IS Zelda, The Best Game On An Epic Scale?
The Legend of Zelda; it’s one of the most popular and longest running video game franchises ever. For many, Zelda is the end all be all of when it comes to games on an epic scale, but would that translate over to a film?
Video game-to-movie adaptations have not exactly been good, or even tolerable. In fact, the closest one to being a good movie was Disney’s adaptation of Ubisoft’s Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Still, most movies -based off games suffer from the fact that the source material has a very thin, or sometimes non-existent, storyline. This however, is not the case with “The Legend of Zelda.” The Zelda games all have self-contained stories, with no continuity from one game to the next, so the writer/director was simply able to choose one storyline and run with it.
The film is based mostly off “The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time,” which is arguably the most popular game in the series. The casting choices are great, though I could have done without the horridly put on accent from the actress playing princess Zelda. The makeup and costuming is amazing, this is Oscar-worthy work if I’ve ever seen it. Any movie that can make a green guy with fire red hair look plausible AND intimidating, is clearly doing something right.
The storyline is mostly taken from the video game Ocarina of Time, with a few minor changes made. Link is a young-man living in a forest town with creatures known as Kikori. He accompanies his boss on a journey to the castle town to make a delivery. But when Link is pulled away, he soon finds himself face to face with Princess Zelda. Through a series of somewhat cliché but fun to watch moments, Link finds himself wielding the legendary master sword, on a quest through time to save Princess Zelda and defeat the dark wizard Ganon.
The score is very well done too, taking tracks from the games as well as adding in new, original music that really pumps up the action. The composer does a great job of capturing the feel and emotion of the storyline.
Finally there’s the acting, which is spotty at best. Like in the games, Link remains mostly silent. The actor plays this up well, and does a nice job of emoting with only facial expressions and grunts. Link gets a few lines here and there, but for a film this just feels very odd and out of place. What makes it worse is the actress who plays Zelda, an American stage actress, clearly thinks she does a great British accent when she doesn’t. Zelda’s horrible accent, combined with some incredibly cheesy and contrived lines, makes her performance one of the hardest to watch. However, the actor playing the evil wizard Ganon does a superb job, and clearly is the standout performer in this whole thing. He’s pure evil, plain and simple. There are no jokes, nor any time for foolishness. Ganon is scary to put it bluntly. Sure, some of his lines are goofy, but the actor delivers them with such ferocity and malice that you can’t help but jump out of your seat when he speaks. I should also mention that this actor doesn’t try to put on an unnatural accent.
Overall, this is the video game movie gamers have been waiting for. Your average moviegoer may be put off by some of the cheesy dialogue and silly looking creatures, but for fans of the game, everything is here and well represented. This movie may not top Lord of the Rings, but it is a nice fantasy flick for fans of the game series and fantasy fans a like. Some images might be a bit frightening, so the youngsters may want to sit this one out.
I give The Legend of Zelda 3 out of 5 stars.
