Live-action The Legend of Zelda film announced

[Lightchao42]

It was just an ordinary day when Miyamoto made a sudden announcement on Twitter.

It'll probably be a few years before it releases, so we'll have plenty of time to discuss how the movie will go. Discuss your various feelings, ideas, hopes, and fears here!

[Etrurian emperor]

Can't wait to see Chris Prat as Link.

[indigoasis]

"Avi Arad"

oh no, Link is gonna have a symbiote arc

[Acacia Sgt]

1 hour ago, indigoasis said:

"Avi Arad"

oh no, Link is gonna have a symbiote arc

The symbiote: "Hey, listen!"

[vanguard333]

As a very longtime Zelda fan, I have to say that the announcement of a Zelda adaptation is cool. That said, I would've preferred a Zelda animated series over a live-action film; the fantastical worlds of the Zelda series lend themselves far better to animation and are much harder to recreate in live-action without either very impressive Lord of the Rings-like sets or huge amounts of CGI to the point where the film may as well be animated.

I'm also a little concerned that the director of the film has only directed the Maze Runner films before this announcement and that, apparently, the writer for this film co-wrote the the Jurassic World films. Neither of those are a good sign, though at least the latter was also one of the co-writers for Pokémon: Detective Pikachu.

I mainly just hope that the film will be good. But I do have some small hopes on top of that:

1. Link is silent. This would be hard to do, I admit, but they could get around it by making Link mute within the story.

2. Link is left-handed. Link is the left-handed hero; he was left-handed in the original Zelda game and he's been left-handed in every game except Skyward Sword, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom (and there is no real reason that Link was right-handed for the latter two games; every time Aonuma was asked about it before BotW's release, he gave a different, nonsensical answer), and it would be a real disservice if he were right-handed in his first movie.

 

Also, I'm a little curious as to what they are going to do regarding Ganondorf, who will inevitably in the film. In-game files place Ganondorf's height in the games he appears in at somewhere around seven-foot-six; for the movie, will they use clever photography to make him seem bigger? Will they hire a really tall actor such as one of the actors that played The Mountain? Or will they make him CGI?

[Jotari]

I have very low expectations. An animated Mario film? Sure, even a life action Mario film is a better idea. Mario's a fun and wacky series that you can do anything with. Zelda is not that. Mean, it's not super serious grim dark either, but it is meant to be telling a story that has consequences and some form of complexity (well with the exception of Tri Force Heroes, but I doubt they intend to adapt that).

And if one goes full hall into an authentic tone with a competent director, you're still going to run into massive issues because Zelda as a series is still designed to be video games, very heavily. The story of Zelda typically involves Link going to several dungeons to collect several items to reach the next plot beat. How can you maintain that for a 100 minute movie while still having good pacing and not being redundant? How can you even implement a dungeon, let alone several, without it just ending up being an extended fight scene? How can you build character relationships when each act is Link and his possible guide meeting characters and moving on? Unless we break formula and have a bunch of characters follow him like they did with Donkey Kong in Mario. Or they just focus on the partner relationship and make the whole story about Link and Midna or something. And none of this even touches on the issue of mute Link vs speaking Link.

In terms of Zelda stories to adapt, I think the most appropriate would be The Wind Waker or Spirit Tracks. As they both have a more robust, relevant and mobile supporting cast than most Zelda games. But there's little point in even entertaining the idea that they'll go for any setting that isn't primarily Ocarina of Time with a bit of A Link to the Past sprinkled in.

Edited November 8, 2023 by Jotari

[Fire Emblem Fan]

I'm trying not to feel too much about it, to be honest. It'd be really easy for me to be skeptical and negative about it. But I want to resist that and just wait and see what happens, wait until we have more information. This could end up being really awesome.

Unrelated to the topic or Zelda at all, but @Acacia Sgt your profile picture is very cool. The breezebuilders in Spyro 2 are great.

[Acacia Sgt]

Plot twist. They'll pull a Pokémon Victini movie and release two versions in a surprise Oracles adaptation, complete with extra footage you're only allowed to see if you've seen both movies.

 

Just now, Fire Emblem Fan said:

Unrelated to the topic or Zelda at all, but @Acacia Sgt your profile picture is very cool. The breezebuilders in Spyro 2 are great.

Haha, yeah. I'm no land blubbler supporter! This one ain't got troubles with trolleys, but his design is still cool. XD

Edited November 8, 2023 by Acacia Sgt

[Fire Emblem Fan]

I think one big immediate question for me is...will Ganon be the villain, or will they opt for one of the other villains, like Agahnim, and build Ganon for a sequel?

7 minutes ago, Acacia Sgt said:

Haha, yeah. I'm no land blubbler supporter! This one ain't got troubles with trolleys, but his design is still cool. XD

Fully agreed haha, his design is one of the best of the enemies in Reignited.

[indigoasis]

26 minutes ago, Jotari said:

In terms of Zelda stories to adapt, I think the most appropriate would be The Wind Waker or Spirit Tracks. As they both have a more robust, relevant and mobile supporting cast than most Zelda games. But there's little point in even entertaining the idea that they'll go for any setting that isn't primarily Ocarina of Time with a bit of A Link to the Past sprinkled in.

If I may offer another possible story to adapt (assuming they aren't making an original story, which they probably are), the Skyward Sword prequel manga might be doable, which could even make the movie a canon story within the timeline. I highly doubt they'd do something like that over a nostalgia fest, though.

[Acacia Sgt]

I feel that they may do like the Mario movie and have it be an origin story type of sorts. So that could narrow it down.

[Jotari]

23 minutes ago, indigoasis said:

If I may offer another possible story to adapt (assuming they aren't making an original story, which they probably are), the Skyward Sword prequel manga might be doable, which could even make the movie a canon story within the timeline. I highly doubt they'd do something like that over a nostalgia fest, though.

You actually beat me to this. As soon as I posted I needed to leave for lunch and this thought struck me. Yes, it would be by far the best choice to do something related to a Zelda setting without actually being a game we've seen. There's a lot more room for doing original stuff that fits a movie framework, and the Skyward Sword prequel Link in particular sufficiently dramatic enough to stand on its own.

25 minutes ago, Fire Emblem Fan said:

I think one big immediate question for me is...will Ganon be the villain, or will they opt for one of the other villains, like Agahnim, and build Ganon for a sequel?

Fully agreed haha, his design is one of the best of the enemies in Reignited.

I fully expect Ganondorf+1 other villain. Either a subordinate directly answering to Ganondorf or Ganondorf as a sealed evil the villain is trying to resurrect/release. Said other villain will be the one to confront Link at the dungeon set piece so they don't have to blow their entire budget on putting giant bosses at multiple points in the story and because someone like Ghirahim who can talk works better for a movie. As for specific villains I expect either Agahnim or Twinrova as a LTTP OoT mash up is most likely. Though they could definitely pull Zant or someone from another continuity. There's also a good chance we'll have a tiny bit of Dark Link in there at some point. They might even decide to use Majora because of fan popularity, even though that would be a rather poor choice in terms of story. My personal preference for a non Ganondorf movie would be Twinrova.

19 minutes ago, Acacia Sgt said:

I feel that they may do like the Mario movie and have it be an origin story type of sorts. So that could narrow it down.

An origin story for whom? Almost every Zelda game has a different Link. The only real origin is for Ganondorf, which is Ocarina of Time, which is one of the highly likely candidates. The other origin story would be for the Master Sword and the cycle of reincarnation, which is Skyward Sword. Which wouldn't be the worst in terms of plot elements, but in terms of setting in lacks a lot of Zelda iconic locations and characters, and if there's one thing the Mario movie convinces me of, it's that they're going to fill it to the brim with fanservice in terms of locations, side characters and enemies.

 

Regardless of setting, I expect we'll get three dungeons with three macguffins to collect, four at most, unless they decide to directly adapt Ocarina of Time and have a child Link section. Which would be murder on the pacing and would require truncating a lot. Even if it's not a direct Ocarina of Time adaptation, I also fully expect we'll see Zelda disguised as Sheik for a decent portion of the movie so she doesn't just spend the entire thing damsled.

 

On the subject of Live Action Zelda, has anyone here seen The Legend of Neil?

Edited November 8, 2023 by Jotari

[lenticular]

I generally don't get particularly excited about media adaptations. Typically, if I like a work in one medium, then I'm happy to just enjoy the original. Any competent adaptation is going to have to change a bunch of stuff, because what works well in one medium doesn't necessarily work in another. And maybe I'll like the new stuff, or maybe I won't. Some adaptations are great and some suck. So, open mind but no excitement.

I think that the best approach would be to tell a completely new story rather than try to adapt any specific game. That way gives more freedom to write for film with the fewest constraints. But if they do try to do a specific game, I'm going to go against the grain and say that I'd like to see Link's Awakening. I think that the whimsical dreamlike quality could translate well, and there's a decent emotional core to work with in Link's relationship with Marin. I'd be very surprised if they went down that path, but it's one I'd be interested in.

31 minutes ago, Jotari said:

On the subject of Live Action Zelda, has anyone here seen The Legend of Neil?

Now there's a series that I haven't thought about in a long time. But yes, I did watch and enjoy it. Can't say I remember much of it, though.

[Jotari]

15 minutes ago, lenticular said:

Now there's a series that I haven't thought about in a long time. But yes, I did watch and enjoy it. Can't say I remember much of it, though.

I remember it very fondly. It went a bit too gross out in it's humor sometimes, but there was some genuinely great jokes in it. And, in a weird way, for an internet show, I was kind of cool that it so solidly fixated on being an adaptation of the original NES Zelda game alone and didn't just reference and parody Zelda games from across the series, which would be pretty easy to do. Instead it mined deep into almost every aspect of the first game in the series which doesn't always get that kind of love. I was a pretty bit contributor to the Zelda wiki at the time and there were quite a few elements of the original game that hadn't been covered until The Legend of Neil put focus on them. So, yeah, fond memories.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

I'm happy to hear that it's live action. If it were just another Mario Movie, then the best we could hope for is a 90 minute collection of cutscenes depicting a story I'd rather play than watch. I want to see something that's not safe. A swing for the fences.

Not looking forward to the Discourse (TM) when it comes out though. Seeing how the internet reacted to Peach in the Mario movie, they are NOT equipped to handle Zelda's titular character. I'm expecting a dynamic similar to the DIC saturday morning cartoon series. Link and Zelda are just hanging out in the post game, thwarting Ganon like the heroes they are, but they are so over each other's bullshit when they're in a room together. Do that, but obviously not have them be at the top of their power level so we have a proper action adventure arc, classic zelda item collection, etc

[Jotari]

9 minutes ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

Seeing how the internet reacted to Peach in the Mario movie, they are NOT equipped to handle Zelda's titular character.

How did the internet react to Peach?

[Zapp Branniglenn]

19 minutes ago, Jotari said:

How did the internet react to Peach?

Just the usual Movie Too Woke youtube chuds. The most inane clip I've seen posted around is one of them saying it "emasculates Mario that he has to rely on powerups to win". Buddy, that's Mario. He uses power ups. Just like in the games.

[Jotari]

44 minutes ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

Just the usual Movie Too Woke youtube chuds. The most inane clip I've seen posted around is one of them saying it "emasculates Mario that he has to rely on powerups to win". Buddy, that's Mario. He uses power ups. Just like in the games.

Well I do think they made her a tad too competent compared to Mario to the extent that it became questionable why she needed Mario at all. I think that's a fair criticism that doesn't depend on any woke politics. Course that's the writing being a bit inconsistent overall and not necessarily Peach"s fault. If it didn't have that early segment where Mario is escorting Luigi across Brooklyn via expert parkour then his failure to accomplish the obstacle course would have felt more like character growth. But I wouldn't exactly want that scene cut either as it was pretty great.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

17 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Well I do think they made her a tad too competent compared to Mario to the extent that it became questionable why she needed Mario at all. I think that's a fair criticism that doesn't depend on any woke politics. Course that's the writing being a bit inconsistent overall and not necessarily Peach"s fault. If it didn't have that early segment where Mario is escorting Luigi across Brooklyn via expert parkour then his failure to accomplish the obstacle course would have felt more like character growth. But I wouldn't exactly want that scene cut either as it was pretty great.

I'm not the sort of person to interrogate plot contrivances like that. But is it ever expressed within the film that she thinks she needs his help? I recall her already planning to set out on her journey before bumping into Mario. And as they leave, one Toad asks who's the new guy and she answers "he's....not important". Her expressed interest in him was that he looks like her - whatever she is. She "needs" him to solve the mystery of who she is, but not to save the day.

[Jotari]

36 minutes ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

I'm not the sort of person to interrogate plot contrivances like that. But is it ever expressed within the film that she thinks she needs his help? I recall her already planning to set out on her journey before bumping into Mario. And as they leave, one Toad asks who's the new guy and she answers "he's....not important". Her expressed interest in him was that he looks like her - whatever she is. She "needs" him to solve the mystery of who she is, but not to save the day.

Well she spends like a whole day trying to train him instead of just departing with him right away which she would do if information was all she was interested in.

To bring it back to Zelda though, I think a hyper competent Zelda would be an easier pill to swallow than a hyper competent Peach. As, while they both very much are 80s Princess defined by being captured, Zelda has had a more active role in fighting against evil throughout her games compared to Peach. Not that Peach has never done any adventuring, there are certainly some stand out examples, but for Zelda pretty much every game she has been doing something to combat the bad guy (and yet of the two only Peach has had her own game... discounting the CDI of course).

As I said before, for this reason I fully expect us to see Sheik make an appearance even if we're not going to be directly in Ocarina of Time's plot or setting. Side note, I'd love if a Zelda product some day featured Sheik and had the plot twist that it was actually someone else in disguise. Was hoping they'd do that in Hyrule Warriors, but it ended up being Zelda who was in disguise pretty much for no reason. Why would I like a plot twist like this? I'm not sure. Maybe because I don't like Sheik given it's a single disguise for Zelda in a single game that has managed to retain relevance only because of Smash Bros. and by divorcing by identity from Zelda it could kind of be its own thing while also providing a nice subversion of expectations by playing off of knowledge of the mythos.

Edited November 8, 2023 by Jotari

[vanguard333]

9 hours ago, Jotari said:

In terms of Zelda stories to adapt, I think the most appropriate would be The Wind Waker or Spirit Tracks. As they both have a more robust, relevant and mobile supporting cast than most Zelda games. But there's little point in even entertaining the idea that they'll go for any setting that isn't primarily Ocarina of Time with a bit of A Link to the Past sprinkled in.

I think, much like the Mario movie, they're not going to go the route of adapting any particular game, and instead they'll create an original story for the film. That would probably be the best way for them to retain things like the dungeon exploring while maintaining a movie's pacing.

 

It really should've been a TV show; that way it would've given the worldbuilding, dungeon exploring, etc., the time that they need. I can only think of one reason why this is a live-action film: prestige.

In Hollywood and in North America, live-action media, especially live-action movies, are seen as prestigious, while animated media is generally seen as the realm of kids' media (even though shows like Arcane demonstrate that that perception is just not true). With Mario, Mario is the commercial franchise already seen as mainly aimed at kids, so of course its adaptation is an animated film, but The Legend of Zelda is generally seen as the less commercial, more prestigious franchise, so naturally it's adaptation is live-action even though animation would be better for it.

[Fabulously Olivier]

Excuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuse me, Princess!

[Armchair General]

I kind of figured that if there would be an Zelda movie, it would be an lot more doable in CGI on account of half of the fancy sword movies that were in games like Twilight Princess and Wind Waker. And also, monsters. We can't forget about the monsters.

 

But an live action version of it might be an little bit out of their league.

[vanguard333]

35 minutes ago, Armchair General said:

I kind of figured that if there would be an Zelda movie, it would be an lot more doable in CGI on account of half of the fancy sword movies that were in games like Twilight Princess and Wind Waker. And also, monsters. We can't forget about the monsters.

 

But an live action version of it might be an little bit out of their league.

And also Gorons, Rito, Zora (though they maybe could be done with elaborate makeup and such), etc. Not to mention all the castles and dungeons will have to be CGI unless they build sets as elaborate as the ones made for The Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones.

Yeah; it would be far easier to make a Zelda movie in animation; a live-action film is going to need enough CG that it may as well be fully animated. If the hardest thing to realize on-screen in a story is that story's world, then it probably should be animated.

[Jotari]

2 hours ago, vanguard333 said:

I think, much like the Mario movie, they're not going to go the route of adapting any particular game, and instead they'll create an original story for the film. That would probably be the best way for them to retain things like the dungeon exploring while maintaining a movie's pacing.

Yeah, but for all the criticism of every Zelda game being the same... it's really not true. Like, they are not going to give us a game set on the Great Sea or Labrynna. It's going to be Hyrule. And it's going to be Hyrule as Hyrule and not the prehistory Skyward Sword. It's almost certainly not going to have trains very probably won't have Link splitting into four colour coded copies (unless it's a cameo). And it probably won't be the mostly barren wasteland of the original and Breath of the Wild. It's going to be Link, Zelda, Ganondorf, the Master Sword, Kakariko Village, the Lost Woods, Death Mountain, Lon Lon Ranch, Gerudo, Gorons and Zora if they have the budget. Which means it's primarily Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time with some other stuff thrown in. Maybe the Rito thanks to Breath of the Wild and Ordon from Twilight Princess to give Link a home town that isn't Kokiri Forest, but probably not the Twilight stuff unless it's a cameo.

In other words, not adapting any specific game and trying to go general means mostly being A Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time as they were the most foundational games to the series image despite the actually rather impressive number of different directions and experimental paths they've taken with the series.

Edited November 8, 2023 by Jotari