As children, we played a pretend game in the world of Hyrule on the playground. My friends and I searched for the ghosts of restless Poes on the wood chips under the jungle gyms. The corkscrew slide was our gateway to the Lost Woods. And when the bell rang, we pretended it was the ominous bell tower Majora’s mask, indicating the ‘dawn of the last day’. We made up our own dark and fantastic storylines and played them out like in the movie Legend of Zelda movie of our dreams.
I’m older now, and while I don’t play pretend play as often as I used to, I haven’t stopped thinking about making a movie adaptation of Nintendo’s great adventure series. So when I lost my job a few weeks ago and suddenly had a lot of free time, I decided the day had finally come to turn my (dark) fantasy into reality. Yes, I made one Legend of Zelda movie… sort of. I’ve had one since I got fired trailerAn opening credits rolland a malfunction videoand I wrote one 40 page story treatment for a whole-ass feature film called A link to the lost era (more on that later).
However, this is not just fanfiction or the fulfillment of children’s wishes. Let’s face it: Nintendo and Universal are about to announce a Zelda sequel to the billion dollars Super Mario Bros. movie every moment. So I see my project as a simple plea: if you’re going to bring the Master Sword to the big screen, don’t forget to give it some sharp edges. That is, please don’t make The Legend of Zelda just another Minions movie!
This whole project actually started a few months ago when I was looking at Ridley Scott’s Legend For the first time. My podcast co-host and I were planning our next miniseries for our show Eye of the Duck, and I was curious about the dark fantasy films of the eighties. Five minutes in LegendI could already see that we would be devoting the next few weeks and months of our podcast (and our lives!) to this movie and all the other movies.
Image: Universal Pictures Home Entertainment
Released in 1985, Legend is most famous for Tim Curry’s portrayal of the devil, who might as well be the definitive movie Satan now (although he’s referred to simply as “Darkness” in the film). The film is a dark, windy, glitter-covered hallucination, an experience so disorienting that Gene Siskel said it was like “remembering a bad dream” (he hated it). It is also It is rumored to have been the inspiration for the creation of the first Zelda game, although that’s almost certainly impossible since they were in production at exactly the same time. I can understand the presumption of that Legend and Zelda may be blood related in some way. The film straddles this awkward space between a hack-and-slash epic and a surreal horror film about the horrors of growing up and living in a world where, whether we like it or not, darkness always exists alongside the light. There are fairies too! Sounds familiar?
Like the best dark fantasy movies of the era, the Zelda games aren’t afraid to take us to uncomfortable places. The games have been exploring difficult themes for decades, such as the tragic loss of innocence Ocarina of Time or, of course, the ticking clock of the Apocalypse Majora’s mask. It’s the franchise’s unique combination of thematic gloom and wild, uninhibited fantasy that reminds me so much of Scott’s. Legend. And as I started exploring other movies from the 1980s dark fantasy movement, I became convinced that there was a Zelda movie hidden somewhere in the decade. So I tried to find it.
These movies contain exactly the kind of unbridled creative electricity that flows through the entire Legend of Zelda series. Yes, there are swords, castles, horses and scary monsters. But it’s more than that. Unfettered by the demands of today’s cinematic universe building, such as movies Conan the Barbarian, HighlanderAnd The story without end were free to actually do some swings. These had the advantage of coming out in the aftermath of Star Wars and well before Jurassic Parkwhen the concept of the “blockbuster” was still fairly new and directors were given the means to emulate the success of Star Wars – but no one knew exactly how to turn a movie into a billion-dollar venture (adjusted for inflation, of course).
So that’s how we end up with so many wonderfully bizarre attempts to capture the magic of Star Wars. The Jim Henson Company attempted a super dark muppet film as well as The dark crystaland a crazy, strangely sexual pseudo-musical, Labyrinth. There’s Matthew Robbins’ dragon slayer (created by many of the same people who made Star Wars), a hardcore sword-and-sorcery flick featuring a practically made dragon that takes your breath away. And later in the decade, we get cult favorites like The story without end, a portal fantasy that teaches children to read…or die! Some other lesser known gems are The company of wolvessome kind of perverse, Freudian Little Red Riding Hood, and Return to Ozasking, ‘What if The Wizard of Oz was it a total nightmare?”
Photo: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
When it comes to the value of darkness in children’s films, I often think of what director and legendary puppeteer is Frank Oz said about Jim Henson, a longtime co-worker: “He was fine with scaring children. He thought it was not healthy for children to always feel safe.” And having seen the best of the ’80s dark fantasy movement, I agree with him: Our current fantasy films are too safe. What lessons can children learn in the The Super Mario Bros. movie, besides “it’s cool to be Mario”? There are no hard truths in it The Rise of Skywalkeror Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and the list goes on and on. It’s not about traumatizing kids with kids movies, but it’s like Darkness says Legend: “What is light without dark?”
I hope my Zelda represent videos — no, celebrate it! – the 1980s dark fantasy movement. And I very much hope that Nintendo and Universal look to that era when planning what will likely be another world-dominating movie adaptation. But just in case they need a refresher… I wrote a dark fantasy Zelda film myself! It is called A link to the lost eraand the whole story treatment (with great art by my talented brother Vince) can be found here. The PDF is 40 pages long, but the pitch is simple. It’s just three words: old man Link. And yes, there’s also a role for the aging demon king Ganon, if Tim Curry is interested…
Legend is available for digital rental or purchase at Amazon, AppleTVAnd Vudu. Conan the Barbarian is streaming on Netflix. Highlander is streaming Prime video, Peacockor for free with ads on Crackle, Freevee, Plex, and The Roku Channel. The story without end streams for free with a library card on Hoopla and is available for digital rental or purchase at Amazon, AppleTVAnd Vudu. The dark crystal is available for digital rental or purchase at Amazon, AppleTVAnd Vudu. Labyrinth is streaming Hulu. dragon slayer streams for free with ads on Pluto TV, free with a library card on Kanopy, or available for digital rental or purchase on Amazon, AppleTVAnd Vudu. The company of wolves is streaming shiver and AMC Plus, or free with ads on Kanopy. Return to Oz is streaming DisneyPlus.