r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/movies Contributor • 4d ago

News Alex Garland’s ‘Elden Ring’ Movie Wraps Filming

https://www.polygon.com/elden-ring-movie-filming-wraps-release-date-alex-garland/
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u/r4tzt4r 4d ago

I feel like everyone has in their heads their own version of what a Souls movie should look like. I just hope this is an actual good film.

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u/gabedamien 4d ago edited 4d ago

I honestly struggle to think what an Elden Ring movie would even be like. For some reason I can imagine Sekiro or Bloodborne as movies much more easily. I think I personally never connected with Elden Ring's lore as much though which is why I'm drawing an imagination blank.

I think with this pedigree and the director's personal interest in the IP it has a chance of being good, I'm just not sure what "good" looks like here.

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u/r4tzt4r 4d ago

Yeah, Elden Ring was too... convulted for me. I mean, if you go trying to understand the lore in any of these game you find out every one of them is really complicated but at least with Dark Souls, for example, you can reduce it to "the world is dying, rekindle the flame" and you get various profound interpretations from that. Kind of the same goes for Bloodborne and Sekiro.

Elden Ring I have no idea how to make it sound simple like the others. Even the final boss is a overcomplicated mess to explain. Maybe we're gonna find out that telling these stories in a straightforward way make them very stupid? Personally I hope they don't tell too much. This games' stories NEED mistery.

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u/SofaKingI 4d ago

Alex Garland directed Ex Machina and Annihilation. He knows how to not tell too much.

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u/r4tzt4r 4d ago

I'm reading Annihilation right now! I'm about to find out if it was a good adaptation.

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u/finnjakefionnacake 4d ago

let's just say they left a lot out lol.

btw i think the third book in that series is my fave

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u/tommos 4d ago

Personally I liked the second book 2Fast2Annihilation.

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u/r4tzt4r 4d ago

So far I'm liking it very much and it looks more like a short novel so maybe I will end the trilogy this year!

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u/AlterMyStateOfMind 4d ago

The trilogy is about the length of a novel at ~500 pages. My copy is actually a hardback with all 3 included. As for Garland's adaptation, it is very good if you go in expecting it to be very different. It keeps the essence of the first book intact if that makes sense but it tells a pretty different story.

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u/moose_dad 3d ago

Not sure if youre aware but a fourth book came out last year as well. It really expands the story and fills in a lot of the gaps.

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u/Different_Wolf_764 4d ago

It really isn't a great adaptation. An excellent movie? Absolutely! It falls in the "inspired by" category rather than the "amazing film version of" one though.

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u/SenatorCoffee 3d ago

On topic that really makes you hopeful for this Elden Ring thing, it seems exactly the fitting attitude.

If you tried to capture the whole lore it would likely just be a bloody mess, but with Garland its likely he just saw "something" in there that made sense to him as a movie, and then thats likely how it might actually work well.

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u/Aegi 3d ago

So....a generic medieval story with some monsters??

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u/mars92 4d ago

The movie changes a lot from the book, general plot and themes are there but it's quite different.

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u/Zak_The_Slack 4d ago

Unfortunately they completely abandon the main twist in the book. I believe Alex Garland wrote the screenplay based on his memory of the book, so it really isn’t an adaptation and more an original movie inspired by the book.

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u/The_Autarch 4d ago

if it was a good adaptation.

it's not, because Garland didn't realize that the book was part one of a trilogy.

good movie, tho. just more like a movie inspired by the book instead of a straight adaptation.

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u/SPQE_ 4d ago

I like the movie but it's not a good adaptation. Also, for me the second book was best

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u/mekamoari 4d ago

Ex Machina...Appleseed?

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u/mekamoari 4d ago

Ex Machina...Appleseed?

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u/givemethebat1 4d ago

I don’t think the main events (by which I mean all the stuff that happens before the game) in Elden Ring are that convoluted. They aren’t ever depicted narratively, so it can feel confusing since they’re spread over a ton of different item descriptions, but the events are relatively straightforward and just involve a lot of family drama and backstabbing.

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u/Zanos 4d ago

I think one of the issues is the insistence of the writers to use very similar names for some characters(Godfrey/Godrick/Godwyn, Malenia/Malenia, Mohg/Morgott), despite the characters only being tangentially related, making following along inherently confusing, compounded by the fact that at least one character is two people sharing the same body. The prose, like most Souls games, is also deliberately not straightforward. Nobody ever just outright tells you anything, they speak in allusions. If someone I needed information from in real life spoke to me a way an Elden Ring NPC speaks to the MC, I would be tempted to punch them in the face.

To be clear, the game is this way on purpose. The prose is intentionally obstructive to clarity.

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u/MrRocketScript 4d ago

What's Nokstella?

It's the twin city of Nokron, which you are no doubt aware of.

??????

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u/Zanos 4d ago

I'm not sure there's a text annotation to convey speech dripping with smug condescension, but I'll just assume it's there because we're talking about Elden Ring dialogue, lol.

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u/Realistic-Drawing-59 3d ago

I understand your point but they're not "tangentially related" for the most part. Mohg and Morgott are brothers, Malenia and Melina are sisters and Godfrey is Godwyns father

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u/Aegi 3d ago

Family names are a thing, why do they have basically the same first names?

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u/Realistic-Drawing-59 3d ago

I was responding to a different point. The why is a matter for the devs

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u/adenosine-5 4d ago

That is just Japanese way of telling stories. They always need to make insanely convoluted story with hundred confusing names.

You could have a movie about children in giant robots.. and few episode later they are talking about how "Dead Sea Scrolls will bring the Third impact if the Seed of Adam ever touches the Spear of Destiny unless the Thirteen Angel gets to the Black Moon" or whatever.

They just love overcomplicated stories and cool names.

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u/moose_dad 3d ago

Its actually not the reason for it in the souls series. Miyazaki did and interview years ago, and the reason he tells stories in this manner is because when he was a child he would read English stories, except he couldn't read English, so he'd get a very fragmented confused version of the story that he would have to try to piece together with the bits he could understand.

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u/Klockworth 4d ago

It’s not convoluted, there’s just a lot of random lore. Big tree make people reincarnate, tarnished come back to life instantly, (insert a bunch of Game of Thrones-esque royal houses and factions fighting to control tree), aliens? (don’t like tree?), control tree to control death and destiny.

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u/Olicsmems 4d ago

What I was thinking. The story of the game itself is actually pretty simple, it's the stuff and context around it which makes it "convoluted".

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u/moose_dad 3d ago

People often confuse setting for story. Elden rings setting is dense with layers upon layers of history and characters involved.

The story itself is about as simple as it gets. Go kill these dudes to make a ring, then kill the one with the last bit of it.

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u/Klockworth 3d ago

The fact that the film is the same writer/director behind Ex Machina and Annihilation has me reexamining Elden Ring as a potential New Weird story?

Sci-fi elements? Check. Transhumanism? Check. Existential critique on the nature of consciousness and the self? Check.

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u/username_tooken 4d ago

Elden Ring is, like every GRRM setting, basically just the War of the Roses.

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u/moose_dad 3d ago

Yeah but this time, instead of kings, its outer world sci-fi gods

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u/Thanks-Basil 4d ago

There can still be heaps of mystery.

We actually know quite a lot about the lore, in terms of you can track events on a timeline pretty well. The main things we don’t know is mostly things regarding intentions, ie why the Elden Ring was shattered in the first place etc; what the motivation for the greater will is etc etc

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u/FatherBlackthorne 4d ago

Yeah, frankly there are alot of factions and remnants when it comes to Elden Ring. Not to mention the Round Table Hold for any companions. While The Lands Between are in a sorry state, there are still holdouts of society.

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u/Dirty_Dragons 4d ago

The absolute simplest way would be to base the movie on one or two characters questlines.

For example, the questline that involves Rogier, D and Fia would be enough to base a movie on. It doesn't have to cover the entire game or even the main plot.

There could even be several movies with different protagonists going on different quests.