June 14, 2023 • 34 mins
With recent rumors of Illumination heading a Legend of Zelda movie, we discuss how Zelda could be translated to the silver screen. (If at all) Check out our socials: https://switchclicks.carrd.co/ The Switch Clicks Podcast Intro Track: Dreams Are Pretty — Seoul June [Audio Library Release] Music provided by Audio Library Plus Watch: https://youtu.be/Y6sVyLLakhM Free Download / Stream: https://alplus.io/dreams-are-pretty #Zelda #SuperMarioMovie #Nintendo
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Good evening everyone.
(00:04):
Today we dive into the recent rumors surrounding a potential Legend of Zelda movie.
Welcome to the Switch Clicks Podcast Episode 140 recorded on June 13th, 2023.
My name is Kaiser, alright. I know you guys missed me. I did too.
(00:27):
It's been 9 episodes.
Yes, alright. A little hiatus. You see they had a little beach episode, that was a little bit of a whited.
Now, speaking of which, my co-host, Dakota.
I've already said stuff.
Obviously, but I start to introduce you.
I guess, yes.
The man himself, Nathan.
(00:48):
We're no longer alone, so it's no longer dangerous.
And the man who has been carrying the podcast, I do really mean that, Tyler.
Hello, I can't believe you just said that, Nathan.
What a...
Yeah, oh my god.
It's been a long while since we last been together.
(01:10):
Yeah, literally 10 episodes.
Last time we were all together, we talked about the Mario movie.
Guess what we're talking about today.
What were the odds?
What were the odds?
Apparently, I understand.
It was actually pretty low. I don't think this rumor came out very, very recently.
(01:31):
And if it wasn't for this rumor, we'd probably be very loosely talking about maybe Tears of the Kingdom.
Although, I heard Dakota is still progressing through the game.
And I do not want to spoil it for him.
I'm just absorbing everything on my Twitter to highlight, unfortunately.
Most likely, we will talk about it next week if a Nintendo Direct does not come around the corner.
(01:55):
It probably will never come.
There will never be another one. They've stopped, actually.
Finally, I mean, finally.
Tears of the Kingdom, last good game.
The last game ever.
They said, I don't want to be after that. They're like, well, that's it.
That's all we... Icon 4 cancelled.
Let's get back on track.
(02:17):
Now, overall, Nintendo, obviously, we've seen the success of the Mario movie.
Geek fiction, diddy-kong, all right?
Oh my goodness.
Now the question is, what kind of...
The details surrounding it, obviously muddled.
We don't need specifics.
I want to know specifics, but of course, that'll never come.
(02:40):
The only thing we know about the Zelda movie is that there's a rumor deal between Nintendo and Universal
that's being close to signed.
Yeah, I'll have to...
The current theory is that I think that rumor came out the weekend of Spider-Verse.
So they saw the success of Spider-Verse and now Illumination.
(03:01):
They like to experiment a little bit with their animation.
A little bit, tiny, tiny, tiny bit.
They did probably the most of their animation with the Mario movie.
Hopefully they push it a little bit more with the Zelda one.
But the theory is that they greenlit this one pretty fast, the Zelda movie pretty fast, because of Spider-Verse.
(03:25):
Which is a little weird because it's not like...
I mean, they're both animated movies, but Mario didn't exactly do any...
I feel like if they were like, oh yeah, we can 100% keep pushing our stylized animated movies, as Spider-Verse does well.
But Mario was pretty safe.
It looked pretty, but it wasn't a shockingly visual kind of movie.
(03:52):
Compared to other Illumination, I'd say it was pretty shocking.
It looked bad for Illumination for sure.
Maybe that's the path that they're going on with these bigger budget, bigger IP franchises coming in here.
Maybe that's the path that they're setting on, and they're going to get better at animation from this point on.
(04:17):
But yeah, it's like...
For something like Zelda, they need the awe-inspiring landscapes of Hyrule.
I feel strongly that they definitely do need to have very strong art direction.
And I do love the art direction of the Mario movie.
And as we've stated a long while back, like in...
(04:43):
Insert episode number here.
Sorry.
In episode 130, right?
We talked about how visually the Mario movie is gorgeous, all the colors, even the locations, right?
And they really do have to match it, if not surpass that kind of art direction.
(05:09):
It may look better.
But I feel like visuals are going to be very important for this movie.
But I think Illumination can do pretty visuals.
What they haven't really been able to prove is that they can make a mature, compelling story.
Which most, I imagine, I'm pretty sure most Zelda games fall into that category.
(05:33):
There isn't like a...
Even like the goofiest most mature.
But it's definitely more mature.
Yeah, not like R-rated or anything.
But it's definitely...
I mean, that depends.
I feel like even the goofiest Zelda game has a more nuanced story than Mario.
(05:57):
Clearly you have not seen Tingle's balloon ride.
Okay, how about Plague?
Give me out.
So, assuming that Miyamoto is staying on, the movie's not going to be as mature as if, say, G.I.O.N.U.M.A. would be coming on.
I doubt G.I.O.N.U.M.A. would have the time to come off of the game development to help produce the movie.
(06:24):
So it'd have to be Miyamoto.
And Miyamoto, knowing how Miyamoto reacted to Twilight Princess, like, you know, Darker Game, or even Majora's Mask,
he didn't really particularly like those.
He liked the charm that the brighter games brought.
So if anything, this will be a much brighter movie than what the majority of fans want.
(06:47):
I'm not sure if that's actually majority or not.
But even Wind Waker has his sisters kidnapped and he stabs Ganondorf in the head.
Yeah, that's as far as they'll be going.
I doubt they'd be going anywhere farther than that.
Yeah, it's a very interesting direction.
And with art style, it is noteworthy that the Mario movie still used the generic, you know, the generic illumination art style
(07:19):
with all the Mario designs basically just slapped into it.
Yeah, I think he's moving together.
I'm not sure if they're going to be doing the same here, but I do have a really good feeling that's going to be the case.
Because when you think about it, the illumination art style does kind of look similar to certain official game art of Zelda.
(07:45):
I think it was the Oracle games that had this type of art style that feels a lot more generic.
And like, for example, they had round eyes in those games.
I figure maybe this is something that illumination would be basing off of, and that's what Miyamoto would probably choose.
And even like Breath of the Wild, like the people in Breath of the Wild don't look too too far off.
(08:09):
Once again, Breath of the Wild is kind of like a bit more anime than what you get from illumination.
That's much more than I if I saw one of the Breath of the Wild NPCs in the Mario movie.
Obviously, if they weren't in a Legend of Zelda looking outfit, but if their face just showed up, I'd be maybe a little confused.
(08:35):
But it isn't the furthest off from what they might do.
And if I'm being honest, Breath of the Wild being as big as it is, it's probably going to be where the movie takes a chunk of its inspiration visually from.
I highly doubt that.
Okay, so even though Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are more successful than previous entries,
(09:03):
people are starting to recognize Link more for his blue Champions tunic rather than his Peter Pan inspired green tunic.
I think Miyamoto being Miyamoto would probably want to bring the more classic appearances of the characters.
Green tunic would make sense, but I'm more like how when Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are marketed,
(09:30):
where they have more that kind of look, the paint brushy maybe kind of...
Oh man, I'm not too sure.
I don't think they're going to go for a Wind Waker or maybe Skyward Sword because it's kind of generic.
Twilight Princess or Wind Waker, I'd feel like are completely off the table stylistic-wise.
(09:54):
Yeah, I am completely doubtful they would ever choose that art style.
If anything, they just go with their standard elimination art style and work off of some older games that actually had something similar.
I like the idea of bringing almost all art styles together, maybe less Twilight Princess, less Wind Waker.
(10:18):
But I like the idea of the Oracle games mixing a little bit with Breath of the Wild and Skyward Sword.
You can get a mix of all of them.
Yeah, like a good middle ground.
I think that would be probably what they're going to game for because they can't just say, oh it's Zelda, but which one, right?
I'm definitely going to try and kind of hone down a style that really speaks to most of the games.
(10:42):
I feel strongly that the Breath of the Wild style with some tweaks could really match the illumination.
I feel that they could take a bit of inspiration from Skyward Sword in terms of the colors and proportions.
Yeah, or even the official art, like the not in-game stuff obviously from Ocarina of Time and the promotional material.
(11:09):
I feel like you could fold in some of that.
The illustrations and renders, yeah.
I saw somebody point out recently that completely changed my whole viewing on the Zelda timeline, but we won't get into that.
They said, the Legend of Zelda is a legend, so every iteration is slightly different than the last.
Yeah, that's pretty much what I used as my base theory for Breath of the Wild's timeline placement.
(11:43):
That's insane.
It's a true story, it's a fairy tale, it's a myth.
This movie would just be an iteration of that.
It would just be more interesting.
Legend of Zelda has a kind of formulaic story with the idea of Link being reincarnated.
(12:08):
Reincarnated, kind of reincarnated is the right one.
Okay, yeah, Link being reincarnated to fight Ganondorf again, that's kind of the basic thing.
But each Legend of Zelda game, I don't really have a...
It's such a weird...
(12:29):
I don't know what they're going to do with the story because there's so much stuff.
It's difficult to... I feel they're going to have a lot of struggle really condensing the story.
At least either they try to tell a story or read a whole different story.
Actually, that's what I want to get into, right?
(12:51):
What do you believe the story beats that the story will take after?
Will it be more Ocarina of Time based?
Will it have some ploids from Skyward Sword? That's a big question on my mind right now.
It would either be a specific game being referenced or the most default basic first Legend of Zelda game kind of storyline.
(13:23):
Because you can visit a variety of land, but with Legend of Zelda, it's probably Nintendo's most actual story driven series.
And you know, famously, very heavily story driven video games translate to movies really well.
I almost shot you down there, Tyler.
(13:50):
I guess you could argue that Xenoblade is not made by Nintendo, but they do publish it.
You already got a ton of this, but Xenoblade not to sell 10 million copies in a weekend.
Yeah, the focus is that a lot of the games feel more narrative based than story based, right?
Because the story is there, but without that, but they're really focused on a narrative with how to kind of build the world rather than build the story, really.
(14:19):
Because if you look at Twilight Princess, I love the storytelling, but a lot of it was very focused on the narrative of that responsibility throughout the game, right?
Responsibility of having the Triforce of Furage, how Zelda really deals with the Twilight stuff, right?
(14:40):
And the story could be better to a degree, but a lot more focus is on that narrative in the theme games, right?
It's gonna be kind of hard to translate that to an illumination film, in my opinion.
I'm a little worried because I do feel like in the wrong hands, the Legend of Zelda movie could almost be the exact same story beat wise from the Mario.
(15:12):
It could be the same as the Mario movie.
Like you could pretty much do outside of the, what's it called, Isekai-ness of it all. It could be pretty much the same story.
That's a risk. That is definitely a risk there.
(15:35):
I feel that risk is a lot more prevalent if they try to do a Hyrule Warriors story kind of thing, right?
I'm not talking about merging of timelines and universes. I'm talking about Link being part of...
Ensemble cast type of thing.
Yeah.
I don't want that kind of story beat there. It's just...
(15:59):
The fact that they did that... two games with that too. It kind of takes away the whole purpose of Link being the center.
Looking at the Mario movie, they did start exploring stuff that we never saw in the games themselves.
(16:26):
One of the things I've thought about Miyamoto bringing up is probably something that they did in Mario movie where they had Peach and Mario team up.
I think technically this was already done in one Zelda game where they had Zelda team up with Link.
But I do suspect this might be the route that they'll take for this movie as well, just for the sake of having a bigger cast for this.
(16:58):
I can see it almost being...
The Legend of Zelda actually focuses on Zelda.
Have any of you had the... not displeasure, but the meh viewing experience of Raya and the Last Dragon?
No, I skipped that movie.
Because the movie pretty much follows an elevator pitch for the movie.
(17:25):
Girl needs to save her city or town or whatever, so she goes to every other town and gets one friend.
And with all the friends, they can save the town.
And I feel like Legend of Zelda could do that, where they get a funny comedian voicing the lore.
Or at least the sages, right?
Or something. That could be a possibility.
(17:48):
They've been in so many games already.
They freaking Tingle.
Alright, Tingle.
Tingle will never be a main character in a Zelda movie.
He'll be in the movie.
We already have him.
Freshly picked, Tingle's Rosy Ruby Land.
Oh, gosh. Oh dear.
That would be probably the most interesting choice they could choose.
(18:11):
Like, direction they could go.
Just not have Link at all.
Oh, that's not happening.
You know how mad people would be.
No, I don't think so.
Speaking of which, though...
Speaking of the Tingle movie...
The Tingleverse.
Oh dear.
How are you gonna sing with Tingle? Wait, what?
I don't know.
(18:32):
I don't know how that works, but...
Isn't there the Tingle game about Tingle just wanting a bunch of money so he can get a girlfriend?
I'm not sure about girlfriend, but yeah, basically.
He just gets Tingle.
Honestly, that could be a genuinely interesting movie.
I mean, if you want him as the main villain, that might work.
(18:56):
I'll come with the Blu-ray.
It's a short story, and you'll have a panic attack in it.
Of course.
Like, Pixar shorts that always come with the DVD copy of an old Pixar movie?
Oh man.
Of how Tingle is actually disturbing Link's journey of trying to sell maps, right?
(19:17):
Yeah.
Alright, I think we're getting off track a bit, but I know that Nathan has a synopsis of his preferred Zelda movie.
Right, yeah. Let's do this over on the Zelda Wiki Discord.
Basically, I think it's gonna be a generic story just for the sake of being the first movie.
(19:39):
Ganondorf or Ganon is the villain. I don't know whichever one they prefer.
Ganon, the Beast Ganon form is much more interesting to design.
I bet Ganondorf is more marketable, though.
Ganondorf could be more marketable, even though he's only been in a few games.
They need to make him hot, alright?
I do think more people know Ganondorf, mostly because of Smash Bros. as well.
(20:02):
That's true. Plus, I think Illumination has some very unique human villains already.
I think that the Link that we'll be seeing is a young boy.
It's kind of like some of the games.
Wait, like how old?
(20:23):
I'm thinking like 10 to 13 years of age.
So like young Link young?
Yeah, pretty much young Link young. Maybe, yeah, somewhere around that age.
Just to cater to the younger audiences and whatever Miyamoto wants.
I wonder if they're gonna age him up just a tiny bit so they can do some romance with Zelda if they choose to.
(20:44):
It's a little bit weird for a 15 year old kid.
Miyamoto is not the type to...
Do romance.
Yeah, to push romance.
I feel like Mario and Peach have like a canon relationship and they barely even lock eyes in the movie.
Yeah, I felt more of a situational thing than an actual relationship.
(21:07):
Maybe we'll do the stereotypical anime like meet cute thing.
They accidentally touch hands, both of them blush, boom you're done.
Yeah, that's probably a supply.
They get a pick.
He picks it first and he's like, oh, I'm so sorry. And it's like, oh, and then from there.
Yeah.
(21:28):
Zelda is probably gonna be the same age as Link because I mean, that's exactly how it works.
The thing is like a lot of the games, right, is that they don't explicitly say romantic. It's more purely platonic, right?
Actually, one of them does have a romantic.
I forgot. I am a fake fan. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Loremaster. You can strike me down now. I am no longer... I'm not fit for the podcast.
(21:57):
If the two main characters, Zelda and Link, are very young, that's also an interesting character development they could do throughout the movie.
Zelda has to now like take the throne or something. She has to bear the burden of A, the Triforce, and B, the throne.
So you could do something like that.
And I was thinking that, okay, so Zelda's young. She's still a princess. She still has parents who run the kingdom.
(22:26):
Oh, boom, Ganondorf suddenly attacks and Zelda's the only one who escapes or something like that.
And that's basically the pushing point for Link and Zelda to go on an adventure together.
And I think I wrote down here that this iteration of Link would have a younger sister and a father or grandfather, just to reference some other games.
(22:52):
They don't want Link to leave, but the village elder that sees Link and Zelda knows the situation, encourages them, encourages them leave, and then says the legendary words after giving Link a weapon.
Yeah, his last name is Tree or something.
Mr. Deku Tree.
Or... yeah.
(23:13):
And apparently, and you know, the adventure starts there. I'm not sure if they're going to go on an adventure where they recruit more people or if they're going to go on a classic Zelda adventure where they self-dungeons and get more special items or something like that.
That's the hard part, I think. The middle ground is where it falls apart for anything.
(23:35):
Yeah, because if you look at the Mario movie, they completely abandon the idea of worlds.
They basically just abandon the idea of a second act.
Yeah, pretty much. They just lost everything and went straight to basically treated their third act as kind of their second act.
(23:56):
Yeah, you were saying there is two ways they can go. You can either do their going through Hyrule, recruiting people, cool, you get to meet new characters, or you go through dungeons.
But one of the problems of earlier video game movies was that you always felt like you wanted to play the game that they were showing in front of you.
(24:18):
So if they were just doing it in the dungeon in animated form, and they're trying to figure out the stupid puzzle, that would be horrible in theaters.
You know what you're saying? You don't want the middle of the movie to be Link stuck on a puzzle for an hour?
Yeah, exactly.
Because you know how many Zelda fans are going to be in that audience just screaming at the screen?
(24:39):
They bring in the war temple.
It is a really weird dilemma because Legend of Zelda is known for its dungeons and puzzles, but that's so far too much into a movie.
I think maybe if they are at a dungeon sequence because of those fears, it's probably going to last maybe no longer than five minutes.
(25:01):
Well, it's not going to be a montage, it's just going to be a small dungeon type of thing.
They focus a lot more on suspense and maybe the atmosphere of the dungeon rather than having a full blown puzzle written large structure with a boss at the ending.
(25:22):
I think the boss at the end could be cool.
They could have a boss, yes. They definitely have a boss, they definitely have an item, but it'd be like maybe a five minute sequence or something.
It wouldn't be a huge section of the movie. They have no reason to do that.
But the rest of the dungeons would probably have to be a montage type of thing, which I'm a little scared about.
(25:47):
I'm not sure if it's going to be like, oh, they're going to run through eight dungeons and stuff like that.
It's a long incoming montage.
It's a water feeling like P.
Can we take one second of this podcast to all throw out one pop song guess for the movie?
(26:08):
Oh my god.
I'm going to go a little funky with it. I'm going to go a little funky with it and say that...
Oh shoot, I can't remember what it's called. Uptown Funk is going to be in the movie.
I, you know, I'm not going to question it. I can see that.
(26:33):
Take On Me was in Mario. I don't know what...
Copy was in Mario, right?
Everything is so off the air.
I'm feeling that they'll put something in by Motley Crudo.
Never going to give you up.
Oh no.
The Rick Roll.
The Rick Roll.
(26:54):
I think, you know...
They did that for the Angry Birds movie.
Don't even say that as a joke.
I think to introduce Link's Village or at the end of the movie when they're rebuilding Hyrule or whatever, they're helping the townspeople.
(27:15):
They're going to play We Built This City on Rock and Roll.
It's around the same era of song that's in every Illumination movie.
I can see it. Maybe instead of Rock and Roll it'll be like The Tri Force or something.
The Immigration Song. That's a good guess, I feel.
(27:38):
All I hope is that whatever song they play, Cass starts it.
Wait, so the Immigration Song. So Link pulls out the Master Sword and suddenly...
No, no, no.
Does the superhero land in the midst of battle and then starts beating up 50 enemies at once?
(27:59):
Wait, yeah, that actually works so well.
It's kind of building off that first dungeon sequence where they kind of discover more so the idea of the Master Sword. Not really introduce the Master Sword but kind of hint towards it.
That's probably the next location they'll go to and Ganondorf is actively looking for it to make sure that Link or Zelda will not get to it before him.
(28:31):
I mean, for the opening to explain the Master Sword, if I was the director, I would do one of those...Zelda's famous for their openings on their title screens where they kind of explain whatever the current story is going on.
They did that in Minish Cap. Skyward Sword's famous for theirs. What else? I guess Ocarina of Time kind of did that too.
(28:57):
I also had one a little later in.
Oh, that's true. Yeah, I like kind of like the lore breakdown. If they could do some kind of tease like that. I like Ocarina of Time's I think the most.
Almost.
Because there's a lot of information. I don't think the elder of Link's village should explain it just standing there.
No, it'd have to be like a flashback or you know like a montage type of thing.
(29:22):
Like at the beginning of Lord of the Rings where you just have...I don't remember her name. And she's talking like really softly about the history of the ring, but it's that except it's the Triforce.
I mean, yeah, that could work. Just have Impa talk about the Triforce. Basically what she did in the 2017 trailer.
The history of the world.
(29:45):
The history of the world and its ties to the Triforce, right? And how like Gandorf is...the thing is they could take a story beat from Ocarina of Time of how Ganon is present.
Shmoosie the King, right?
I actually really like that as well. I really like when they add like political stuff into something or like different ties for characters that already existed. It's not just, oh, we got this magic wizard that just showed up randomly.
(30:14):
Yeah. Yeah.
I feel that would actually kind of clue us in to at least Zelda recognizes that something's off. Off by his presence.
It kind of, I mean, of course he looks evil, but that doesn't mean he is evil. And then, oh no. Oh, he, oh no, he actually summons his monsters and the like. It's like crazy. Who would have thought?
(30:40):
Well, one thing that one thing to note is how Illumination used to handle their villains. I'm not sure if they did that in their later movies as well, but they did a really like they did a decent job explaining like the origin story of how their villains came to be.
And I think maybe if they're going to pull something out like that here, that could make up for some really good history, like a really good history section, maybe.
(31:05):
Yeah, I think in general Illumination villains are pretty good with their origin stories and maybe except like, what is it, the half twin brother grew situation.
Yeah, true.
That was really bad.
They were trying to pull something out. I feel with the way they can introduce Ganon, right, he would definitely introduce his, what's called motivation. Of course, there's something something Gerudo, how he's here to really just speak about it.
(31:38):
But, but how he kind of states it puts Zelda off as it feels like he's aiming more for like Hyrule rather just like, like more stable piece right.
Yeah, get the guys who wrote Arcane on this.
It did that stuff really well.
(31:59):
I do. I, I thinking of Ganondorf reminded me of our casting video and with Illumination taking this over it is annoyingly possible for at least one of those casting predictions to be correct.
And I for one hope it's not more. I hope it's. I hope Marky Mark does not touch this, does not touch this movie.
(32:23):
That's your fault for for casting him.
Did I, I don't remember if I was the new picked it was either me or Tyler but it was a me.
I feel like Timothée Chalamet is up there is like probably the highest.
Which would mean tilta tilta Swenson would probably never get back because assuming link is the same age.
(32:46):
Who would you say who do you think would be a possible replacement if, if Chalamet got got link.
It was in the comments down below.
It's like a really crazy thing. It could actually be anyone come to think of it.
I mean, if Nintendo puts out a video exactly like how they announced the cast for the Mario movie, you already know we're going to milk that.
(33:11):
Oh dear.
That's that's that's gonna be an interesting turn of events in our.
Nintendo cinematic universe video.
From here on out that video will be just wrong every day.
That stinks.
(33:32):
Is that it.
I don't have anything else to talk about really.
I'm good. Yeah.
Okay. Let's all pray that this movie is good and it comes out in like 2026 or something. Give the it time.
Actually, between Avatar 3 and Avatar 4 I'm thinking.
Yeah, that actually sounds pretty okay.
(33:55):
Let's hope it doesn't come out after Avatar 5. I don't want to be 30 years old when the Legend of Zelda movie comes out.
Thank you for joining us discussing a rumored Legend of Zelda movie.
Now we would love it if you could follow us on Twitter and list of future episodes on Spotify and iTunes.
Join our community Discord to see today's discussion and we'll see you next time on the Switch Clicks podcast.
Good evening everyone.
(00:04):
Today we dive into the recent rumors surrounding a potential Legend of Zelda movie.
Welcome to the Switch Clicks Podcast Episode 140 recorded on June 13th, 2023.
My name is Kaiser, alright. I know you guys missed me. I did too.
(00:27):
It's been 9 episodes.
Yes, alright. A little hiatus. You see they had a little beach episode, that was a little bit of a whited.
Now, speaking of which, my co-host, Dakota.
I've already said stuff.
Obviously, but I start to introduce you.
I guess, yes.
The man himself, Nathan.
(00:48):
We're no longer alone, so it's no longer dangerous.
And the man who has been carrying the podcast, I do really mean that, Tyler.
Hello, I can't believe you just said that, Nathan.
What a...
Yeah, oh my god.
It's been a long while since we last been together.
(01:10):
Yeah, literally 10 episodes.
Last time we were all together, we talked about the Mario movie.
Guess what we're talking about today.
What were the odds?
What were the odds?
Apparently, I understand.
It was actually pretty low. I don't think this rumor came out very, very recently.
(01:31):
And if it wasn't for this rumor, we'd probably be very loosely talking about maybe Tears of the Kingdom.
Although, I heard Dakota is still progressing through the game.
And I do not want to spoil it for him.
I'm just absorbing everything on my Twitter to highlight, unfortunately.
Most likely, we will talk about it next week if a Nintendo Direct does not come around the corner.
(01:55):
It probably will never come.
There will never be another one. They've stopped, actually.
Finally, I mean, finally.
Tears of the Kingdom, last good game.
The last game ever.
They said, I don't want to be after that. They're like, well, that's it.
That's all we... Icon 4 cancelled.
Let's get back on track.
(02:17):
Now, overall, Nintendo, obviously, we've seen the success of the Mario movie.
Geek fiction, diddy-kong, all right?
Oh my goodness.
Now the question is, what kind of...
The details surrounding it, obviously muddled.
We don't need specifics.
I want to know specifics, but of course, that'll never come.
(02:40):
The only thing we know about the Zelda movie is that there's a rumor deal between Nintendo and Universal
that's being close to signed.
Yeah, I'll have to...
The current theory is that I think that rumor came out the weekend of Spider-Verse.
So they saw the success of Spider-Verse and now Illumination.
(03:01):
They like to experiment a little bit with their animation.
A little bit, tiny, tiny, tiny bit.
They did probably the most of their animation with the Mario movie.
Hopefully they push it a little bit more with the Zelda one.
But the theory is that they greenlit this one pretty fast, the Zelda movie pretty fast, because of Spider-Verse.
(03:25):
Which is a little weird because it's not like...
I mean, they're both animated movies, but Mario didn't exactly do any...
I feel like if they were like, oh yeah, we can 100% keep pushing our stylized animated movies, as Spider-Verse does well.
But Mario was pretty safe.
It looked pretty, but it wasn't a shockingly visual kind of movie.
(03:52):
Compared to other Illumination, I'd say it was pretty shocking.
It looked bad for Illumination for sure.
Maybe that's the path that they're going on with these bigger budget, bigger IP franchises coming in here.
Maybe that's the path that they're setting on, and they're going to get better at animation from this point on.
(04:17):
But yeah, it's like...
For something like Zelda, they need the awe-inspiring landscapes of Hyrule.
I feel strongly that they definitely do need to have very strong art direction.
And I do love the art direction of the Mario movie.
And as we've stated a long while back, like in...
(04:43):
Insert episode number here.
Sorry.
In episode 130, right?
We talked about how visually the Mario movie is gorgeous, all the colors, even the locations, right?
And they really do have to match it, if not surpass that kind of art direction.
(05:09):
It may look better.
But I feel like visuals are going to be very important for this movie.
But I think Illumination can do pretty visuals.
What they haven't really been able to prove is that they can make a mature, compelling story.
Which most, I imagine, I'm pretty sure most Zelda games fall into that category.
(05:33):
There isn't like a...
Even like the goofiest most mature.
But it's definitely more mature.
Yeah, not like R-rated or anything.
But it's definitely...
I mean, that depends.
I feel like even the goofiest Zelda game has a more nuanced story than Mario.
(05:57):
Clearly you have not seen Tingle's balloon ride.
Okay, how about Plague?
Give me out.
So, assuming that Miyamoto is staying on, the movie's not going to be as mature as if, say, G.I.O.N.U.M.A. would be coming on.
I doubt G.I.O.N.U.M.A. would have the time to come off of the game development to help produce the movie.
(06:24):
So it'd have to be Miyamoto.
And Miyamoto, knowing how Miyamoto reacted to Twilight Princess, like, you know, Darker Game, or even Majora's Mask,
he didn't really particularly like those.
He liked the charm that the brighter games brought.
So if anything, this will be a much brighter movie than what the majority of fans want.
(06:47):
I'm not sure if that's actually majority or not.
But even Wind Waker has his sisters kidnapped and he stabs Ganondorf in the head.
Yeah, that's as far as they'll be going.
I doubt they'd be going anywhere farther than that.
Yeah, it's a very interesting direction.
And with art style, it is noteworthy that the Mario movie still used the generic, you know, the generic illumination art style
(07:19):
with all the Mario designs basically just slapped into it.
Yeah, I think he's moving together.
I'm not sure if they're going to be doing the same here, but I do have a really good feeling that's going to be the case.
Because when you think about it, the illumination art style does kind of look similar to certain official game art of Zelda.
(07:45):
I think it was the Oracle games that had this type of art style that feels a lot more generic.
And like, for example, they had round eyes in those games.
I figure maybe this is something that illumination would be basing off of, and that's what Miyamoto would probably choose.
And even like Breath of the Wild, like the people in Breath of the Wild don't look too too far off.
(08:09):
Once again, Breath of the Wild is kind of like a bit more anime than what you get from illumination.
That's much more than I if I saw one of the Breath of the Wild NPCs in the Mario movie.
Obviously, if they weren't in a Legend of Zelda looking outfit, but if their face just showed up, I'd be maybe a little confused.
(08:35):
But it isn't the furthest off from what they might do.
And if I'm being honest, Breath of the Wild being as big as it is, it's probably going to be where the movie takes a chunk of its inspiration visually from.
I highly doubt that.
Okay, so even though Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are more successful than previous entries,
(09:03):
people are starting to recognize Link more for his blue Champions tunic rather than his Peter Pan inspired green tunic.
I think Miyamoto being Miyamoto would probably want to bring the more classic appearances of the characters.
Green tunic would make sense, but I'm more like how when Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are marketed,
(09:30):
where they have more that kind of look, the paint brushy maybe kind of...
Oh man, I'm not too sure.
I don't think they're going to go for a Wind Waker or maybe Skyward Sword because it's kind of generic.
Twilight Princess or Wind Waker, I'd feel like are completely off the table stylistic-wise.
(09:54):
Yeah, I am completely doubtful they would ever choose that art style.
If anything, they just go with their standard elimination art style and work off of some older games that actually had something similar.
I like the idea of bringing almost all art styles together, maybe less Twilight Princess, less Wind Waker.
(10:18):
But I like the idea of the Oracle games mixing a little bit with Breath of the Wild and Skyward Sword.
You can get a mix of all of them.
Yeah, like a good middle ground.
I think that would be probably what they're going to game for because they can't just say, oh it's Zelda, but which one, right?
I'm definitely going to try and kind of hone down a style that really speaks to most of the games.
(10:42):
I feel strongly that the Breath of the Wild style with some tweaks could really match the illumination.
I feel that they could take a bit of inspiration from Skyward Sword in terms of the colors and proportions.
Yeah, or even the official art, like the not in-game stuff obviously from Ocarina of Time and the promotional material.
(11:09):
I feel like you could fold in some of that.
The illustrations and renders, yeah.
I saw somebody point out recently that completely changed my whole viewing on the Zelda timeline, but we won't get into that.
They said, the Legend of Zelda is a legend, so every iteration is slightly different than the last.
Yeah, that's pretty much what I used as my base theory for Breath of the Wild's timeline placement.
(11:43):
That's insane.
It's a true story, it's a fairy tale, it's a myth.
This movie would just be an iteration of that.
It would just be more interesting.
Legend of Zelda has a kind of formulaic story with the idea of Link being reincarnated.
(12:08):
Reincarnated, kind of reincarnated is the right one.
Okay, yeah, Link being reincarnated to fight Ganondorf again, that's kind of the basic thing.
But each Legend of Zelda game, I don't really have a...
It's such a weird...
(12:29):
I don't know what they're going to do with the story because there's so much stuff.
It's difficult to... I feel they're going to have a lot of struggle really condensing the story.
At least either they try to tell a story or read a whole different story.
Actually, that's what I want to get into, right?
(12:51):
What do you believe the story beats that the story will take after?
Will it be more Ocarina of Time based?
Will it have some ploids from Skyward Sword? That's a big question on my mind right now.
It would either be a specific game being referenced or the most default basic first Legend of Zelda game kind of storyline.
(13:23):
Because you can visit a variety of land, but with Legend of Zelda, it's probably Nintendo's most actual story driven series.
And you know, famously, very heavily story driven video games translate to movies really well.
I almost shot you down there, Tyler.
(13:50):
I guess you could argue that Xenoblade is not made by Nintendo, but they do publish it.
You already got a ton of this, but Xenoblade not to sell 10 million copies in a weekend.
Yeah, the focus is that a lot of the games feel more narrative based than story based, right?
Because the story is there, but without that, but they're really focused on a narrative with how to kind of build the world rather than build the story, really.
(14:19):
Because if you look at Twilight Princess, I love the storytelling, but a lot of it was very focused on the narrative of that responsibility throughout the game, right?
Responsibility of having the Triforce of Furage, how Zelda really deals with the Twilight stuff, right?
(14:40):
And the story could be better to a degree, but a lot more focus is on that narrative in the theme games, right?
It's gonna be kind of hard to translate that to an illumination film, in my opinion.
I'm a little worried because I do feel like in the wrong hands, the Legend of Zelda movie could almost be the exact same story beat wise from the Mario.
(15:12):
It could be the same as the Mario movie.
Like you could pretty much do outside of the, what's it called, Isekai-ness of it all. It could be pretty much the same story.
That's a risk. That is definitely a risk there.
(15:35):
I feel that risk is a lot more prevalent if they try to do a Hyrule Warriors story kind of thing, right?
I'm not talking about merging of timelines and universes. I'm talking about Link being part of...
Ensemble cast type of thing.
Yeah.
I don't want that kind of story beat there. It's just...
(15:59):
The fact that they did that... two games with that too. It kind of takes away the whole purpose of Link being the center.
Looking at the Mario movie, they did start exploring stuff that we never saw in the games themselves.
(16:26):
One of the things I've thought about Miyamoto bringing up is probably something that they did in Mario movie where they had Peach and Mario team up.
I think technically this was already done in one Zelda game where they had Zelda team up with Link.
But I do suspect this might be the route that they'll take for this movie as well, just for the sake of having a bigger cast for this.
(16:58):
I can see it almost being...
The Legend of Zelda actually focuses on Zelda.
Have any of you had the... not displeasure, but the meh viewing experience of Raya and the Last Dragon?
No, I skipped that movie.
Because the movie pretty much follows an elevator pitch for the movie.
(17:25):
Girl needs to save her city or town or whatever, so she goes to every other town and gets one friend.
And with all the friends, they can save the town.
And I feel like Legend of Zelda could do that, where they get a funny comedian voicing the lore.
Or at least the sages, right?
Or something. That could be a possibility.
(17:48):
They've been in so many games already.
They freaking Tingle.
Alright, Tingle.
Tingle will never be a main character in a Zelda movie.
He'll be in the movie.
We already have him.
Freshly picked, Tingle's Rosy Ruby Land.
Oh, gosh. Oh dear.
That would be probably the most interesting choice they could choose.
(18:11):
Like, direction they could go.
Just not have Link at all.
Oh, that's not happening.
You know how mad people would be.
No, I don't think so.
Speaking of which, though...
Speaking of the Tingle movie...
The Tingleverse.
Oh dear.
How are you gonna sing with Tingle? Wait, what?
I don't know.
(18:32):
I don't know how that works, but...
Isn't there the Tingle game about Tingle just wanting a bunch of money so he can get a girlfriend?
I'm not sure about girlfriend, but yeah, basically.
He just gets Tingle.
Honestly, that could be a genuinely interesting movie.
I mean, if you want him as the main villain, that might work.
(18:56):
I'll come with the Blu-ray.
It's a short story, and you'll have a panic attack in it.
Of course.
Like, Pixar shorts that always come with the DVD copy of an old Pixar movie?
Oh man.
Of how Tingle is actually disturbing Link's journey of trying to sell maps, right?
(19:17):
Yeah.
Alright, I think we're getting off track a bit, but I know that Nathan has a synopsis of his preferred Zelda movie.
Right, yeah. Let's do this over on the Zelda Wiki Discord.
Basically, I think it's gonna be a generic story just for the sake of being the first movie.
(19:39):
Ganondorf or Ganon is the villain. I don't know whichever one they prefer.
Ganon, the Beast Ganon form is much more interesting to design.
I bet Ganondorf is more marketable, though.
Ganondorf could be more marketable, even though he's only been in a few games.
They need to make him hot, alright?
I do think more people know Ganondorf, mostly because of Smash Bros. as well.
(20:02):
That's true. Plus, I think Illumination has some very unique human villains already.
I think that the Link that we'll be seeing is a young boy.
It's kind of like some of the games.
Wait, like how old?
(20:23):
I'm thinking like 10 to 13 years of age.
So like young Link young?
Yeah, pretty much young Link young. Maybe, yeah, somewhere around that age.
Just to cater to the younger audiences and whatever Miyamoto wants.
I wonder if they're gonna age him up just a tiny bit so they can do some romance with Zelda if they choose to.
(20:44):
It's a little bit weird for a 15 year old kid.
Miyamoto is not the type to...
Do romance.
Yeah, to push romance.
I feel like Mario and Peach have like a canon relationship and they barely even lock eyes in the movie.
Yeah, I felt more of a situational thing than an actual relationship.
(21:07):
Maybe we'll do the stereotypical anime like meet cute thing.
They accidentally touch hands, both of them blush, boom you're done.
Yeah, that's probably a supply.
They get a pick.
He picks it first and he's like, oh, I'm so sorry. And it's like, oh, and then from there.
Yeah.
(21:28):
Zelda is probably gonna be the same age as Link because I mean, that's exactly how it works.
The thing is like a lot of the games, right, is that they don't explicitly say romantic. It's more purely platonic, right?
Actually, one of them does have a romantic.
I forgot. I am a fake fan. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Loremaster. You can strike me down now. I am no longer... I'm not fit for the podcast.
(21:57):
If the two main characters, Zelda and Link, are very young, that's also an interesting character development they could do throughout the movie.
Zelda has to now like take the throne or something. She has to bear the burden of A, the Triforce, and B, the throne.
So you could do something like that.
And I was thinking that, okay, so Zelda's young. She's still a princess. She still has parents who run the kingdom.
(22:26):
Oh, boom, Ganondorf suddenly attacks and Zelda's the only one who escapes or something like that.
And that's basically the pushing point for Link and Zelda to go on an adventure together.
And I think I wrote down here that this iteration of Link would have a younger sister and a father or grandfather, just to reference some other games.
(22:52):
They don't want Link to leave, but the village elder that sees Link and Zelda knows the situation, encourages them, encourages them leave, and then says the legendary words after giving Link a weapon.
Yeah, his last name is Tree or something.
Mr. Deku Tree.
Or... yeah.
(23:13):
And apparently, and you know, the adventure starts there. I'm not sure if they're going to go on an adventure where they recruit more people or if they're going to go on a classic Zelda adventure where they self-dungeons and get more special items or something like that.
That's the hard part, I think. The middle ground is where it falls apart for anything.
(23:35):
Yeah, because if you look at the Mario movie, they completely abandon the idea of worlds.
They basically just abandon the idea of a second act.
Yeah, pretty much. They just lost everything and went straight to basically treated their third act as kind of their second act.
(23:56):
Yeah, you were saying there is two ways they can go. You can either do their going through Hyrule, recruiting people, cool, you get to meet new characters, or you go through dungeons.
But one of the problems of earlier video game movies was that you always felt like you wanted to play the game that they were showing in front of you.
(24:18):
So if they were just doing it in the dungeon in animated form, and they're trying to figure out the stupid puzzle, that would be horrible in theaters.
You know what you're saying? You don't want the middle of the movie to be Link stuck on a puzzle for an hour?
Yeah, exactly.
Because you know how many Zelda fans are going to be in that audience just screaming at the screen?
(24:39):
They bring in the war temple.
It is a really weird dilemma because Legend of Zelda is known for its dungeons and puzzles, but that's so far too much into a movie.
I think maybe if they are at a dungeon sequence because of those fears, it's probably going to last maybe no longer than five minutes.
(25:01):
Well, it's not going to be a montage, it's just going to be a small dungeon type of thing.
They focus a lot more on suspense and maybe the atmosphere of the dungeon rather than having a full blown puzzle written large structure with a boss at the ending.
(25:22):
I think the boss at the end could be cool.
They could have a boss, yes. They definitely have a boss, they definitely have an item, but it'd be like maybe a five minute sequence or something.
It wouldn't be a huge section of the movie. They have no reason to do that.
But the rest of the dungeons would probably have to be a montage type of thing, which I'm a little scared about.
(25:47):
I'm not sure if it's going to be like, oh, they're going to run through eight dungeons and stuff like that.
It's a long incoming montage.
It's a water feeling like P.
Can we take one second of this podcast to all throw out one pop song guess for the movie?
(26:08):
Oh my god.
I'm going to go a little funky with it. I'm going to go a little funky with it and say that...
Oh shoot, I can't remember what it's called. Uptown Funk is going to be in the movie.
I, you know, I'm not going to question it. I can see that.
(26:33):
Take On Me was in Mario. I don't know what...
Copy was in Mario, right?
Everything is so off the air.
I'm feeling that they'll put something in by Motley Crudo.
Never going to give you up.
Oh no.
The Rick Roll.
The Rick Roll.
(26:54):
I think, you know...
They did that for the Angry Birds movie.
Don't even say that as a joke.
I think to introduce Link's Village or at the end of the movie when they're rebuilding Hyrule or whatever, they're helping the townspeople.
(27:15):
They're going to play We Built This City on Rock and Roll.
It's around the same era of song that's in every Illumination movie.
I can see it. Maybe instead of Rock and Roll it'll be like The Tri Force or something.
The Immigration Song. That's a good guess, I feel.
(27:38):
All I hope is that whatever song they play, Cass starts it.
Wait, so the Immigration Song. So Link pulls out the Master Sword and suddenly...
No, no, no.
Does the superhero land in the midst of battle and then starts beating up 50 enemies at once?
(27:59):
Wait, yeah, that actually works so well.
It's kind of building off that first dungeon sequence where they kind of discover more so the idea of the Master Sword. Not really introduce the Master Sword but kind of hint towards it.
That's probably the next location they'll go to and Ganondorf is actively looking for it to make sure that Link or Zelda will not get to it before him.
(28:31):
I mean, for the opening to explain the Master Sword, if I was the director, I would do one of those...Zelda's famous for their openings on their title screens where they kind of explain whatever the current story is going on.
They did that in Minish Cap. Skyward Sword's famous for theirs. What else? I guess Ocarina of Time kind of did that too.
(28:57):
I also had one a little later in.
Oh, that's true. Yeah, I like kind of like the lore breakdown. If they could do some kind of tease like that. I like Ocarina of Time's I think the most.
Almost.
Because there's a lot of information. I don't think the elder of Link's village should explain it just standing there.
No, it'd have to be like a flashback or you know like a montage type of thing.
(29:22):
Like at the beginning of Lord of the Rings where you just have...I don't remember her name. And she's talking like really softly about the history of the ring, but it's that except it's the Triforce.
I mean, yeah, that could work. Just have Impa talk about the Triforce. Basically what she did in the 2017 trailer.
The history of the world.
(29:45):
The history of the world and its ties to the Triforce, right? And how like Gandorf is...the thing is they could take a story beat from Ocarina of Time of how Ganon is present.
Shmoosie the King, right?
I actually really like that as well. I really like when they add like political stuff into something or like different ties for characters that already existed. It's not just, oh, we got this magic wizard that just showed up randomly.
(30:14):
Yeah. Yeah.
I feel that would actually kind of clue us in to at least Zelda recognizes that something's off. Off by his presence.
It kind of, I mean, of course he looks evil, but that doesn't mean he is evil. And then, oh no. Oh, he, oh no, he actually summons his monsters and the like. It's like crazy. Who would have thought?
(30:40):
Well, one thing that one thing to note is how Illumination used to handle their villains. I'm not sure if they did that in their later movies as well, but they did a really like they did a decent job explaining like the origin story of how their villains came to be.
And I think maybe if they're going to pull something out like that here, that could make up for some really good history, like a really good history section, maybe.
(31:05):
Yeah, I think in general Illumination villains are pretty good with their origin stories and maybe except like, what is it, the half twin brother grew situation.
Yeah, true.
That was really bad.
They were trying to pull something out. I feel with the way they can introduce Ganon, right, he would definitely introduce his, what's called motivation. Of course, there's something something Gerudo, how he's here to really just speak about it.
(31:38):
But, but how he kind of states it puts Zelda off as it feels like he's aiming more for like Hyrule rather just like, like more stable piece right.
Yeah, get the guys who wrote Arcane on this.
It did that stuff really well.
(31:59):
I do. I, I thinking of Ganondorf reminded me of our casting video and with Illumination taking this over it is annoyingly possible for at least one of those casting predictions to be correct.
And I for one hope it's not more. I hope it's. I hope Marky Mark does not touch this, does not touch this movie.
(32:23):
That's your fault for for casting him.
Did I, I don't remember if I was the new picked it was either me or Tyler but it was a me.
I feel like Timothée Chalamet is up there is like probably the highest.
Which would mean tilta tilta Swenson would probably never get back because assuming link is the same age.
(32:46):
Who would you say who do you think would be a possible replacement if, if Chalamet got got link.
It was in the comments down below.
It's like a really crazy thing. It could actually be anyone come to think of it.
I mean, if Nintendo puts out a video exactly like how they announced the cast for the Mario movie, you already know we're going to milk that.
(33:11):
Oh dear.
That's that's that's gonna be an interesting turn of events in our.
Nintendo cinematic universe video.
From here on out that video will be just wrong every day.
That stinks.
(33:32):
Is that it.
I don't have anything else to talk about really.
I'm good. Yeah.
Okay. Let's all pray that this movie is good and it comes out in like 2026 or something. Give the it time.
Actually, between Avatar 3 and Avatar 4 I'm thinking.
Yeah, that actually sounds pretty okay.
(33:55):
Let's hope it doesn't come out after Avatar 5. I don't want to be 30 years old when the Legend of Zelda movie comes out.
Thank you for joining us discussing a rumored Legend of Zelda movie.
Now we would love it if you could follow us on Twitter and list of future episodes on Spotify and iTunes.
Join our community Discord to see today's discussion and we'll see you next time on the Switch Clicks podcast.
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