So I recently learned that Nintendo is gonna make a Zelda movie, just like they did with the Mario movie. I’m pretty sure we all kinda knew that was gonna happen eventually. And I’m impressed with the choice to make it live-action. That suits the series much better than animation, I think, just like the opposite was true for Mario.

But there are a few things I really, really hope Nintendo doesn’t do with this movie – so, excuuuuuse me, Nintendo, are you listening? You better be listening!

First, and most importantly, DONT’T MESS UP THE STORY. MAKE IT GOOD. Action is flashy, but story is the meat — nay, the bones — of the entire film. If the story fails, the movie fails.

Second, and most importantly, do NOT make an adaptation of one of the games. Storytelling in video games is fundamentally different from storytelling in movies, and if you try to make a movie out of a game, it will allways suffer as a result. Make up a completely new, original story.

Third, and most importantly, I don’t mind if Link talks. (Oh, look, there goes half my audience.) The way I see it, Link is just a stand-in for the player, who can say whatever they want, which is why Link stays silent and lets them say it. But in a movie, Link doesn’t have any player controlling him, so he can say whatever he wants. Also, in a movie, you kind of have to know the protagonist’s motivations and goals and intentions the whole time, and it gets MUCH harder if the main character can’t say anything. It can still be done, but it would be very hard, so I wouldn’t mind if Link can talk in this movie. He talks a lot in that 80s cartoon series.

Actually, wouldn’t it be cool if this movie were mostly about Zelda? Link gets most of the screen time, so it would be a lot more interesting if Zelda were the main character instead. It’s in the title, after all.

Fourth, and most importantly, I want Link and Zelda to both be teenagers, played by teenage actors. Just my opinion. They’re allways teenagers in the games. Give them stubborn teenage-ish personalities. And maybe make Zelda a bit hotheaded or stubborn. It might be interesting if they don’t especially like each other at the start of the movie.

It might be interesting if the setting were radically different, but since this is a lot of peoples’ introduction to the whole franchise, it makes a lot more sense to make it generic Hyrule.

Sixth and lastly, the dungeons. The main pillars of dungeon gameplay are puzzles and monster-fighting. But puzzle solving is only interesting in games because they’re an interactive medium. In a movie, it just gets reeeeeal boring. So the dungeon sections had better be pretty low on the puzzle solving, unless there’s more than one person there working together. But combat can allso get boring after a while, so make sure each dungeon has a big set-piece moment or chase or boss fight, and probably make it most of what happens in the dungeon.

And by the way, make sure the characters all talk to each other. I’d hope this would go without saying, but I’ll say it anyway.

Now that I’m thinking about it, this would work pretty well if it were a road-trip, quest movie. Maybe it’s kind of like the original game, where Link is trying to reassemble all the pieces of the triforce, one from each dungeon. That would work, because that game didn’t have much of a plot anyway. You could use dungeons from every game in the series, weave in an equally-weighty plot involving Zelda, and seal the whole deal with a big boss fight against Ganon at the end. By the way, make sure that we know exactly what Ganon wants and why he wants it. “Take over the world” is such a generic plot nowadays, most villains could do it easy.

Also, make sure Zelda is on screen at least half the time, and make sure she actively does stuff. She’s the whole reason the franchise exists, and, like I said, Link allready gets most of the screen time.

Also, I really want Link and Zelda to get married at the end.