Videogame fans rejoice! Director Adriano Forti has created a film adaptation of his vision of the Nintendo 64 classic hit ‘The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask’ with his latest Italian feature film ‘Lost in the Woods’. The feature film has been around the film festival circuit this year 2021 and has been on a roll with multiple awards wins as best feature film, animation, director, and animation.
‘Lost in the Woods’ is about the titular character Link who finds himself in the world of Termina, a place where the inhabitants are stuck in a three-day limbo, where he was told that the moon will strike the world of Termina on the festival called the Carnival of Time. Link must embark on a journey through the three-day perpetual cycle and wearing various masks that allow him to turn into different creatures. Link must play melodies of the Ocarina of Time to control the flow of time within the three-day cycle to meet his destiny with Skull Kid and recover the Majora’s Mask the Skull Kid possesses.
Adriano combined his direction with 3D animation and some scenes with real-life characters in a seamless fashion as a nice homage to making sure the creatures in the film match closely to the videogame’s counterparts, which is a pleasant feeling of providing the fan-service this series deserves for the audience. The special effects and 3D animation look amazing as the decision to modernize the graphics of the cinematics help bring his own vision out to what it would look like if there was a remastered version of the game (yes, I know there was a remastered version on Nintendo 3DS too in the form of the videogame).
As the majority of the film is 3D rendered, this essentially gave the film free reign to create some incredible wide shots of the world of Termina to the smallest details of battle scenes, giving the sense of loneliness and grief within the society knowing they have a predetermined fate of danger. With the plot device in place, the dialogue emphasizes that humanity and empathetic characters become very important in the time of desperation to come together as a society to save the world of Termina from its potential demise.
The musical score has a nice blend of piano, violins, and heavy bass orchestras that create the sense of urgency during battles to the sadness within the villages of the people in Termina. Sound effects create the dark undertone theme behind the evil that revolves around the story that Link encounters during his adventure, combined with darker tints of each scene that presents the danger in several scenes of battle.
The voiceover work from the actors playing the characters blend well with the theme of this film. The audio effects and manipulation of the voices to reflect the type of monsters and creatures compliment the art style of what they would sound like if the videogame characters had voices. Because it is an Italian film, luckily there is still closed captions for English speakers and for those who prefer to read text like they did when they played the videogame (90s kids who played RPGs in the PlayStation One and Nintendo 64 era can relate to this).
In the scenes with the real-life characters, a lot of green screens was put into work that does a great job in blending the 3D rendered towns with the characters walking through them in the backgrounds. Some real location scenes are also carefully selected to retain the consistent look and feel throughout the film, without having to cause any distraction away from the story. The budget of the film is unknown, but if it was a low-budget production, the animation and green screen effects did a great job in accentuating the positives and hiding the negatives as best as they can for each scene.
Overall, the feature film did an incredible job to bring a videogame story to life on the silver screen. The Legend of Zelda series is long overdue of getting a film adaptation, and it is understandable why not a lot of filmmakers take the risk of turning videogame stories into film as Zelda fan enthusiasts will likely make harsher comparisons to the story they grew up with. But for those that just want a film to enjoy pay homage to this “legendary” series (pun intended), ‘Lost in the Woods’ does just that.
by: Trevor Brooks
© 2021. UniversalCinema Mag.