I can only imagine how many Nintendo fans have allowed daydreams of a LOTR-scaled Legend of Zelda film to unspool in their head, and not without good reason. The Nintendo franchise has often been a beautiful, exciting blend of sword-and-sorcery genre elements with a Western-eseque, lone gun, destiny-driven adventuring for as long as I’ve been around. Shigeru Miyamoto and his teams have always come up with compelling aesthetics in which to wrap the stories of Hyrule, Zelda, Ganon, Gorons and the silent hero, Link himself.

legend of zelda linkAll of that to say an animated film may not be the ideal format in the eyes of fans, but it’s certainly always been the most plausible. Nintendo doesn’t let loose with these franchises often (with questionable results in the rare event…), so a +$100m fantasy blockbuster isn’t in the cards anytime soon. The team behind TMNT and Astro Boy, Imagi Studios, gave the animated route a shot though, and put together the proof of concept above in 2007.

Obviously Nintendo didn’t swing for it, and it’s easy to see why. No more compelling than a few minutes of actually playing the game, there’s also a frankly lame homogenization of the aesthetic- here every character is that same smoothed-over, square-jawed CG character. It’s not with some energy and fun though.

What form would a Legend Of Zelda film take in your ideal world, if any at all? I’m of the N64 generation, so naturally Ocarina Of Time would be my jumping off point. Really though, anything as long as it ends up nothing like this:

via First Showing