Nintendo is making a live-action Zelda movie – I’m not sure if I’m excited or worried

It’s finally happening. Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto has announced that a live-action movie of The Legend of Zelda is officially in development. Sony Pictures’ Avi Arad is a producer, which also makes this an unexpected partnership between the two companies since the original ‘PlayStation’ prototype.

After the barn-storming box office success of the Super Mario Movie, it was a given that the next franchise getting the big screen treatment would be for the series that has games frequently considered the greatest of all time. It is however surprising that Nintendo is opting for live-action rather than animation, especially given the Ghibli-esque style of the latest games. Yet given rumours of a since cancelled Netflix show years before, maybe it’s not such an unexpected direction to take, and ever since Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings, fantasy has been big bucks at the cinema.

A beloved game franchise greenlit for Hollywood naturally gets gamers excited, but to paraphrase Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park, it’s easy to get preoccupied with whether this could be done rather than stopping to think if it should. Sure, Nintendo’s heavy involvement, including Zelda’s own creator, might be assuring to some, but this also resulted in the Mario movie being a very safe 90-minute commercial. We regret to inform you that spotting easter eggs does not in itself make for a good film.

Of course, apart from its existence, we know nothing, while Miyamoto has added, “”It will take time until its completion,” which could mean it’s at least a few years away. But while there’s no cast, the names attached don’t give the earliest confidence. Arad may be a renowned Hollywood producer who brought us the Spider-Man flicks, including the excellent animated Spiderverse entries. But he also has his name to some stinkers like Morbius and the Uncharted movie.

Perhaps more cause for concern is that the director’s chair has been given to Wes Ball, best known for the Maze Runner films, with a script written by Derek Connolly. His credits include Jurassic World, Kong: Skull Island, and The Rise of Skywalker – you know, the worst of the new Star Wars films.

The real issue though is that while films based on games are no longer box office bombs, the curse of bad film adaptations haven’t completely gone away. Now Zelda’s stories come from your bread-and-butter foundations of fantasy fiction – young hero on a quest to vanquish evil that involves going on an epic journey and meeting new colourful allies – that you can probably knock out a script based on Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces in your sleep.

But the fun of these games come from being immersed in the world and the sense of discovery you make through your own interactions. That’s harder to convey when you’re just sitting back and watching it, worse still when Link historically doesn’t speak aside from the odd grunts and shouts.

Are we in for another Chris Pratt situation? Where in trying to give Link a personality and dramatic arc, he ends up being a character that puts off whatever idea fans have in their head? Or is he just going to be the dullest person alive? Worse still, you can’t even hide behind animation, because the lucky (or unlucky) fella who gets the role is going to have to be the face of Link once he puts on that green tunic.

Yet this could also be a chance for its title character to shine. Given how the Mario movie was at least able to depict Princess Peach as a fierce leader with agency over protecting her kingdom, rather than the damsel she’s been in the games for decades, Zelda could be a much more fleshed out character with a more active role in the story. Here’s a radical thought, why not have a Legend of Zelda film where Zelda is actually the hero? To be fair, her character has arguably been its deepest since Breath of the Wild, but it would be more refreshing if she wasn’t portrayed as the melodramatic dainty princess type.

As for which game or games the film should base itself from, perhaps there’s an original story to tell though the whole point of this legend is that it’s essentially the same story being retold again and again. Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom may be the newest and arguably most story-rich of the series, but its structure of essentially discovering pieces of the story from the past isn’t really what you want in the immediacy of a film. We can see the dystopian and sci-fi elements of the technology depicted sharing some similarities with the attached filmmakers’ past work, though.

The hero’s origin story of Ocarina of Time however feels like a more fascinating proposition, especially with the time-travelling elements. But that would also mean having the headache of having to cast both child and adult actors for Link and Zelda respectively.

More than plot however, we really hope is that this doesn’t turn into some lofty or gritty fantasy with multi-part arcs. Instead, why not focus on the series’ weirder elements like Majora’s Mask, or take a leaf from The Princess Bride and subvert our expectations by having fun with the materials that’s not just in-joke references for fans? This year’s excellent and underrated Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves certainly shows how not all fantasy films need to follow the same epic formula to be entertaining…but then we’re reminded that the lorecraft and human interactions in D&D is really not the Zelda series’ core strengths.

Regardless, a live-action Zelda film will be coming and only time will tell if it’s something we should dread like a malevolent Moon inevitably crashing upon us or something to look forward to. Still, it’s hard not to look at this fan poster of a Zelda animated film by Studio Ghibli and think that it could have been different.