach (based on one of his novels) was game-inspired by the scenes, Polygon’s Matt Patches is described as “the closest thing we will get” Starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

While many filmmakers seem interested in adapting the material they hire to soothe the material’s existing fan base (to this day, I refuse to believe that M. Night Shyamalan even looked at an episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender), Garland’s love for us for the last of us, Bioshock, Bioshock, and most importantly – the dark soul seems to be sincere. Compared to other games, he seems to have a good grasp of what makes the series unique and distinctive. Talk to Gamespot Back in 2020, Garland said: “The dark soul game seems to have this embedded poetry inside. You'll sit outside the door with some kind of broken soul and have some weird conversations, and it feels like you've been trapped in this dream of being.”

Holding on to this “Dream of Existence” image, Garland may adapt his Eldon ring to Annihilationafter its release, was praised for its psychedelic visual effects. This will work, but it's not the only way forward. Another less obvious but arguably more effective plan of action is to adjust Elden Ring to a mold warGarland's nail thriller about the Navy SEALs fighting in Iraq. I say that, not because the movie has something fantastic – instead, it’s sold as one of the most realistic war movies of all time – but because watching this movie is very similar to those feelings you’ve experienced while playing Elden Ring: Beyond, Overnumber, Overcome, Mismatch, Overwhelmed, Overwhelmed, Overwhelmed, Fear of Your Life (or Running).

Swap the war-torn Iraqi town of Ramadi for the ruins of Limgrave, alleyways of Leyndell, or badlands of Caelid, and what you're left with is a film that adapts not the game's vitality, overarching backstory – the backstabbing saga of Marika, Godrick, Radagon, and the Demigods – but the minute, moment-to-moment experiences of the player's Tarnished characters dabble in between the lands and thus fall into the closest place of grace, so that they completely lose the greater pursuit to become Elden Lord's pursuit, whatever that means.

Given that the garland is It is reported that hope to seize an actor from the war – Kit Connor – In the leader, his Elden ring adaptation may end up in a suspense-like tone, not to mention rereading the subjects of fear, despair and meaningless violence that Connor has proven himself able to convey. Using war as a blueprint for Elden Ring will not only take advantage of Garland as a filmmaker, he explores psychology through graphics, carefully choreographed actions, but also follows – examples of fighting ME – only solid video game adaptation, HBO Season 1its quality is largely derived from the fact that its creators understand the best choice for making the original game.

Like other games from FromSoftware, Elden Ring is not a power fantasy, with supernatural heroes defeating giant monsters with gorgeous cutscenes and epic fast time events. It's a counter-force fantasy that reduces players to the unknown fighters who are familiar in death and hit the wall of fog until they finally succeed. To get Garland's adaptation to the heights of his previous films, he did a great job of capturing bittersweet emotions. Through his work on the war, we can glimpse what Elden Ring might have been when he finally arrived at the cinema.

Tim Brinkhof is a freelance writer specializing in art and history. After studying journalism at NYU, he continued to write for Vox, Vulture, Slate, Polygon, GQ, Esquire and more.