It’s been a week since Nintendo’s announcement of its live-action The Legend of Zelda movie but I still can’t get one thing out of my head. While I’m intrigued to see how Nintendo and Sony Pictures will adapt my favorite Nintendo franchise for the big screen, I remain convinced that going the route of live-action is a big mistake.
It’s not that I necessarily think a live-action adaptation has no chance of working (although I have many concerns in that department as well), but more so because I’m mourning what we’re not getting: A beautiful, hand-drawn, animated The Legend of Zelda movie.
Animation Is the Perfect Fit for Zelda
I’m a lifelong Zelda fan, and one of my favorite things about the series is how Nintendo never sticks with one art style for too long. Name another franchise that has looked so different across every mainline game. With such a wide palette to choose from, there are so many different art styles I can envision working in a Legend of Zelda animated movie.
But one style that immediately comes to mind for Zelda’s fairytale-like imagery can be found in the works of Studio Ghibli. Take a look at most of Studio Ghibli’s catalog and you’ll find movies that visually and tonally align with much of the Zelda series. Common themes like nostalgia, one’s world growing larger, and the loss of childhood innocence permeate throughout Ghibli movies and Zelda stories, making these two a perfect match.
There’s even a fan project floating around on the internet that imagines what Ocarina of Time’s Castle Town would look like with hand-drawn animation. It brilliantly showcases how side characters are truly the focus of Zelda’s unique atmosphere rather than Link himself. The style is perfect, and I’m bummed that’s not the direction Nintendo has chosen to go in. Even if a Studio Ghibli partnership was never on the table, there are plenty of other studios Nintendo could have partnered with to develop a hand-drawn Zelda movie.
And while hand-drawn art may be the best fit for a Zelda movie in my opinion, there are plenty of animation styles that would serve as a better vehicle for Zelda than live-action. Think about all the gorgeous animated projects we’ve seen in the last several years: Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, Dragon Quest: Your Story, the Castlevania anime, or even a claymation look come to mind as visual styles that would perfectly suit the wonderful world of Hyrule. I can visualize what all these versions of Hyrule would look like, but I can’t say the same thing about live-action.
Zelda is weird, and I feel that animation widens the ways you can express that weirdness. Remember how the Happy Mask Salesman from Majora’s Mask immediately changes animations with no transition? It’s a small, unsettling detail that animation can pull off far better than live-action can. Zelda is full of offbeat moments like this, and that’s exactly what I love about it. I hope the franchise’s strange tendencies aren’t lost in translation from animation to live-action because that would mean leaving behind a core element of what makes Zelda, well, Zelda.
Plus, the Zelda games themselves have leaned more into painterly aesthetics over the years, even as some fans beg for Nintendo to go with a darker, more realistic art style. Games like Skyward Sword, Breath of the Wild, and Tears of the Kingdom look like paintings at points, as if they’re practically begging to be adapted into an animated film.
For other video game properties like Uncharted, The Last of Us, or even God of War, a live-action adaptation is a reasonable choice. The characters and worlds in those games are designed to look like fictional versions of the real world, with motion-captured facial animations and character designs that – for the most part – look like real people. Zelda has never gone after a visual style attempting to look anything like the real world. Zelda looks like a children’s picture book, and animation is the best choice to do it justice.
Pitfalls For a Live-Action Hyrule
A live-action Zelda adaptation has many challenges. Even Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto has said making this movie a success will be "an extremely high hurdle" to overcome.
There are so many oddities in Zelda that come across as charming when animated, but could easily be seen as off-putting when done in live-action. This is a franchise where a literal enormous pig is the main villain, after all. But Zelda is also full of surprising horrors, from zombies that wrap their entire bodies around Link to try and kill him, to disembodied giant hands that swoop down from the ceiling. I have a hard time seeing a lot of Zelda enemies make it into a live-action movie without seriously frightening the little ones.
And it’s not just the scary elements that might not work in live-action – it’s Hyrule as a whole. Link’s droopy green hat, the toyish-looking nature of the Master Sword and the Hylian Shield, all of these are iconic symbols of the series that risk looking silly in live-action. Not even Marvel has fully succeeded in taking designs from comics and getting them to look good for the movies. Plus, in an era where Hollywood CGI and VFX artists are more overworked than ever, it’ll take more than rushed CGI work to do justice to beloved Zelda races like Gorons and the Zora, if the filmmakers choose to incorporate these iconic characters.
There are bright spots to look towards for what we could potentially get from a live-action Legend of Zelda movie, however. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is a recent example of a live-action fantasy adaptation that turned out nicely, capturing the imagination of tabletop RPGs and with CGI effects that translated high fantasy with charm. If the Owlbear looked so good, why couldn’t a Goron? And, we know director Wes Ball has some affinity for the Zelda series, which is a great sign.
I love The Legend of Zelda, and the live-action movie will be the first exposure to the franchise for a ton of people who don’t play video games. This is one of gaming’s most important franchises, and it deserves to be done right on the big screen. And while I think animation would have been the best way to do it justice, the people in charge have gone a very different route.
I mentioned earlier that one of my favorite things is how Nintendo consistently transforms what Zelda looks like. People doubted the cartoon style of The Wind Waker when they first saw it, and now it’s one of the most iconic looks in the series. So maybe history will prove me wrong, and Nintendo’s transformation of Zelda into live-action could turn out to be a big success. But no matter how this live-action adaptation ends up looking, I’m not convinced that it will turn out better than the animated Zelda movie I still long for.
