Saturday, February 7, 2015

Hey! Listen!

What? It is. And yes, I'm an adult. Shut up.
Hold on to your minish caps nerds, there's-huh? It's a magical talking bird-hat. Just trust me on this. Anyway, somebody's making a live action Legend of Zelda series. For those of you who don't know or care why that's simultaneously fantastic and terrible news, I'd advise you to hold reset while you turn the power off. Get it? No? Then you might not get the rest of this. That's not a judgement, it's just that we're going down a pretty deep nerd hole here and, well, I'd still like you to respect me in the morning. Still there? Ok. Don't say I didn't warn you.

So the story, and I'm still not entirely sure I buy it, but the story is that Netflix will be developing a series based on The Legend of Zelda. 
If the first 8 episodes are a tutorial on how to watch Netflix, I'm out.
Yeah, see what I did there? I just burned you Skyward Sword!
Ok, that one time. Yeah, in 30 years
he utters one line, and that's it.
If you're unfamiliar, Zelda is a video game series about a little elf boy who rescues a perpetually kidnapped princess called Zelda. Usually the games involve solving puzzles, fighting monsters and wishing to hell that Navi would stop talking. Speaking of talking, one of the things that makes this news a little weird is that Link doesn't talk. The series creator, Shigeru Miyamoto intended Link to be sort of a blank slate for the player, like a point of view character. Sure, he can speak, and other characters in the games can converse with him just fine, but the convention is that we as the player never hear him.

So despite advancements in video game technology that allow for spoken dialogue, outside of a few grunt and shouts, Link is silent. Mostly. There were a couple of shitty CD-i games with poorly animated cut scenes in which Link was voiced, but those don't count.
Besides, I said advancements in video game technology. Burn #2!
Oh, that kind of family audience...
Ok, so live-action Link will probably have lines. Fine. Fans will probably get over that. What might be harder to get over is Netflix's description of the series as"Game of Thrones for a family audience," which, um. No. Zelda is a light-hearted adventure and Game of Thrones is, kind of...well, depressing and violent. Like for real, after last season's head-crushing episode I don't think I can watch GOT anymore. Or sleep. Ever again.

Hopefully 'just like Game of Thrones' is network executive short-hand for 'it'll also make a shit-load of money, just like Game of Thrones' because dark, gritty reboot and Nintendo go together like ill-advised and commercial failure.
Above: Denis Hopper as King Koopa in the live-action Super Mario Bros. movie,
which is widely recognized as an ill-advised commercial failure. See?

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