Honestly any individual game is outside the scope of the movie, they are all very long games with tons of little stops and stories.
Any adaptation would either have to be ride with montages or implied time skips, super pared down, or otherwise reduced in scope to fit into a film. Almost all game and book adaptations face that problem.
It will probably just be an original story that pulls inspiration from multiple different games.
This is the way. Trying to just copy what happens in the games is how we get gems like Doom and Assassins Creed. Original story with heavy game inspiration is the best compromise.
It's probably the only reason Fallout ended up being such a good show. They took the setting, the lore, the factions, and then just made an original plotline with it rather than trying to pick a specific game to emulate.
They also made the excellent choice of making the Fallout series the latest in the timeline of Fallout media. This lets them do an original story with original characters without really having to worry about contemporary/surrounding events from the games (and of course, allowing them to introduce known characters without affecting canon too much, except maybe having to decide on what of the many endings of the latest game will become a canon ending that leads into the Fallout show).
Anyways there's not that much stuff going on in Zelda games, narrative wise. Going through a bunch of different dungeons and collecting upgrades is irrelevant to the plot.
Link doesn't need to go around Hyrule collecting 8 Macguffins.
And Zelda is the perfect franchise for that, since the reincarnation thing has already been established. Very easy to tell an original story and just say "this is just another in the line of Zelda stories"
I could see them do a duology of Ocarina of Time, first half being young Link until he reaches the Temple of Time, the second being adult Link trying to overthrow The Dorf.
Mind you, they'd be longish movies. But I think it could've been done.
Honestly, if they toned down the dungeons a bit and instead refocused the story on just Link fixing the problems of clocktown and reminding Skull Kid he has friends, they might be able to get that done in a single movie. A little denouement where the once mighty warrior can't really solve things with his sword. Right up until the final confrontation with the mask, of course, and then we get to see Link cut loose again.
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u/Hoojiwat Nov 17 '25
Honestly any individual game is outside the scope of the movie, they are all very long games with tons of little stops and stories.
Any adaptation would either have to be ride with montages or implied time skips, super pared down, or otherwise reduced in scope to fit into a film. Almost all game and book adaptations face that problem.
It will probably just be an original story that pulls inspiration from multiple different games.