In the OP of this thread on The Golden Compass,John DiFool mentioned that the director, Chris Weitz, is also scheduled to make an Elric of Melnibone movie.* First I’d heard of any attempt to film Elric!
But, having seen TGC – look, it’s a good fantasy flick, good FX, good acting, action-packed, but it just doesn’t reflect the surreal, Daliesque quality and the smell-of-rotting-souls mordant sensibility that come to my mind when I read an Elric novel. Peter Jackson couldn’t do it justice either. Moorcock is not Tolkien. This is a job for Tim Burton! Or maybe Ridley Scott. (Actually, I would be tempted to say it calls for David Lynch, but after the job he did on Dune I don’t want him coming near an SF/high-fantasy project ever again.)
What do you think?
*I can’t find confirmation of this on IMDb. Sci Fi Wire says the Weitz brothers optioned the Elric saga in 2003 but are planning to produce, not direct, it.
I saw the Golden Compass, I thought it was dreck. I like Tim Burton, but Elric doesn’t seem like his type of movie or style.
Ridley Scott can do dark well, he might be a good choice. In fact he is the perfect choice. I was trying to think of a good director for it and I was thinking about Blade Runner. I forgot, he was the director of that dark masterpeice.
Well, if he’s anything like Jackson, Weitz would hire artists who have actually done Elric-related material, like book covers and whatnot, and get them to work with his set designers. They’d be the ones responsible for making the murky and gloomy atmospheres. But, they don’t want to overdo it and turn off potential audiences, who for the most part want majesty and spectacle.
Plus, the Elric character is nothing like the action hero audiences would root for. He doesn’t get kicked around, beaten up, and come back and kick ass. He doesn’t have a swashbuckler-type image. Instead, he’s an emaciated, feminine-looking albino emperor who already has power and wealth, and weilds a sword that kills everything for him effortlessly. Thus, no underdog factor. I’m sure whoever made this movie would change his personna at leasy halfway.
The Elric series (thanks for the mention in the OP, BG) is a fantasy equivalent of Shakesperian tragedy; as such it will take a very deft touch to pull off without seeming overly pretentious or ponderous, or (Lord forbid) unintentionally comical. I’ll point out that the main conflict is Elric vs. Himself, so he doesn’t need to make relentless comebacks from random pummelings, but even at that there will certainly be more than enough violent swordplay to get the action freaks into the theatre. He definitely has a story arc to end all story arcs, if that’s what you are getting at, Knowed Out.
He’s also a brooding, alienated, morally tormented intellectual – and there’s plenty of cinematic precedent for that, just not much in the action or fantasy genres. He’s hero and antihero in one. The director – more importantly, the screenwriter* – would be breaking some new ground here. I wonder who’s up to it?
*Didja hear the one about the Polish starlet trying to make it in Hollywood?
Hmmm…I could see a number of directors that could pull this off (none of them Chris Weitz). Ridley Scott could do it, but I’d be happy to see any of the following get a chance to adapt Elric: Terry Gilliam, Guillermo del Toro, or Alfonso Cuarón. All of them are visionaries with a flair for dark fantasies.
Lessee…I guess you could list Shane, High Noon, Good Bad & Ugly, and a whole slew of westerns with brooding, tormented heroes as examples of what you’re talking about. But they’re either mystery men from the lands o’strange, or they had humble beginnings and survived constant threat and turmoil. Batman is a lot like what you describe, and he’s also filthy rich, having an arsenal and plenty of hardware to employ. But he suffered tragedy prior to his gains. Elric has nobility, sorcery, and Stormbringer, so I guess the tack that he was already a tormented soul before he gained all this power could work. The Goths would certainly go for that.
Plus, Elric’s wizardry and Stormbringer’s nuclear-level power would make for plentiful special effects…but we don’t want that to be the star, do we?
Tim Burton might be appropriate to direct, but I don’t think epic scale battle is his forte. So yeah, Ridley Scott.
Hm. Way back in 1990 or 91 I saw Blue Oyster Cult and in introducing the song “Black Blade”, Eric Bloom said that within a couple of years, “there will be–I can guarantee–an Elric movie”.
More like a couple decades, eh?
I also read many years ago that they were going to make a movie based on Casca: The Eternal Mercenary and I’m still waiting.
Elric was a tormented soul from birth because of his physical condition (and because his mother’s death in childbirth made it difficult for his father to form an emotional bond with his son); he read every book in his father’s library because that was something for which he had the energy; a process that made him into an intellectual who questioned the very foundations of Melnibonean society and values, yet still inherited a duty to preserve and defend the same. I dunno if that’s Goth, but it’s real interesting.
I just had a disturbing thought…when they go casting for Elric, they’ll think, Hmmmm, who do we know who has a slender build, is slightly effeminate, looks good with long pale hair, and can handle a sword?
There was a scene in 13th Warrior where the Viking with the long blonde hair is slumping down near death covered in rain, mud, and misery, and I instantly thought “This would be a perfect Elric”.
