Is The Legend of Zelda the most famous story never to be adapted on film? It’s certainly up there. Nintendo’s hit video game franchise has sold more than 150 million copies across nearly four decades, and includes several of the most acclaimed games ever made. And yet, the forthcoming live-action film – announced on Tuesday by Nintendo – will be the first time the story has been officially adapted for the screen. That doesn’t mean it’s a good idea, though.
It’s clear that Nintendo want to strike while the iron is hot on the video-game movie boom. In the past, video games have long been a quagmire for Hollywood, with the industry’s fundamental inability to adapt them successfully (or particularly profitably) leading to rumours of a “curse”. The past few years, however, have seen several of the biggest titles in gaming strike gold with big-screen adaptations, Sonic the Hedgehog and this year’s Super Mario Bros Movie chief among them. But despite lucrative box office figures – Super Mario Bros sits just behind Barbie as this year’s second-highest grossing film, having made $1.36bn globally – these new films were as creatively arid as ever. Mario is visually bright and breezy, yes, but utterly ramshackle as a story. These were kids’ films, people say, but even kids deserve a bit of nourishment with their iridescent sugar. A Zelda film is sure to be a profitable endeavour. But nourishing is another matter.
After all, what is the story of The Legend of Zelda? While the specifics have changed, meandered and repeated itself down the years, a few key aspects are almost always present. We have the hero – the player-character, in the games – a sword-brandishing, green-clad adventure known as Link. Link has always been nonverbal, save for the odd grunt or yelp; it’s fair to assume that the film will make him considerably more loquacious. Then we have Zelda, a princess whom Link often has to save from the villainous Ganon, a kind of vaguely porcine monster with the build of Tyson Fury. Rooted firmly in the fantasy genre, the series is a lot richer in lore than, say, Super Mario. The kingdom of Hyrule makes for a much more fleshed-out setting than many of the worlds of Super Mario, which were always principally decorative. But Zelda shares Mario’s fatal flaw – a vacuum at its centre where a protagonist should be.
Despite being the main man of the Zelda franchise, Link is ultimately a blank slate. This is the case with so many of the best video game characters; it is one of the things that distinguishes the medium from so many others. Characters need not be defined by “motivation” or “personality” in the way they must on camera. They are defined exclusively by how they look, our capacity to control what they do. If we look at his actual character, Link barely even registers as a person. He’s “brave”. “Noble”. “Loyal”. Hardly a compelling figure to construct a whole feature film around. The other figures are similarly one-dimensional. It’s a problem that marred the Mario movie – a worldview that’s so broad and simple, nuance is afforded no oxygen to survive.
Augmenting these doubts is the creative team attached to the project. Wes Ball, known for the Maze Runner franchise, is directing, while Jurassic World’s Derek Connolly is attached to write. Marvel Studios founder Avi Arad is among the film’s producers. Much of the success of the film will surely rest on its cast – those people responsible for turning flat pixels into something fleshy and real. The matter of who’s playing Link, or Zelda, is still up in the air. Names like Jacob Tremblay and Jacob Elordi have been thrown around on social media; such is the blandness of Link’s character that it seems to befit any actor under the age of 30.
For decades, Nintendo has pretty much set the industry standard when it comes to quality, innovation and consistency in video games. The Legend of Zelda is a chance to prove that artistry extends beyond the boundaries of the medium. Whether it’ll seize or squander that chance remains to be seen.
