I have a hard time picturing good looking Bokoblins or ChuChus in a live-action movie (even if CGI obviously).
In Lord of the Rings they made the Orcs and Uruk-Hai rather gruesome looking (especially for a PG-13 movie) and most about the movies is about a darker mood/atmosphere with some minor horror elements.
Zelda is usually much brighter in tone (with very few exceptions).
It has this magical elf vibe going on, with goofy monsters and weird characters.
That could look very cheap and stupid in a live-action movie.
That was also part of the reason why the hobbit movies did not quite come together for me.
I am not optimistic but I would like to be pleasantly surprised.
I mean... see aliens in marvel movies. they are somewhere between bokoblins and tolkin. i think that can work fine, we just need good creature designers.
If you don't like those, thats fair. But not something that i think will be a problem for mass audiences.
Given how the Zelda film is partnered with an unrelated studio from Universal (unlike Mario), does that mean the idea of a Smash crossover movie that is so commonly wanted is out of the picture? I am personally not a fan of films being created just to be in the service of being a crossover one, like as if they cannot stand on their own as films and their value is reliant in participating in crossovers.
Thank you for reading.
The problem there is that the studios bought the movierights to be the sole owner.
Nintendos not selling the rights to its ips to those studios. They are a) paying for most of the production themselves, and b) keeping all the rights, or most of them. there is a chance that some aspects of some designs and the specific assets are say still part of illumination, but that would only mean that the mario characters in a smash movie would look slightly different.
think of it this way: disney giving EA the sole rights to make Starwars games vs nintendo giving the mario ip to Ubisoft for Mario vs Rabbids but keeping full control of the mario IP.
(not the best example, since the Star wars rights get negotiated after a while, unlike the ip rights that say marvel gave away, which where unlimited as long as new releases get produced)
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Honestly, im worried not because of the director, or the script writer (often they never had the chance to work on a project thats really near and dear to their heart, and when they get the chance they produce way better scripts/direction), especially since nintendo will have final say and control.
Whats worrying me: nintendo trying to make zelda movie to mass market and do to much comic relief/western movie influences. It clearly started influences by western fantasy, but since say OoT there was at least as much of an anime and japan influence, culminating in BotW/TotK being more ghibli then LotR.
Also: the format. The zelda structure is essentially visiting different places with new fun characters,
having dungeon exploration, and collecting mcguffins. You can do a boring story where link moves between 4 places to find the 4 special stones and find the master sword while collecting a party with a zora, a goron and korok and another one (whoever you want), but.. that would be rather boring (say 20 minute segments of "now were in zoras domain, oh, new party member, go to dungeon, do 1 puzzle, fight boss, find secret stone, done and gone to next segment. Its FINE for the games, but boring from a narrative perspective.
What would work better? A short series (12 ~1h episodes, have 1 intro episode, 6 dungeon episodes, 3 sidequest / world building episodes, and 2 ganons castle and final battle episodes)
In a series more formulaic dungeon episodes would be less of a problem compared to a movie, 1 h would be fine to have a typical "get to a new place, meet new characters, have a 20 minutes just dungeon segment, where it has time to breath, feeling of traversing it, finding stuff, etc, ...
heck, vary it, have 1 episode have a short dungeon (10 minutes), another be a huge maze and taking 40 minutes,...)
If we do want movies... 3 movies, child link -> master sword with a cliff hanger, adult link with cliffhanger twist (zelda -> shiek), and a final installment with "preparations", world building, and a big final showdown.
A zelda story without the "adventuring", "exploring", or "dungeon" parts is... only zelda in the most superficial sense.
Alternatively:
have a "child link" storyline, but end it after the 3 mcguffins, with a post credit hint that the true danger is only now awakening (like there was this mage that tried to resurect ganon, and link stops him, but the seal is weakend and we see it start to crumble in the post credits), so that we have a fulfilling movie arc, but a clear open end so that if the film is recieved well they can just do a follow up (then 2 parts) as a "ok, you liked that, theres more of that). if would go against the "after the "midpoint" the story kicks into gear" structure of zelda games, but could work, and have an older link (without time skip) with more experience and zelda try to figure out whats going on in the second movie, when ganin is awakened but weakened in the background, pulling the strings, and end the movie with them confronting ganon which gets to full power at the end. it would be the empire strikes back moment, maybe have zelda kidnapped, or even better, split from link and the third movie having an a and b plotline, link trying to find zelda, and zelda researching/collecting something in an "other world", and when they find eachother confronting ganon.
i know, its more or less the structure set in stone by the first star wars trilogy. but it works well in this case.
Or, the one i would like the most: throw away the mcguffin hunt, have link explore the world to find characters that would help him, and have knowledge, and on his way he helps them so they go with him. have a lot focus on the journey, banter, finding cool things on their way,... and 2 dungeon setpieces. Thats more or less the fellowship structure.
both of those would liberally diverge from established game naratives.
It is important that the movies have enough time, i would say 150 minutes.
90 is way to short, and under 2h is rushing it. (obviously depending on the script, but for a satisfying adventuring storyline next to introducing a handful of colorful characters, races, mythology of the world, thats a lot. Iron man is easy: hes a start billionaire, he builds cool suit. thats all the lore and world building we effectively need for the first one.)
