Ever since it was announced, it’s been hard to fathom what a live action Zelda movie might look like or what it will be about. Will it follow the archetypal events of the games or chart a completely new story? Will Link still have pointy ears and a green tunic? Well, today the upcoming Nintendo movie’s director, Wes Ball, gave fans something to chew on: He wants it to be more like a Hayao Miyazaki animated movie rather than Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings.
At least that’s what he told Entertainment Weekly this week in a brief interview. Ball, who directed The Maze Runner and the upcoming Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes movie, described his vision for a live-action adaptation of Zelda as “this awesome fantasy-adventure movie that isn’t like Lord of the Rings, it’s its own thing.” “I’ve always said,” he continued, “I would love to see a live-action Miyazaki. That wonder and whimsy that he brings to things, I would love to see something like that.”
So what exactly does that mean? Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli is, after all, an animation studio best known for feature-length animated movies like Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away. Nintendo, in partnership with Sony, specifically decided against making an animated Zelda movie, which seemed like the more obvious route to go. We can still glean from Ball’s pitch that he’s aiming for a more colorful and vibrant take on fantasy than the grim, gray violence of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Maybe Ball simply intends that his film will have a similar level of grace, playfulness, and economy as Miyazaki’s films (the animator famously hates the Lord of the Rings movies). After all, the Hobbit trilogy was pretty bright and colorful for the most part, but I’d hardly call it Studio Ghibli-like. Or maybe Ball simply knows that dropping the acclaimed Japanese animation director’s name will be a sure way to get fans excited without actually explaining what he’s talking about.
Elsewhere in the interview, the director said he’s not really planning to get deep into working on the Zelda movie script until after he’s had a break following Planets of the Apes’ release next year. After that, the life-long Zelda fan said he wants to, “give fans what they’re hoping for, and also invite new people in” to the Nintendo fantasy world that’s been around for nearly 40 years.
He called the action-adventure series, whose latest entry, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, broke sales records and might be one of the best games ever made, the most important “untapped IP” around. “My whole life has led up to this moment,” Ball told Entertainment Weekly. “I grew up on Zelda and it is the most important property, I think, that’s untapped IP, if you will. So we very much are working hard to do something. We’re not just trying to do it because we can. We want to make something really special.”
You go tap that IP Mister Ball, just like Miyazaki would.
