Yesterday felt like a normal Tuesday. I was gaming the night away until I checked my phone and was met with a news story I hoped would never come to pass. Nintendo has greenlit the production 🧜of a live-action The Legend of Zelda movie in partnership with Sony Picไtures and Morbius producer Avi Arad. He’s done other stuff, but that feels the most relevant right now.
It w𝔉as only a matter of time until Nintendo capitalised on the cinematic potentiꦚal of its library after the Super Mario Bros. movie became one of the highest grossing animated flicks of all time. Deep down, I expected Nintendo to stick within that medium. Nope, Shigeru Miyamoto himself rocked up to let us know that a live action Zelda film will be coming from The Maze Runner director Wes Ball. I don’t like the sound of this.
No actor on this planet has the range t൩o embody a twink as androgynous as Link. If there is, we have yet to discover them.
The film could be incredible, it could be a trainwreck, or it could be a bizarre enigma that will defy traditional definition. Zelda has always been a mysterious property to adapt because its video game counterparts are similarly ever changing. Link and Zelda are generational heroes who remain the same, but also never hesitate to change with Nintendo’s creative vision and what part of the timeline they happen t🦂o occupy. Each generation is a chance to experiment and explore, and the idea of a live action film trying to ground this sort of tale in the realm of realism unsettles me. Do it right, and you could have a live action film matching the whimsical dark fantasy of Pan’s Labyrinth or The Green Knight. Do it wrong, and we’d end up with another Dragonball Evolution on our hands.
I’m not going to sail it down the river just yet, because we hardly know anything about it, but it will have so much more to prove than the Mario movie ever did. Illumination is a renowned animation studio with a proven track record, and you can see the Minions or Secret Life of Pets fo🥀rmula translating painlessly onto the Mushroom Kingdom. I wouldn’t have objected to a Wind Waker-esque Zelda film from them either, or even something that gathers inspiration from Spider-Verse, Arcane, or even Kubo and the Two Strings. But that isn’t what we’re set to receive, with Nintendo dedicated to live action in a way we didn’t expect. So what similar adaptations can we turn to that provide us with some sort of foundati൲on?
The critically panned Avatar: The Last Airbender from M Night Shyamalan comes to mind, but lessons have already been learned from that travesty. More recent projects in which producer Avi Arad was also involved include Ghost in the Shell, Uncharted,🐟 Morbius, and both Spider-Verse films. He has worked within the realm of adaptations long before we saw the MCU take over the world, having produced plenty of bangers and just as many stinkers. I’d picture the Legend of Zelda film telling a relatively mainstream story in the Zelda universe as opposed to pushing the boat out, hoping to hit an audience as large as Mario without getting into the weeds with weird timeline nonsense. References galore, but within the confines of a st🔯ory where Link and Zelda work together to defeat Ganon and save Hyrule.
Batting too far out of the ballpark feels too risky, and after seeing how simplistic a tale Mario tells in spite of its love for the source material, I doubt Zelda will be any different. You’ve also got to cast a lot of characters who, for the majority of their existence, have been silent. It wasn’t until Breath of the Wild that Zelda was given voice, let alone Link - whose silent demeanour has become a defining part of his character with a mixture of confident grunts and cutesy reactions. That will be the biggest obstacle for Zelda to conquer when it comes to creating a live action film. Unless you don’t voice Link? But that brings with it its own unique challenges. The characters, narrative, aesthetic, and goodness knows how many factors are unknown at this point, so it’s hard to judge what sort of film🐎 it’s going to be, but I can’t help but feel it’s a bad idea.
Nintendo won’t mess around though, and likely has enough influence to prevent creative decisions it 🐲disagrees with. It cares about its world and characters - perhaps too much sometimes - and will no doubt have a say on casting, narrative, locations, and what this film ends up being. The guiding hand will be strict, and even though the Mario movie wasn’t my cup of tea, it did a lot of things right. With any luck, Zelda will be the same.
