Nintendo recently announced that they are looking to use some of their IPs in movies. We thought it’d be interesting to come together and see what properties we would like to be seen made into a full-length feature.
I’m going to have to pick The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. One of the most influential games of all time, and one of the most iconic; it’s almost shocking that nothing has been made yet. Link would definitely have to speak in the film which could upset some fans. Live action would be better, with some CGI for the monsters and Navi. In my mind, it’d look something like that legendary April Fool’s joke from IGN. (Honorable Mention: The 1987 Zelda fake trailer)
My pick is Star Fox. While there are plenty of Nintendo properties that would potentially make for great movies I have to go with Star Fox. If I look at the recent anime Star Fox: The Battle Begins, I can’t help but think how incredible it could be if fleshed out into a full-length film. It would have to be animated, obviously.
You can hear most of my picks for this sort of category in mine and Spazzy_D’s discussion on Nintendo movies. I gave some examples of Nintendo IP that would certainly work on the big screen like Metroid, Xenoblade Chronicles and Splatoon. However for this pick I am going to go crazy and say Ice Climbers. After watching How to Train your Dragon the other day I began to think that DreamWorks could make a great Ice Climbers film. Two siblings venture into a cold and dangerous mountain in order to recover their villagers stolen food from a hoard of mean Condors. Throw in a village of Toppies in there and a cool-talking polar bear that likes icy-puns and you have a fun family adventure movie.
Mario, Zelda, whatever. Those are fine choices, powered by the imaginations of millions of players and with some of gaming’s most iconic elements. So I’m going to ignore them in favor of something less likely, but in no way less interesting: Kid Icarus. Uprising gave the series an unbelievable wealth of content, from a large cast of combative, eccentric gods to gorgeous and imaginative worlds. In a way, it’s a series that’d be especially suited for a narrative adaptation, where its many shifting allegiances and daring adventures could be told in a tighter way.
I think making a movie on IP’s that don’t have much in the way of their current content will give them a lot more freedom than attempting to do so with a well-established one. That said, something like a Donkey Kong movie (that may be Tarzan-esque in a way), a Metroid movie (the usual Aliens sort of thing) could work. Personally, seeing a movie version of Luigi’s Mansion may be interesting, though like I say about Zelda movie suggestions, notions of exploration and such would have to be translated into something that would keep the audience intrigued. So they can’t really follow the games too closely. For that reason, seeing an entirely new IP for a Nintendo-made movie may be something more interesting and fun to do –especially if it brings fresh characters to the ever growing Nintendo family!
This is both an exciting and scary prospect for Nintendo to go forward with, which is why I feel the best starting point would be a major Metroid motion picture. The technology is there of course to make it a full fledged animated production, but Metroid is also “real” enough in terms of character that a live action/CG affair could work well too. Metroid of course is well loved in the west as well, and Samus, even in silence, is one of Nintendo’s most complicated heroes and a strong female they could likely market easy, plus the universe is rich enough they could either do a movie adaptation of a game, or have it take place as it’s own stand alone part of the universe.
There are many staple Nintendo franchises that fans throughout the world (not to mention a fair share of Hollywood execs looking to fatten their wallets even further) are longing to see adapted into movie form, be it animated or live action. It’s undoubted that the first entry into Nintendo’s ‘cinematic universe’ will be one of the most important, with everyone turning a critical eye towards their debut picture (as much as I’m an advocate for hilariously bad films, I can’t bring myself to defend the 1993 Super Mario Bros. movie, so in this case let’s just pretend it doesn’t exist) to see if they’re capable of changing the precedent on video game movies for good. So in order to make a big splash, what franchise should they go with? Well there’s only one possible answer really, and that’s Urban Champion. Forget the Urban Champion you know and mildly tolerate, and picture a gritty, violent, face-breaking journey into the dark underworld of gang warfare. It’s the moving tale of a nameless fighter who wants to leave his shady criminal past behind and live a normal life, but to escape the mob he’ll need wits, street-smarts and most importantly, his fists. Of course, it can’t be done without knocking a few helpless saps into open manholes along the way too. All Nintendo need to do now is dye Sylvester Stallone’s hair blue, and they’ve got their lead – clone him a bunch of times and you’ve got the rest of your cast! With the huge financial nest egg they’re sitting on, there’s no reason it can’t be done.
Check out Kantopia for information about Fire Emblem!
…and Minus World for information about retro and obscure games!
Let us know what you think in the comments below or on Twitter!
Call me crazy, but it seems like it would be a good idea to do a fairly obscure Nintendo title for a movie first, as with Minus World’s Urban Champion suggestion. That way, the filmmakers can have maximum freedom with the subject material, and thus very well make a really good movie without having to worry much about staying true to the source material. Like um… Excitebike. Pilotwings? Wild Gunman? Steel Diver? Or yes, Ice Climbers. …I can’t think of any others right now.
Or not, I dunno. Metroid would be one of the easier ones to do, and I think it’d end up being good. The idea of having Samus being played in live action rather reminds me of Lara Croft’s film appearances. I would hope they would choose someone lesser known than Angelina Jolie, though.
Punch-Out! is a great prospect, in my opinion. There have been some pretty successful boxing films in the past. Creative liberties would need to be taken, though.
I would love to see a Fire Emblem movie. I would much rather want it to be an animated movie since the art style and cutscenes of Awakening and Fates are so gorgeous that it would be a sin to not make a movie with that art style. Although I would be fine with a live action movie as well.
If they’re working on animated movies, I’d think that Mario or Zelda would be safe bets, though I’m leaning more towards Zelda. Main series Mario games are pretty much devoid of plot, and I don’t know how willing they’d be to reach into one of the spin-off titles to make a movie based on those series. Zelda, on the other hand, is pretty well known for its story and a great range of characters. I don’t know how well a movie would do with a silent protagonist though, but it might be an interesting experiment.
Live-action, on the other hand, I would say Metroid, Punch-Out!, or maybe even Fire Emblem. Punch-Out would be the easiest, as has been said before me. Metroid again has the silent protagonist issue, but I didn’t have a problem with Samus airing her mind out in Fusion (don’t speak of the other one), so it could work either way. Fire Emblem would be a lot easier live if the characters didn’t have such ridiculous hair colors all the time, but otherwise I think it’d be possible.
But I’m just gonna throw this one out there, since I know everyone’s thinking it: Smash. Something akin to the Subspace Emissary, but fleshed out into a full movie. Oh hells yes would I watch that.
I’d gotta say…real-life movie does make things a huge failure. Pixel is still okay though (shut up haters, I loved that movie so much as I felt nostalgia), but the real-life Mario movie was kinda off balanced with messed up storyline of Bowser being a humanoid mafia lord and Yoshi being a friendly raptor, even Goombas being a bulky what-the-hell character, and Luigi being TOOOOOOOOOO younger than Mario. Seriously, I think there should be times that we shouldn’t trust the Hollywood.
But, I’d definitely love it if it becomes animated movie, whether that’ll be a 2D or 3D movie. Zelda and Metroid may fit perfectly in 3D, while Fire Emblem and Kid Icarus fits perfectly on the 2D anime, and maybe Earthbound too if Mr. Itoi would allow it. But in this case and when it come with this site, I’d rather see a Smash Bros. movie. Like Spiral said above, I think it’ll be fun they made the Subspace Emissary a movie, but also adding the Wii U/3DS newcomers and DLC characters in the movie too.