How a Cinematic Adaptation of Elden Ring Could Work
FromSoftwareIt is the year 2022 and video game adaptations are still supremely underwhelming, despite making enough buck at the box office due to name recognition alone. The recent Uncharted film is as forgettable and insulting as they come, translating the set-pieces – exciting, interactive sequences in the game – into dull, gravity-defying action scenes. Even last year’s Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City sold itself as being more faithful to the long-running series of horror titles, where “faithful” only stood for “actors wear their characters’ in-game costumes” and nothing more.
It seems like the so-called “video game movie curse” will never be broken, and the main problem seems to stem primarily from who directs and finances these films. Quite a few directors attached to these projects are either non-gamers, working exclusively as journeymen trying to stay afloat in a shifting industry, or they are constricted by studio heads to conform to what the most recent cinematic trends dictate. Even someone as passionate as Duncan Jones, who is a massive nerd, made one of the dreariest and most convoluted adaptations with his 2016 fantasy epic Warcraft, to the point that even die-hard fans of the strategy game-cum-MMORPG could not connect with it.
While this year sees the release of a sequel to 2020’s Sonic the Hedgehog, the first animated Super Mario Brothers film, and yet another Resident Evil entry courtesy of Netflix, there is one video game that has shaken the industry of entertainment at large: Elden Ring. The seventh entry in the unofficial “soulsborne” subgenre of fantasy action titles that developer FromSoftware popularised with 2011’s Dark Souls, it has broken all sorts of records and received outstanding praise from critics and gamers alike.
At a time when video game developers tend to treat their audience like children in constant need of handholding – either by using aggressive markers or ever-present maps that show exactly where to go and what to do – Elden Ring takes the open world formula and subverts it completely. There are quests, yes, and there are non-player characters to interact with, but none of it is explicitly stated or written down. There are a multitude of areas, castles, and dungeons to explore, but the game never gives the player a reminder of where to go next. It is a level of freedom so refreshing, it makes the latest titles of Assassin’s Creed or Far Cry pale in comparison.
A key component of these types of games, outside of their brutal difficulty spikes that lead to countless deaths, is their narrative – or lack thereof. In the name of player freedom, no diaries, exposition, or endless conversations are shoved down their throats, instead relegating much of the storytelling to the environment and the cryptic dialogue of NPCs. The lore is deep and complex, if one chooses to venture in this direction, and Elden Ring was penned by none other than George R.R. Martin: he likely had more fun envisioning a new high-fantasy world on the brink of extinction than sitting down to finish The Winds of Winter.
The success of Elden Ring has been so surprising to everyone involved that there are already talks of possible live-action adaptations of it, either as a feature-length picture or as a television series. While the obvious statement of “why not just leave it as a game” is quite valid, it is undeniable that money speaks louder than reason. So let us fantasise about the best-case scenario, where whoever ends up in charge of producing this movie actually knows what they are doing.
It would be tempting to choose a big-name filmmaker to helm such a massive production: someone like Denis Villeneuve or Steven Spielberg, who have proven to be more than capable of blending spectacle with nuanced storytelling. Alternatively, there are the usual suspects of Shawn Levy, Tim Miller, or Ruben Fleischer, who would probably make the most generic fantasy film ever. But all of these choices are wrong for what Elden Ring and FromSoftware’s catalogue are: the world is a bigger protagonist than the player character, dialogues are kept at a minimum, and a constant feeling of dread and hopelessness is carried from beginning to end.
There are two filmmakers that would work incredibly well in translating such ideas to the big screen: Lynne Ramsay, or any one of the slow-cinema masters (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Tsai Ming-liang, Bela Tarr, or Lav Diaz – just to name a few). Those choices might be baffling, weird, and just plain wrong, but they all fit for what Elden Ring truly is.
Take Lynne Ramsay, who became an art-house darling thanks to her daring and subversive thrillers We Need To Talk About Kevin and You Were Never Really Here: her filmography consists of character studies that focus on broken individuals, unable to find meaning in a claustrophobic world, all told primarily through sounds and visuals rather than dialogue. Imagine how well she would make the audience sympathise and feel for the main character, The Tarnished, an immortal exile that goes on a mindless quest to restore the titular ring and become the Elden Lord, ruling over the Lands Between. It is dark fantasy of the highest order, and it would be a delight to see Ramsay dabble into a genre-heavy setting with her love of complex psychological stories and penchant for visual storytelling.
Alternatively, rather than having a character study, Elden Ring could be a tremendous piece of high-art environmental filmmaking with a slow-cinema execution. Static, beautiful shots of the Lands Between could show just how far this kingdom has fallen in ruin, holding on specific vistas where the lonely Tarnished is riding on his horse. The decadence of the castles and ruins would hold a strong level of texture, and the terrifying creatures that roam the world, waiting to strike whoever crosses their path, would be feared more if they were shown moving in the shadows across the wide-angle shots. It would be like David Lowery’s The Green Knight, but with double the violence, half the dialogues, and triple the walking.
Alas, this is all just a dream concocted by the creative mind of a cinephile who loves to dabble into gaming from time to time. While FromSoftware has been able to maintain a high level of respect for two decades now, Elden Ring has become too big for its own good and is likely to have the most basic, surface-level adaptation possible if the Japanese studio does not hold creative control of their intellectual property. The existence of a Hollywood version of this fantasy tale would go against the very reason why the game succeeded: fighting the tired trends of the industry, giving players what they need, not what they want. For ultimately, originality and risk will always trump safe choices.