Director of the upcoming Elden Ring Movie, Alex Garland, is on his seventh playthrough of FromSoftware's epic fantasy RPG, and has revealed the boss he found the toughest to take down.
Speaking to IGN ahead of the release 28 Years Later — the zombie apocalypse film he has written 23 years on from penning the first movie in the franchise — the Ex Machina and Civil War director revealed which of all of the famed foes in Elden Ring that he has settled on being the most difficult: Malenia, Blade of Miquella.
“It's Malenia who's the tough one”, Garland explained. “I'm now on my seventh playthrough of that game. I've leveled up, I've got lots of juice, and a cool sword, and stuff like that, and I just throw myself at them again, and again, and again, and again.”
“That was the technique I learned with Dark Souls," he continued. “It's not that you get better, it's more like monkeys and typewriters. You just keep doing it, and eventually, one day they're dead.”
But it turns out, Garland never had quite the trouble with Starscourge Radahn, instead offering his very own game help guide on how to take down the gravity magic-harnessing horseman.
“Radahn's really easy”, stated Garland. “I thought Radahn was quite easy, because as long as you sort of activated the people who can assist you in that fight, they get on with fighting him, and they take off whatever it is, half his energy, and you finish him off. It's all about activating those little summon signs dotted around.”
Can we expect either of these bosses to appear in A24's upcoming Elden Ring film adaptation? Well, as you may expect, Garland gave us no details on what he plans to do with the project. Indeed, we know next to nothing about the Elden Ring movie, which is in the works from Garland as writer and director, Elden Ring publisher Bandai Namco, and A24. Game of Thrones author George R. R. Martin, who helped create the original Elden Ring, is attached as a producer on the movie, as is Vince Gerardis. DNA’s Peter Rice will also produce, along with Andrew Macdonald and Allon Reich from DNA. There’s no word yet on how involved FromSoftware or game director Hidetaka Miyazaki will be.
What do you think the story of the Elden Ring movie should be? I, for one, think it would be smart to tackle a prequel based on the events of The Shattering, rather than the story of the game itself. Got your own idea? Let us know in the comments below!
Simon Cardy is a Senior Editor at IGN who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social.
