During an interview for the world premiere of the new horror movie “Men“, American writer and filmmaker Alexander Medawar Garland (Herein, Alex Garland) revealed that the Japanese anime television series Attack on Titan was the inspiration for the creation of Men.

Garland stated that Hajime Isayama‘s Attack on Titan forced him to reconsider his approach to Men after his daughter introduced the series.

“The truth is that any time you see something really good, it encourages you to just try harder, think harder, do better,” he says. “What Attack on Titan did was, it gave me a kind of jolt. And when you get a jolt, you get a chance to step outside what you’ve been working on and thinking about, and kind of clear your head and start again and think not What was the idea I originally had? but What is right for the film?”.

The director however noted that the connections between the works will be difficult for fans to make since he did no homages or take anything from the anime. He instead instilled the stories. Attack on Titan continues to produce similar changes in his filmmaking.

“There are Attack on Titan-like changes that continued to occur through the shooting process, or through the editing process,” he said. “Or it might be to do with playing the piano, the use of a poem, or whatever it happens to be. It’s just simply the whole film is in a kind of constant fluid state, partly because it’s the product of a group of people working together who are having a role in a conversation. All I’m really saying is that at one point, one of the voices that came up and contributed to one thing at one moment was Attack on Titan.”

Garland stated that the anime series was not only an inspiration for Men, but Attack on Titan‘s complexity and absurdity made a heavy impression on him and it pushed him away from any complacency that might have crept into his filmmaking.

“You know, it’s difficult — when you see other people’s stuff and it’s really good, you’ve sort of got two choices,” he says. “One is to get intimidated by it and think, Do I really need to do this? Another is to think. No, I’ve got to run faster. And I tried to respond by running faster,” said the filmmaker.

Polygon described the movie like:

The film centers on a woman named Harper (Jessie Buckley) who takes a trip to the English countryside to escape a recent trauma and encounters a series of men who all want something from her, all have the same face, and all show a willingness to assault her out of frustration if they don’t get what they want.

Source: Polygon