Illumination is an awful fit for Zelda and here’s why:
illumination can’t write complex stories, after Despicable Me 1 (which I’m not trying to imply is complex) they just stopped trying to write (good) character development or deeper themes or anything of that sort. The reason the Mario movie worked is cause Mario has such a simple story that you can get away with a movie that’s basically just fanservice with minimal plot, and I liked the Mario movie, but, my god, you just can’t do that with Zelda! There is so much more interesting lore and plot that happens in Zelda games than in Mario games that I don’t have faith in illumination to tackle. Also illumination’s artstyle does not work with most of Zelda’s artstyles! Illumination’s artstyle can’t replicate the dark art of twilight princess, or the ghibli inspired look of botw or totk, etc, Truly the only artstyle that could work with it is The Wind Waker’s but even thats a stretch. Now, I get why Nintendo chose Illumination again, cause they made them over a billion dollars last time, but almost any other studio would’ve been a better pick for Zelda and I just don’t see this movie being good with illumination at the helm.
TLDR: Zelda + Illumination = bad #
Honestly I’m not hopeful that anyone would be able to really capture the spirit and story of a zelda game in a movie series. Even as a comic/manga or tv show I think it would take a lot to flesh out properly and as such I’m kind of apathetic about the whole thing in genera.
14 year old me would be going NUTS over this news one way or another, but in my 30s I dont really have much expectation for hollywood adaptations and in general these things dont really matter to me as a person who enjoys the game. If it’s decent I’ll be pleasantly but otherwise I expect nothing.
This is especially true for a game like zelda. Zelda has lore and storytelling and cutscenes and characters, but at the end of the day they are a franchise where the heavy lifting is done by the gameplay and environments. Filling in those blanks or trying to capture it properly would be difficult. Any adaptation that’s good would have to be to do a lot of work to adapt it to a different format and will have to add a lot while picking and choosing from different eras.