At least some of the talk of entertainment town over the past two days has been Japanese videogame company Nintendo’s casting announcement for what is sure to be a blockbuster in two years’ time, the first Legend of Zelda live-action film.
For those who don’t know, the Legend of Zelda is one of Nintendo’s most beloved and longest-running video game series, a popularity that isn’t running out of steam with age, the last two installments, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom garnering rave reviews and fast-tracked places in the gaming hall of fame.
That context alone wouldn’t be enough to account for the supercharged levels of conversation around the casting choices of the two protagonists, though. No, that required the entrance of ideology, in one of its most virulent, modern forms – gender ideology.
You see, despite no longer being a gamer myself, I maintain an interest in the topic, as well as the industry, thanks to both the countless hours I sank into it as a teenager and its cultural relevance (the degree of which most people over the age of 40 still struggle to grasp, for whatever reason – it’s an industry that dwarfs film by many tens of billions of dollars a year). As a result, I was aware of an upcoming adaptation of the Legend of Zelda, and of that fact that unhinged westerners were staking their hopes and dreams on transgender woman (a man, in other words), Hunter Schafer being cast as the eponymous Princess Zelda.
Hunter Schafer is not just any old transgender woman, as far as his supporters are concerned, but rather was humorously born to play the role, so striking is the likeness in their eyes. I can’t count how many times over the past year I’ve seen side-by-side posts of Schafer and Zelda on social media, a particular post that has multiplied exponentially in recent days as a result of Nintendo’s decision not to go with Schafer, but with an actual woman, 21-year-old English actress, Bo Bragason.
Whether or not Nintendo or whoever was responsible for the casting was even aware of the pressure campaign to see Schafer as Zelda is anyone’s guess, but stranger things have happened than companies caving to noisy minorities. Instead, Nintendo went with two perfectly respectable, non-controversial choices: the aforementioned Ms Bragason as Zelda, and the 16-year-old, also English, actor, Benjamin Evan Ainsworth as the series’ hero, Link.
While both have starred in different projects, it’s still fair to say that they’re relative unknowns, and that has earned the choices some praise from those who aren’t busy tearing their hair out over the door being slammed, consciously or unconsciously, in Schafer’s face.
Everything about the whole saga speaks positively of Nintendo, which, upon reflection, commends itself as a company that, through the progressive fever-dream of the 2010s and beyond, never lost its head as so many other companies in the same industry did. It managed to do that which proved impossible for so many, and maintained a focus on the product over politics.
That is most evident in the consistent quality of the games it churns out, many of which are considered to ‘redefine’ whatever genre the game happens to be set in, with a rapidity that can only come of excellence, an excellence that can only come of focusing on the art and craft of videogame production, rather than social signalling.
A useful example of precisely the opposite is the Playstation exclusive, The Last of Us 2. While technically brilliant, and lauded by critics in the almost entirely liberal gaming journalism scene, it proved extraordinarily divisive amongst players for a number of story and gameplay-related reasons. Characters of diverse gender identities and sexual orientations abound, the story is relentlessly dark and merciless, and the gameplay was considered by many to be tired and repetitive, changing little from its prequel which came years earlier.
Whether rightly or wrongly, much of the blame for this was pinned on studio Naughty Dog’s focus on social signalling, which was perceived as having come at the expense of game production. That is a criticism that could never, at any point throughout its history, have been levelled at Nintendo, even when it wasn’t producing the stream of bangers that it seems to have been putting out in recent years.
One would have to imagine that this difference can be at least partially attributed to the fact that Nintendo is a Japanese company, with a focus on fun, family-friendly content, whereas western platforms Playstation and Xbox, along with their studios, have tended to care more about creating inclusive, socially-sensitive games, characters and content.
Indeed, a scan of LGBT videogame protagonists finds, to the best of my knowledge, zero in Nintendo games, compared to a great many across multiple Playstation and Xbox titles, coupled with a much greater focus on giving players freedom to express their multitudinous identities through same-sex romances (in games featuring such systems) and LGBT-focused stories.
For adults who wish to play such things, well and good, but since becoming a parent and taking on the mental burden of trying to figure out how best to help my children navigate an increasingly-deranged world, my priorities have shifted. With videogames such a central part of the childhood/adolescent experience now, questions of appropriateness now dominate my considerations of my children’s future media engagement.
It’s nice to know that there are still brands out there content to let kids be kids, and focusing on finding new ways to entertain them. It’s an example that no small number of western companies could learn from.