Nintendo could succeed in the cinema, but it is afraid of success

Super Mario Bros. The Movie It was a success by all accounts. The more than $1.35 billion grossed at the box office underscores the incredible legacy of this intellectual property (IP) and the inexhaustible interest that the public has in it, but also shows that if Nintendo does not yet have a movie empire, it is because he is afraid of success.

shortly after Super Mario Bros. The Movie was released, broke dozens of records around the world and easily left behind great films, among which are several from Disney 一the most recognized company in the children’s entertainment industry一, rumors arose about the possibility of Nintendo working on an adaptation of Legend of Zelda. The information was soon denied, which was like a bucket of cold water.

In case you missed it: even the head of Sony liked it Super Mario Bros. The Movie.

Although Nintendo is still very jealous of its franchises, it has relaxed the restrictive measures around them. Today, its intellectual properties are even on mobile devices, and it has vowed to expand it more aggressively.

Fans hope that after this success, the company will bet on similar productions and take advantage of them to bring its other franchises to the movies, but apparently, Nintendo remains undecided, as if it lacked confidence in the intellectual properties it has cultivated for decades.

And it is about Super Mario Bros.a franchise that, while it seems to have barely made its film debut, is backed by decades in the video game industry, including hordes of long-time fans who flock to the theater to see the film as well as children who first encountered it. her and that will lead them to discover the vast world of IP in video games… but apparently Nintendo doesn’t know about this potential or somehow ignores it.

Many companies wish they had even a tiny part of Nintendo’s established IPs to expand, while the Big N squanders them.

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Related video: Video games that should be movies or series

Nintendo may be a movie institution, but it’s taking time

It is understood that Nintendo suffered the trauma of the terrible criticism of the live-action film of Super Mario Bros. of the 90s and that as a result of it he has moved away from the cinema or adaptations in general, but I think that the past decades were enough to heal and try again.

Just see the success of Super Mario Bros. The Movie makes one think how successful adaptations of Legend of Zelda, metroid And till f-zero… But how can you ask Nintendo for an adaptation of the latter if it hasn’t even been encouraged to launch a new game in the series? He seems unaware of the demand that is out there around these dream projects.

There are filmmakers interested in taking over the adaptation of metroidthere are even actresses who would love to play Samus and even Princess Zelda in a live-action Legend of Zelda. The interest of the fans is also there, but the most important one is missing: that of Nintendo.

If Nintendo were another, in an alternate universe at this point we would already have a Nintendo Cinematic Universe and it would be much more successful than Marvel’s. But unfortunately in which we live, Nintendo is not encouraged and we have to settle for the first movie of Mario in decades.

Nintendo doesn’t listen to fans: people want to watch movies and anime from their IPs

Examples of successful film or TV adaptations are abundant: The Witcher, Uncharted, The Last of Us anime of castlevania, Atelier Ryza, NieR and even the adaptation of Rampagewhich remains one of the most successful… people WANT to watch video game movies.

Sony has managed to realize the interest of fans in multimedia projects and capitalize on it: projects such as adaptations of Horizon and god of warthe movie of Grand Touring and even a live-action series of Twisted Metal… How is it possible that an IP whose last installment came out more than 10 years ago has more presence on television than Legend of Zeldaone of Nintendo’s most beloved?

SEGA, neither short nor lazy, after the tremendous success it achieved sonic the movie, released a sequel, an animated series on Netflix, is already preparing the third film and a live-action series focused on Knuckles. And he even listened to the fans who yelled at him to change Sonic’s original design!

There are others, like Capcom with resident Evil, who do not even care that the adaptations are liked by the fans to produce more. Even Microsoft has done the same with several adaptations of Halowhich, regardless of whether they left the fans happy, the efforts are there and they are far from being the worst.

Again: many companies would like to have the prestige of Nintendo, but the latter is missing something that the others have and that it should learn from them.

Will Nintendo be encouraged to fully enter the cinema?

Is the long-awaited collaboration with Ghibli that fans ask Nintendo so difficult? Perhaps the 2 Japanese companies, being giants in their area, do not collaborate well or perhaps Nintendo has simply not been interested. The speculation will continue. Even so, the key seems invariable to me: partnering with a studio with experience in cinema, that the person in charge of the franchise is involved in the creative process so that the premise does not deviate from the IP, that famous actors participate in the production and ready. What could go wrong? Come on!, that Nintendo could well make a silent film and even so the rooms would be full.

This is somewhat ironic considering that Nintendo is part of The Pokémon Company, the company that owns the most prolific entertainment franchise of all time. There is a lot of merchandise from this brand and collections of clothing, Pokémon TCG cards and video games are constantly being released and it has 23 movies and 1 anime that after 25 years continues to issue new episodes, not counting short animations like the fabulous series Pokémon Evolutions, pokemon origins, Pokémon Generations, Pokemon: Twilight Wings, poketoon, Pokémon: Journey of Dreams, Pokemon Hisuian: Snow and many more, like the upcoming collaborative stop-motion project with Netflix, Pokemon Concierge.

Something similar happens with Kirby, a franchise whose support comes mainly from HAL Laboratory and which despite this managed to launch an anime in the 2000s, apart from a lot of merchandise, comics and events in Japan. The most recent multimedia productions are the series of endearing short stories It’s Kirby Time.

Same with Intelligent Systems and Fire Emblem, who have kept the series afloat and with their good dose of fan service. It’s as if the IPs depended on their studios and not so much on Nintendo, which somewhat explains the neglect of f-zero and metroid.

Throughout the article you have seen several productions that show the quality of Nintendo’s productions and that could well work if they were encouraged to fully enter the film and television industry.

Finally, there is hope that after the phenomenon of Super Mario Nintendo changes its position around the multimedia expansion of its IPs and in that sense learns a little from Illumination. Only time will tell if we will ever see the live-action adaptations of Legend of Zelda and metroid or if Nintendo has reserved them for the public of the 22nd century and we will be left to dream about how majestic the film will be Super Smash Bros..

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