Ever since Nintendo announced the film adaptation of Legend Of Zelda, I – like most right-thinking people – have been dead against the idea. More than the iconography, certainly more than the story, each of those games at its best is a new box of toys shipped over from Kyoto. Zelda is so natively a thing of play that it’d be like adapting… well, Hollywood’s post-Barbie gold rush has made it rather hard to find an appropriately hyperbolic analogy (an Uno movie, really?), so let’s just say: like adapting something that should not be adapted.
Or so I thought. Please notify Shigeru Miyamoto, and everyone in Hollywood, that I have changed my stance. There can be a Legend Of Zelda film, as long as it’s directed by Mike Cheslik. Cheslik’s Hundreds Of Beavers – a black-and-white silent comedy with touches of classic animation, with a cast mostly dressed in animal-mascot costumes – might not be the most obvious audition piece for that particular job.
The film borrows as much from video-games as from Buster Keaton or Chuck Jones, but its eye there is primarily on Nintendo’s other big hitter. “Besides the old Popeye and Donald Duck cartoons, [Cheslik’s] biggest influence is probably Super Mario Galaxy 2,” Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, the film’s star and co-writer, said in a 2023 interview, comparing the film’s use of high-angle shots to that game’s tracking camera.
You have to admire anyone who’s that specific (and correct) about their preferred Galaxy, but Cheslik clearly knows his history. The film features a SNES-style overworld map to show journeys across the snowy wilds; hunting tips illustrated in a style reminiscent of that era’s manuals; and a kind of inverted 1up counter that pops up on screen every time Tews’ hunter bags a kill and depletes when he visits the trading post, its wares presented as a gridded menu screen complete with Wii Shop-esque muzak.
The film’s plot synopsis, meanwhile, could double as a description of a survival game’s progression loop. Tews is dropped into an untamed North American forest. Armed only with his wits and a rumbling belly, he must complete the same handful of tasks over and over to slowly expand his range of gear, courtesy of the aforementioned shop.
But what makes this hunter our hero (or at least mine, for reasons we’ll get to) is that he doesn’t approach the situation in the manner of a survival-game player.
The film introduces someone who does things that way, a fellow hunter – dressed, for some reason, as Santa – who’s clearly read all the online guides then put in the hard yards through a process of min-maxing. He sticks to a prescribed route and routine, sweeping up mascot-costumed beavers and rabbits with...
Or so I thought. Please notify Shigeru Miyamoto, and everyone in Hollywood, that I have changed my stance. There can be a Legend Of Zelda film, as long as it’s directed by Mike Cheslik. Cheslik’s Hundreds Of Beavers – a black-and-white silent comedy with touches of classic animation, with a cast mostly dressed in animal-mascot costumes – might not be the most obvious audition piece for that particular job.
The film borrows as much from video-games as from Buster Keaton or Chuck Jones, but its eye there is primarily on Nintendo’s other big hitter. “Besides the old Popeye and Donald Duck cartoons, [Cheslik’s] biggest influence is probably Super Mario Galaxy 2,” Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, the film’s star and co-writer, said in a 2023 interview, comparing the film’s use of high-angle shots to that game’s tracking camera.
You have to admire anyone who’s that specific (and correct) about their preferred Galaxy, but Cheslik clearly knows his history. The film features a SNES-style overworld map to show journeys across the snowy wilds; hunting tips illustrated in a style reminiscent of that era’s manuals; and a kind of inverted 1up counter that pops up on screen every time Tews’ hunter bags a kill and depletes when he visits the trading post, its wares presented as a gridded menu screen complete with Wii Shop-esque muzak.
The film’s plot synopsis, meanwhile, could double as a description of a survival game’s progression loop. Tews is dropped into an untamed North American forest. Armed only with his wits and a rumbling belly, he must complete the same handful of tasks over and over to slowly expand his range of gear, courtesy of the aforementioned shop.
But what makes this hunter our hero (or at least mine, for reasons we’ll get to) is that he doesn’t approach the situation in the manner of a survival-game player.
The film introduces someone who does things that way, a fellow hunter – dressed, for some reason, as Santa – who’s clearly read all the online guides then put in the hard yards through a process of min-maxing. He sticks to a prescribed route and routine, sweeping up mascot-costumed beavers and rabbits with...
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Edge Uk (Digital) - 1 Issue, November 2024