10 Best Movies & Shows For Fans Of Elden Ring | Screen Rant
Elden Ring has taken the gaming community by storm with its massive map and incredibly detailed world. The worldbuilding of this game is paralleled only by all-time great fantasy games like The Witcher and Skyrim, and fans across the internet have already noted many of its inspirations.
The world of Studio Ghibli films is a common reference for many of the game's bosses and roaming creatures. A Song of Ice and Fire is another reference point, noted mainly due to George R.R. Martin's involvement with Elden Ring's lore. Many of the game's creatures and NPCs are also akin to the world of Game of Thrones. For fans of expansive fantasy worldbuilding or ruined civilization adventures, there are tons of shows and films to get a fix once Elden Ring is over.
One of the most notable inspirations is Howl's Moving Castle, specifically its four-legged castle walking around in Weeping Penninsula. The parallels are uncanny. The creature also looks like it could be a boss from Shadow of the Colossus. Howl's Moving Castle, like Elden Ring, exists in a war-ravaged world of fantasy and magic.
The civilization in the Howl's Moving Castle world is a bit closer to the modern world, and uses engine vehicles, unlike Elden Ring. But the world still possesses an ancient energy with magic and mystical creatures.
As of right now, Game of Thrones is the only adaptation of the world of A Song of Ice and Fire, but that will likely change in the coming years, as HBO has prequels and sequels galore in development. If House of the Dragon succeeds, HBO will open up to more series that further expand the world of Ice and Fire. Unsurprisingly, House of the Dragon is one of the most anticipated fantasy series of the year.
Very few fantasy creations compare to the expansiveness of Martin's world, and very few worlds would be as fun to explore. Elden Ring is filled with characters that draw inspiration from it, in terms of armor, sigils, creatures, and more.
Game director Hidetaka Miyazaki cited The Lord of the Rings as one of the main inspirations for Elden Ring. It's easy to list Tolkien's work as a relative to any fantasy project, as the inspirations of Middle Earth are always somewhere in modern fantasy. The game is even centered around a ring, after all.
The war-torn lands viewers see in The Return of the King aren't too far off from the looks of Elden Ring, and Caelid is clearly heavily inspired by Mordor, with its dreadful, end of the world, red skies of doom-type look. Many of the creatures, in particular the summons spirits, seem to draw from Tolkien lore as well.
A24's recent summer hit was the Dev Patel-led film The Green Knight. The film follows Ser Gawain in an almost hallucinogenic fantasy adventure. Gawain encounters unnatural creatures, giants, and hostile humans alike, on his road to the mystical Green Knight.
The Green Knight is the only movie that genuinely feels like watching someone play Elden Ring. Gawain is on an adventure where he doesn't know what to expect and is constantly stumbling across new foes he couldn't have imagined existed. Elden Ring sports impressive imagery and color, as A24 films often do, which helps build the fantasy environment much like Elden Ring.
The Apple TV+ hit series See stars Jason Momoa in a post-apocalyptic world where humans are no longer born with sight. Due to these circumstances, warriors have gone back to using medieval-style weaponry and war strategies. The worldbuilding of the show is fantastic, as the characters adventure around the post-apocalyptic USA.
The castles and structures are more deconstructions of modern buildings than fantasy castles like in Elden Ring, but both stand similarly as ruins of a past civilization. Both have undeniably great action, and inspiration from Eastern culture in the design of armor, weaponry, and fighting styles.
Another Studio Ghibli masterpiece is Princess Mononoke. The film is centered around an ancient war in which the industrious civilization of Irontown has upset the animals and spirits of the forest with their expansion and deforestation. It proposes the idea of a ruined civilization like in Elden Ring.
The film has many beautiful and unique creatures, and leaves many wanting to explore the world in depth, as someone could in a video game. The demons in Princess Mononoke are some of the best examples of Elden Ring-like creatures too.
Another ongoing HBO project that has similarities to the world of Elden Ring is His Dark Materials. Though the landscape itself is more similar to a modern world, the story revolves around mystical creatures and fantasy adventure.
His Dark Materials also has a film adaptation called The Golden Compass. The daemons in this world are similar to the companion summons in Elden Ring, as humans in the world of the series rely on them, along with other magical properties, for fighting. There are also plenty of great movie recommendations for fans of His Dark Materials.
If there was a movie formatted perfectly for a video game with varying boss fights, it'd be the modern adaptation of Clash of the Titans. Between Hades, Medusa, Calibos, and of course the Kraken, the movie almost has levels of action sequences, each of which requires different skills from the team to defeat.
The final fight against the Kraken even requires an "item" from another boss. How much more RPG-like can it get? Greek mythology has its ties in all fantasy, as they were some of the first tales of great monsters and great heroes.
Fans who grew up watching Dragonheart will have a hard time not envisioning themselves in it, or humming the film's beautiful score, while fighting any of the dragon bosses Elden Ring has to offer. While the world of Dragonheart is far less dreadful for humans, it is certainly a dark place for dragons, as very few remain.
Dragonheart was one of the first movies to attempt the CGI dragons audiences know and love today, so it can be rough around the edges, but looking past the prehistoric graphics, the film is very reminiscent of the classic fairy tales of fantasy and medieval times.
One of the wackiest projects on this list is the Tom Cruise-led, Ridley Scott-directed, magical fantasy film Legend. While it may have its flaws, Tim Curry is incredibly fun as the Devil-like villain, Darkness.
The film is riddled with mythical creatures like unicorns, goblins, and more, each of which has a well-crafted prosthetic design. Ridley Scott knows how to create interesting-looking characters, and this film is full of them!