If you could hire a director to make an Eldenling film, who would you choose?
You might settle for fantasy heavyweights like Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro. Or you might tap on Miguel Sapofnic, the man who brought you many of the biggest fights in Game of Thrones, including Hardhome and Asshole. If you’re looking for something a little more avant-garde, you could also choose Robert Eggers (Nosferatu), Yorgos Lantimos (Poor), or Bong Jun Ho (Mickey 17).
Perhaps you wouldn’t choose Alex Garland. The British writer and director are known for its grounded, slowly burning science fiction drama Excina and the disappearance. But Garland exactly who chose Film Studio A24 to adapt Hidetaka Miyazaki’s Magnum Opus to the big screen? Considering Garland, who is planning on writing in addition to the director, you need to wonder how he is going to do this job, as he is not the one who takes his multi-digit check and calls.
At a glance, Garland and Eldenling actually look like a strange match. Despite his considerable experience in sci-fi, Garland has yet to try his hand at hardcore fantasy. It is a tricky genre in itself, and even more tricky when dealing with video game adaptations. In addition to this, his style doesn’t have much in common with FromSoftware’s style. While the stories of Ex Machina and Annihilation are rooted in plot, dialogue and characterization, games like Dark Souls, Bloodborne and Elden Ring tell the stories primarily indirectly through item descriptions and environmental design. (The civil war set in the United States tomorrow was widely criticized for its lack of a deep backstory).
But just because Garland has never made a fantasy film, doesn’t mean he can’t. He reinvented himself and previously ventured into a new frontier – the Civil War and War, unlike the films he wrote before making his directorial debut, who would say he would never do it again?
In fact, making an Eldenling film does not constitute a complete constituency in Garland’s unknown territory. Many people, including his own fans, don’t know this, but he’s actually an avid gamer. His experience playing Resident Evil games appears to have influenced the script for the horror in 2002 28 days later. The 2000 film The Beach features scenes inspired by the game called “We’ve All Time” in the Banjo Kazooie film starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
While many filmmakers seem interested in the material that was hired to adapt to soothe the existing fanbase of that material (today, I refuse to believe that M. Night Shyamalan is watching a single episode of Avatar. He appears to have a decent grasp of what makes the series unique and special compared to other games. Speaking to Gamespot in 2020, Garland said, “It appears that Dark Souls Games has this kind of embedded poem. There is a strange dialogue with some sort of broken soul that is out of the doorway.
Sticking to this image of “existential dreams,” Garland was able to adopt Eldenling’s adaptation in the direction of annihilation. This works, but this is not the only way. Another obvious, but undoubtedly more effective plan of action is adapting Eldenling to the war mold, a Garland claw-biting thriller about naval seals fighting in Iraq. This is not because there is something fantasy about the film, but because it is sold as one of the most realistic war films ever made, but seeing it evokes some surprisingly similar feelings to those who experience it while playing Eldenling.
We’ll trade the war-torn Iraqi town of Ramadi for the ruins of Limgrave, the alleys of Raindel, or the bad lands of Kaerid, and what you’ve left behind. And what you’ve left behind is a encyclopedia of the game, a film adapted to a comprehensive backstory. As I roam the lands between them, I was caught up in reaching the closest place of bounty in one piece, which is completely missing out on the greater quest to become Lord of Elden, whatever hell is.
Given that Garland is reportedly trying to lead one of the war actors, Kit Connor, his Eldenling adaptation could adopt an equally suspense tone, not to mention rereading the themes of fear, despair and pointless violence that Connor has already proven to be able to conceive himself. Using war as Eldenling’s blueprint not only exploits Garland’s strengths as a filmmaker exploring psychology through graphics, but also follows examples set by Fight Me, through carefully choreographed action.
Elden Ring is not a power fantasy where heroes with supernatural abilities defeat giant monsters through flashy cutscenes and epic quick-time events, like other games from FromSoftware. This is a reaction force fantasy that reduces players to unnamed warriors, and then to unnamed warriors to slap their heads into a mist wall until they are ultimately successful. Due to Garland’s adaptation to reach the heights of his previous films, he will do well to capture that bittersweet emotion. And through his work on war, we can get a glimpse into the possibilities when Eldenling finally arrives at the cinema.
Tim Brinkhoff 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.
