"Legend"(1985) movie has strong similarities to OOT

If there has been a thread about this already I apologize.

Recently, I heard about a fantasy movie from the 80's directed by Ridley Scott (who directed such movies as Alien, Blade Runner, and Gladiator) called Legend. The movie stars a young Tom Cruise. I looked the movie up on IMDB and saw some discussion on the message board about how the movie had strong similarities to Zelda games, OOT in particular.

There may be spoilers about the movie below.

I got a chance to watch the movie and I will tell you IMO what the similarities are. The movie is basically about a lone boy who lives in the forest dressed in green, named Jack, who is visited by a princess. The princess is captured by an evil entity know as The Lord of Darkness. It is up to the unlikely hero, Jack, to save her. He is helped by fairies to find heroic armor and save the princess. There is a lot more to the story but that is the basic premise. I am not saying that either Nintendo or Ridley Scott copied the other, I just couldn't help but notice the similarities myself.

The movie bears a considerable amount of visual similarities as well. Although you could not really tell from a still image, during the forest scenes at the beginning of the film, there is a constant fluttering of lightly colored particles flying through the air. I couldn't find a picture of it, but there is even a scene in the movie where Jack is awakened in the middle of the night by a small dancing ball of light, very much like Navi, to aid him on his quest.

Here are a couple images to give you somewhat of an idea of what the film is like.


Here you can see the particles in the air, as the princess is aparently whistling to a bird in her hand.


Jack, before he gets his heroic clothes.

Originally Posted by Presea

I got a chance to watch the movie and I will tell you IMO what the similarities are. The movie is basically about a lone boy who lives in the forest dressed in green, named Jack, who is visited by a princess.

When I was little, I used to watch this movie over and over again. I see some of the similarities you've mentioned.

I'll have to think about this overnight, but my knee-jerk reaction is that the feeling of the movie is not similar to the Legend of Zelda at all. Let me re-think this and post more later.

- J

{EDIT: Presea, your comparison is a good one, though. Very thoughtful. I hope that you liked the movie. From what I remember, there were parts that were terrifying, so I don't think I would recommend it for kids. Tim Curry was awesome, as I recall. There was something erotic about his evil character. Hmmm. Okay, maybe that's too off-topic.}

You do know that the Metroid Ridley is named for Ridley Scott, right?

But yeah, this "similarity" was been disproved as inspiration. I believe TSA covers the topic on his popular "Gannon banned" page.

Welcome to the world of "we've heard of all this before" and "there is no relevancy between the two whatsoever".

Originally Posted by e_alert

Welcome to the world of "we've heard of all this before" and "there is no relevancy between the two whatsoever".

um if you didn't read the first post of presea

Originally Posted by Presea

If there has been a thread about this already I apologize.

so read the post before you be an idiot and be sarcastic about it!

/\/\idna, calm down. Talking like that will get you banned or something. Seriously, take a chill pill.

Originally Posted by e_alert

Welcome to the world of "we've heard of all this before" and "there is no relevancy between the two whatsoever".

Don't say "We" when every one hasn't heard of it, I haven't so thx for this thread im going to watch this movie

If this post sounds weird, please blame it on it being really early in the morning for me.

As for Legend- it's more like a fantasy movie than a Zelda one. I will admit to there being some similarities, but not enough to call it the inspiration for the Zelda series. What similarities there are can be found in other films and even literature.
The hero wore green because it fit the forest he was from, kind of like Robin Hood.
The idea of a lone hero saving a damsel in distress has existed for centuries, along with the idea of fighting evil monsters.
I will admit that the final shot of Jack and Lily reminded me of Link and Zelda.

To be honest, though, I didn't like this movie too much. Might post more on that later, but I have to go.

20. Claiming The Legend of Zelda is based on the movie "Legend":

I am not sure who started this great myth, but it is ending now. I e-mailed IMDB.com to remove that stupid trivia that says Miyamoto was influenced by the Ridley Scott film "Legend". Let's get the facts straight. Zeruda no Densetsu: The Hyrule Fantasy came out in Japan on the Famicom Disk System on February 21st, 1986. Legend came out in limited release in Europe in late 1985 due to an issue with the cut for the North American audience, which Ridley Scott discusses in the Ultimate Edition commentary and special features. Production of both masterpieces began at nearly the same time in 1983 at opposite ends of the globe. Quite frankly, there is a window of maybe two to three months in which Shigeru Miyamoto and company could have flown to Europe, seen Legend, and then flown back to make Zelda. In all honesty folks, Legend has very little in common with the original Legend of Zelda. Sure, Tom Cruise's character of "Jack" wears green clothes and he likes a princess and has to save her from an evil dude, but come on. Jack lives in a forest, has to save unicorns, drinks tea with forest folk, wears gold armor for most of the film, and fights some bull-demon form of Tim Curry. The film is more like Ocarina of Time, which came out in 1998, 12 years after The Legend of Zelda was released anywhere.

That doesn't sound like OOT to me. Ganon-Banned.

EDIT:

Gannon

Double-bonded GANON=BAN. :3

The only thing which relates to OoT between the two is the plot, and the boy garbed in green for camouflage purposes if they're living in a forest. OoT's plot isn't original, Princess is Kidnapped by evil dude, the poor boy has to rescue her, becomes hero, marries princess, they live happily every after THE END. It's nothing that someone would want to copy off some crappy 80's film. Nothing can make OoT look bad.

I think that is a Gannon-Ban.

I checked this movie out from the library after hearing that it had inspired Zelda.

I thought it was an incredibly boring, fruity movie and I didn't even get through it all. I guess its one of those movies that you have to had seen a lot as a kid to enjoy. I have my share of those movies too believe me...

The Labyrinth > The Neverending Story > The Dark Crystal > Legend

Originally Posted by Mr. Fish

You do know that the Metroid Ridley is named for Ridley Scott, right?

But yeah, this "similarity" was been disproved as inspiration. I believe TSA covers the topic on his popular "Gannon banned" page.

Yeah, that page is always a good read.

Originally Posted by /\/\idna

so read the post before you be an idiot and be sarcastic about it!

I suggest you learn some comprehension skills. I was simply confirming that, yes, there has indeed been threads about this before, and adding that they had nothing to do with each other at all, excepting the general Adventure theme. Sure, I used a sarcastic choice of words, but I fail to see how I could have meant anything too far from what I did. It would have been either "this has been discussed before" or "you're right, this has been discussed before". What's the difference?

Originally Posted by Sagge_AM

Don't say "We" when every one hasn't heard of it,

That makes no sense, considering that I don't even know everyone, and was therefore referring to the general populace of ZU (or perhaps the Zelda community, though ZU in particular).

Yeah anyway the movie sucked and it was nothing like Zelda, For those who haven't seen it, Don't even bother .. the movie is really bad ...

There's one similarity I find slightly disturbing, though...

When Ridley Scott was done making Legend, he regretted the decision to let Jerry Goldsmith score the film, so Scott went to German electronic music group Tangerine Dream, and asked them to score Legend for it's American release. And they did (in just three weeks!).

What this has got to do with Zelda? Well... If you ever get a chance to see the film with Tangerine Dream's soundtrack, take a listen to the "Unicorn Theme". It sounds alarmingly similar to "Zelda's Lullaby"!

Well like Janus said, lone boy saving a princess from evil is a very, very, very old tale. Zelda or Legend didn't start it.

Want to see very eerie similarities? Look at Metal Gear Solid and Escape from New York.