Thinking Out Loud: Nintendo Movies

Whilst this isn't strictly superhero related, I have some thoughts I wanted to share and this is about the only forum I have for such a thing, other than ranting at people at parties. I'm not so much going to pitch ideas for films based on Nintendo properties, but rather, I want to discuss the lack of any existing films along those lines. Yes there is the infamous Super Mario Bros, but how did that get one company so gun-shy that there aren't even any terrible straight to video films kicking around? Well, there is Donkey Kong, the 1997 animated series with a "movie" that is regarded as dire and unwatchable, but why just that one? Given the huge amount of profitable IP that Nintendo is sitting on, I find it shocking that there aren't more cheap cash-ins out there. A a general rule, Video Game movies get a bad rap, I feel that's undeserved, as a couple are passable in my reckoning, but I wonder if it's simply a matter of quantity rather than quality? Look at superhero films, before the MCU, there were, what, three or four genuinely good Superhero films? Adapting a different medium and/or genre well takes time, we're still seeing the Fantasy genre butchered on television and celluloid. 

Really, putting together a film based on The Legend of Zelda or Metroid isn't all that hard. Both Legend and Kubo and the Two Strings are pretty close to a Zelda narrative to begin with, just slap Link, Zelda and Ganon into a basic fantasy quest narrative and it should turn out fine with a decent cast and crew. There doesn't need to be all of the dungeons, medals, items and magic stones, because only the hardcore fans are going to get that reference anyway. Think about the classic Ant-Man helmet in Avengers: Endgame, it's a fun moment for me, but the film doesn't need to explain what it is. Having a little fairy tell Link to go get a sword and some Triforce pieces is kind of enough. See also: Metroid, it's kind of just an Aliens riff with a woman in power armour, throw in Ridley or Kraid and it should be a tight ninety minutes with a post-credits sting. The concept/insistence that getting into the minutiae of the source material is puzzling to me, as that's exactly the kind of thing that drags adaptation down; look at the two film versions of The Shining if you need further proof. The MCU stuff works so well because the films are solid before they add in all the Easter Eggs, not because of said eggs. 

Don't expect to see any of my "The Pitch" articles about this kind of thing anytime soon, but I do have some ideas. Like, a Kirby film seems pretty obvious to me, in the vein of a younger-pitched Pixar or Dreamworks joint. Kirby crashes to Pop Star and teams up with, I don't know, Gooey and Adele to save all of the food from King Dedede is a pretty straightforward script to work from and could likely turn a reasonable profit; Kirby is naturally pretty marketable and toyetic. Donkey Kong Country is a buddy road adventure with two monkeys, tell me you can't get Jordan Peele and Josh Gad to voice-over that one, really overusing "It's on like Donkey Kong" as a catch-phrase. So there could be a bad run of cheap cash-ins on Nintendo IPs, big deal, is that really a worse state of affairs than download fan-subs of Japanese TV specials or watching the cutscenes from The Shadow Emissary on YouTube for the twenty third time? Well, that's about all I had in me on this one, more superhero stuff next week.