It’s official: Nintendo is making a live-action movie based on The Legend of Zelda, its hugely influential, decades-old video game franchise about an elf-eared boy named Link who saves the world. Funnily enough, Nintendo is co-financing the project with Sony, the company behind PlayStation, Nintendo’s long-time rival in the video game space. The film will be directed by Wes Ball, who helmed The Maze Runner movies.
The announcement of a Zelda movie comes after Nintendo found huge success earlier this year with The Super Mario Bros. Movie, based on another one of its iconic properties. The quality and quantity of video game movies have been on the rise for awhile, and with Nintendo — basically the Disney of video games — throwing its hat into the ring, it’s a sign that we should all buckle up. Video game adaptations are going to get very big, very fast.
As for the Zelda film, a lot of questions remain unanswered. Which of the many Zelda games released since the first one in 1986 will the movie adapt? Or will it just be a generalized distillation of all of them, another version of a story that is told anew with every game? In the games, Link is silent; will he remain so in the movie, or will he have dialogue? And who will play him?
The answer to that last question might depend on the first few, but even so, we have ideas about who could play this iconic role:
Timothée Chalamet
Let’s start by asking who Link is. What are his defining characteristics? Well, we don’t know a lot of specifics, because Link has been completely mute ever since his first appearance in the original Legend of Zelda game, a tradition that carries on to this day. The point of this is so he can be anything to anyone; the less we know about Link, the easier it is for the player to project themselves onto him.
We don’t know if the movie will go this route, but we do want Link to be easy to identify with. Honestly, that might mean that the best choice would be to cast an unknown actor as Link. On the other hand, well-known actors get people to buy movie tickets. And given how many stars Nintendo hired for The Super Mario Bros. Movie, clearly they have nothing against big-name talent.
So we don’t know a ton about Link as a person, other than that he’s brave and good-hearted; he’d have to be to single-handedly save the world this many times. But we do know what he looks like. In his most popular incarnations, Link is a clean-shaven young man with a slim build. A few big-name actors with those attributes come to mind. Timothée Chalamet came to mind first, at least for me.
Timothée Chalamet is one of the hottest rising stars in Hollywood. He’s proven himself in smaller movies like Little Women and Call Me By Your Name as well as in major franchise fare like Dune, not to mention the upcoming Wonka. Clearly, he’s hungry to appear in major motion pictures, and The Legend of Zelda movie will be about as major as motion pictures get.
Chalamet has the Link look down. He’s slender, soft, almost elven. His screen presence has a gentle quality to it, but he still has a ton of charisma. All of that suits Link very well.
But Timothée Chalamet isn’t the only famous softboy in the running. Let’s talk about someone else who fans think might make a good Link: