'Super Mario' Is a Monster Hit, But 'Legend of Zelda' Will Need a More Delicate Hand

Jan 04, 2024

It's a-time for a ‘Legend of Zelda’ adaptation! But are us mere mortals able to get it right?

Nintendo has taken over the big screen, as The Super Mario Bros. Movie continues to defy expectations at the global box office, cementing its status as Koopa-sized hit. A $1.3 billion worldwide gross (and still climbing!) no doubt has Nintendo looking to fast-track some of their other videogame properties to the big screen, hoping to duplicate Mario's success. And while there's no shortage of potential franchises to turn to, one clearly stands alone, like a jeweled sword standing upright in a sun-dappled forest clearing. Make no mistake: The Legend of Zelda is coming. We're not sure form it'll take. When last we heard of a potential Zelda adaptation, it was rumored to be in development as a TV show for Netflix. (More on that in a bit.) But after Mario's box-office windfall, it's tough to imagine it taking any form other than a big-screen animated film.

In fact, there is little doubt that some studio executive somewhere is meeting with Nintendo's higher-ups, pointing at Super Mario, and saying, "That. Just do that again." Honestly, could you blame them? But Nintendo (who seems receptive to the idea) needs to be careful, because while both Zelda and Mario both sprung from the mind of legendary game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, they are very different properties with very different sensibilities. What worked for Mario could be disastrous for Zelda. As is always the case when you start a Zelda game playthrough ... danger lies ahead.

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First, let's start with what we know. Again, The Super Mario Bros. Movie is now the second-biggest animated film of all time, putting it in the same company as the Frozen films and the upper echelon of Pixar smashes (The Incredibles, Toy Story, etc.). It was also the latest smash from Illumination and Universal, who are already rolling in animation money thanks to the Despicable Me/Minions and Sing franchises. It's easy to assume that Universal would like to get rolling on a Mario sequel and any other Nintendo projects as quickly as possible. They may also be thinking "shared universe," as those continue to be all the rage right now and Nintendo's Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros' videogame series have already laid out a template for allowing all of their characters to mingle. In fact, The Super Mario Bros. Movie features an extended Mario Kart sequence that finds Mario racing against Donkey Kong and a host of other Kong-related Nintendo characters.

The last anyone heard about a potential Zelda project was way back in 2015 when The Washington Journal reported that a live-action series was in the works at Netflix. Given that eight years have passed since then (not to mention Mario's big-screen success and Netflix's latest troubles), it seems unlikely that the project is still on the drawing board. Meanwhile, reports broke this week that Universal and Illumination are very much interested in continuing their relationship with Nintendo and are eyeing Zelda as their next big get.

But just because that makes business sense doesn't necessarily mean it would make creative sense. The simple truth is that the Zelda series (which just released its 19th installment, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, for the Nintendo Switch) is a very different beast from Mario. The world where Mario lives has always been presented as a wacky "anything goes" type of universe, full of colorful (if occasionally nonsensical) creatures and increasingly bizarre "power ups." (You want Mario in a cat costume? You got it!) It's not something Illumination could really screw up by stuffing it with self-referential jokes and needle drops because the Mario universe, which has featured everything from haunted houses to physics-defying roller coasters to giant sentient bullets, is capable of absorbing almost any ridiculous idea while still feeling like Mario. This is decidedly not the case with The Legend of Zelda. The series does occasionally get weird (ask your Zelda-playing friends about Tingle) but, at its best, it carries a quiet and introspective tone. In a perfect world, Zelda should have more of a Studio Ghibli vibe. Like many of that studio's anime films, Zelda is about adventure, magic, and the joy of discovery. It's about uncovering a cleverly concealed secret passage in a dark corner of a castle or stumbling upon a large cave filled with hidden riches. In the best Zelda games, the story can get downright somber.

Super Mario has been adapted a number of times over the years in movies, cartoons, TV series, etc., and even the ones that didn't work out so well have their defenders. Meanwhile, The Legend of Zelda TV show you might have forgotten about (our only Zelda adaptation) was a short-lived animated series that everyone agrees was an unmitigated disaster, largely because the producers tried to bend the Zelda universe into fitting the afternoon-cartoon style of the era. Unlike Mario, Zelda is not a universe that can be bent without breaking. Its main characters, elfin hero Link, headstrong Princess Zelda, and the demonic villain Ganondorf, can't start cracking jokes or singing power-ballad love songs that'll end up on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart like "Peaches" did. The simple truth is it's going to be a much tougher adaptation than Super Mario. And the biggest mistake Nintendo or anyone else can make is to say, "Hey, it worked for Mario, so it'll work for Zelda, too."

So you may find yourself asking, "Okay, then, so how should they make a Zelda movie?" Hey, look, I'm just an entertainment journalist. I don't get to make those big decisions. I could point out that while Illumination did all right by Mario, they're the worst possible fit for Zelda, as their house style is almost the polar opposite of what Zelda needs. (Illumination execs would no doubt counter this by pointing at their box-office receipts and shouting "Scoreboard!" back at me.) Meanwhile, let's hope that live-action Netflix thing truly is dead because Zelda definitely should be animated. But not using the same generic, 3D-animation style that's omnipresent these days and makes a lot of the big-ticket animation releases look largely the same. Instead, anyone working on a Zelda film should be looking at Ghibli. They should be looking at Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. They should be looking at breaking away from Mario to create a fantastical and painterly animation style that's suited to the mysterious world of Hyrule. Link's probably going to have to talk (he typically doesn't). That doesn't mean he needs to be particularly chatty, and finding that balance is going to be far more important than whatever big-name actor a studio tries to lure to the role.

Most of all: Don't think of Zelda as the next big building block in the Nintendo franchise. Think of it as its own unique property, something that needs to be handled with care and not thrown into a shared universe with Mario and Luigi and Metroid's Samus Aran and Animal Crossing's Tom Nook and god knows whatever other Nintendo characters are now being eyeballed for their own movie. (Did I mention Super Mario made a lot of money?) At the risk of sounding trite, Zelda is special. Gamers have known this forever. It would be a shame for that to not hold true for moviegoers, too.

Robert Brian Taylor is the Lead Training Editor and a Features Editor for Collider. Throughout his career, his work has appeared in an eclectic combination of newspapers, magazines, books and websites. He wrote the short film "Uninvited Guests," which screened at the Oaks Theater as part of the 2019 Pittsburgh 48 Hour Film Project. His fiction has been featured at Shotgun Honey, and his short-film script "Dig" was named an official selection of the Carnegie Screenwriters Script and Screen Festival. He lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and also writes and podcasts about film and TV at CultSpark.com. You can follow him on Twitter @robertbtaylor.