Adaptations

A look into the failings of movie’s based on games.

Legend+of+Zelda+Breath+of+The+Wild+cover+art.

Legend of Zelda Breath of The Wild cover art.

 

Through the years many stories have been adapted into big screen movies with success. From books Harry Potter series is a good example, and from comics the Avengers and Dark Knight movies have been good examples. But what Hollywood has never made successful have been Video Game adaptations. With examples like the Super Mario movie from the 90s and more recently Assassins Creed failing. And in the next few years there seem to be more movies based on games such as Detective Pikachu and a Sonic The Hedgehog movie but currently it is unclear if game film adaptations can be as successful as books and comics. With Bill Pivetz saying that,

There’s no way a producer can take the eight hours of the main story (gameplay, cutscenes, interactions, and the scenery) and cut that down to 120 minutes. The games are just too long (in a good way) to make into a movie.”  But I disagree as I feel there are games that I believe could be a successful film

The game I believe could be a great film is the Legend of Zelda. The Legend of Zelda could be a successful film series in my opinion because its simple in concept as Link is trying to save Princess Zelda from the evil Ganon but it has a fully fledged out world ready to be adapted full of exotic creatures and imaginative scenery that would pop on screen. The opposition of this idea have fears of what could occur condensing a long Zelda game into a movie and how that just wouldn’t work in one movie which I somewhat agree with. But what I see with this “limitation” is instead of condensing it to a single movie, a trilogy in the vain of the Lord of The Rings. Which was able to successfully adapt  a 1323 page behemoth of the book into three incredibly profitable and critically acclaimed movies with the final movie winning best picture. So I feel dividing Links adventure into three movies would work to great success and overcome the struggle that most adaptations have when condensing the plot of a game. And I really believe that that is how a Legend of Zelda adaptation could do what other Video Game adaptations have failed to do and become successful critically and commercially.