Attack on Titan Directly Changed The Story of A24's Men
Attack on Titan's final episodes are set to arrive next year, bringing the story of the Scout Regiment to a close as the heroes are now forced to fight against their former best friend, Eren Jaeger. With the dark anime franchise close to its end, it seems that Hajime Isayama's story has had a major effect on a surprising new tale, with A24's horror movie, Men, being changed as a result of the director's love of the Survey Corps.
Men is now playing in theaters in North America, and has the following official description from A24, for those who might not be familiar with this twisted tale:
"In the aftermath of a personal tragedy, Harper (Jessie Buckley) retreats alone to the beautiful English countryside, hoping to have found a place to heal. But someone or something from the surrounding woods appears to be stalking her. What begins as simmering dread becomes a fully-formed nightmare, inhabited by her darkest memories and fears in visionary filmmaker Alex Garland's (Ex Machina, Annihilation) feverish, shape-shifting new horror film."
In talking with Polygon, Alex Garland noted that he originally had a much different approach to the horror movie that sees one man apparently swapping bodies throughout its run time to terrorize a grieving woman, but the story of the Survey Corps had him rethinking just where he wanted the story to go:
"So [Attack on Titan] hovers on this strange space between something absurdist and something actually really frightening. I was just really, really impressed. And I thought, on some level, I'm being too — too lazy, maybe. I don't know what the right word is. But I'm just not anything like as good as that, and I've got to get better. So it made me reinvestigate Men and rethinkt it. That's the nice stuff about other people's good work — it sort of lifts everyone a bit, you know?"
Garland also took the opportunity to dissect his love of Attack on Titan, and how watching the series with his daughter changed his mind on the story of his latest horror story:
"I was watching it with my daughter, who brought me into it saying, 'Dad, you really should watch this. I'm just blown away by that show. It's so complex on so many levels, but in the Titans themselves, it did something really interesting — it takes human forms and makes slight changes that take things to the edge of ridiculous, but does it with real courage and confidence."