Summary

Elden Ring's success and unique world provide potential for a successful movie adaptation with Alex Garland at the helm.
Garland could adapt Elden Ring like Annihilation, drawing on his approach to create a distinct cinematic experience.
Despite challenges in adapting from memory, capturing the game's essence could effectively bring Elden Ring to life on the big screen.

Alex Garland is adapting Elden Ring into a movie for A24, and the director could utilize the same unique approach he took with his 2018 novel adaptation, Annihilation. Aside from Annihilation, Garland has directed Ex Machina, Civil War, and the recent brothers-in-arms true story, Warfare. He's also a lauded writer, having penned 28 Days Later, Sunshine, and Dredd. Garland even has experience writing for video games, having served as story supervisor for DMC: Devil May Cry and co-authoring the criminally underplayed Enslaved: Odyssey to the West.

Elden Ring is an action role-playing game that debuted in 2022. While the game was directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki, who also served as lead writer, Game of Thrones scribe George R. R. Martin fleshed out the worldbuilding, making the Lands Between a uniquely dark, fantasy-fueled open world to explore on their quest to become the Elden Lord. Elden Ring has sold millions of copies, won numerous Game of the Year awards, and continues to thrive via DLC content, all thanks to addictively challenging gameplay, profound lore, and a world fans love to explore.

A24's Elden Ring Movie Will Be Awesome - For Everyone Except Elden Ring Fans

The Elden Ring movie exists only to disappoint a fan base who have forged their identity through hundreds of hours of suffering.

Posts

By Fletcher Bailey

Like Garland's sci-fi horror film Annihilation, the Lands Between offers a vibrantly bleak landscape rife with horrors and devastating enemies. Since Elden Ring is also an adaptation, the writer-director could capitalize on the distinct process he used to bring Annihilation to life for Elden Ring. However, whether the approach would work is another story.

Alex Garland's Unique Approach To Adapting Annihilation

Annihilation-review-cultural-hater (1)-1

Annihilation was written and directed by Garland, who adapted it from the novel of the same name by Jeff VanderMeer. The story follows Natalie Portman's Lena as she joins a female-led team on a dangerous mission to enter "the shimmer," a growing area stemming from a meteorite crash that transforms anything and everything inside of it. Once inside, Lena and the team encounter numerous horrors, including mutated animals and people, with some even being disturbingly beautiful.

Garland's approach to making Annihilation was distinctly different than most approaches to an adaptation. He read VanderMeer's novel once, never returning to the source material for a refresher while penning the script. Garland chose to write Annihilation from his memory of the book, leaving his imagination unfettered by the source material while still delivering the core story of the novel to movie-going audiences. This may seem like a wild approach, especially for book fans who potentially wanted a faithful adaptation, but the result speaks for itself.

Annihilation Proved To Be A Successful Sci-Fi-Fueled Horror Nightmare

Annihilation brought in modest returns at the box office, but proved to be a hit with critics. The film also garnered a following when it made its way to streaming, with fans drawn to the unique horrors on display. The mutant bear scene is taut and terrifying, yet "the shimmer" also shows audiences beautiful horrors, like plants in the shape of people, which they used to be. The characters also find the soldiers they were looking for mutated by "the shimmer," with organs that move like snakes inside them, who eventually meld into the environment.

Some audiences felt disappointed by Annihilation's ambiguous ending, which doesn't neatly wrap up the story but rather leaves viewers with questions. However, despite possible qualms with the ending Garland penned, audiences still raved about the scares it packed and praised the often vibrant world within "the shimmer." Garland successfully captured the look and feel of the world he wanted to bring to life by foregoing a direct adaptation of the novel, with some even stating it was better than the book. However, adapting a book presents challenges quite different from a video game.

Could Alex Garland's Annihilation Technique Work For Elden Ring?

While adapting a novel like Annihilation comes with different caveats than a video game like Elden Ring, Garland's unique approach may have merit. The biggest problem with any adaptation is meeting fan expectations, which can often be difficult, as translating certain things to live-action doesn't always work. Video game adaptations are even more difficult, especially for a property like Elden Ring, which features a customizable character and an open world to explore as the player sees fit, making each player's experience within the game unique. Therefore, in trying to capture every player's experience, a video game movie can miss the mark entirely.

Adapting Elden Ring via his memory of playing the game, rather than a direct story adaptation, may prove effective. It could allow Garland to capture the look and feel of the Lands Between, much like he did with Annihilation's "shimmer," setting the tone for the world. With each player working toward the same end, the world and lore of Elden Ring make for its most distinct features, aside from the bosses. Therefore, by capturing the game's feel, Garland may give himself a bizarre advantage by writing it from memory. Garland has already proven to be a massive Elden Ring fan, recently letting fans know he is on NG+6, stating:

Don't even want to think about the hours I've clocked up. Can't seem to stop playing. Still discovering stuff.

However, adapting Elden Ring from memory may also cause backlash if the director doesn't include a particular boss, like Malenia, or an event, like Selin's horrific fate after being helped. While the goal should still be to reforge the Elden Ring, capturing the look and feel of the world may not be enough to appease hardcore gamers, who, like Garland, have played the game from beginning to end several times. As the shaky history of video game movies proves, they often make for troublesome properties to adapt. No matter the approach Garland decides to utilize in adapting Elden Ring, the director is just as big a fan as millions of other players, which should help to inspire confidence in the movie as development continues.

Rating block community and brand ratings Image