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Nintendo Shuts Down Fan-Made Zelda Movie
Andorin writes "An independently filmed adaptation of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, called The Hero Of Time, has been taken offline by Nintendo as of the end of December. The film's producers write: 'We came to an agreement with Nintendo earlier this month to stop distributing the film... We understand Nintendo's right to protect its characters and trademarks and understand how in order to keep their property unspoiled by fan's interpretation of the franchise, Nintendo needs to protect itself — even from fan-works with good intentions.' Filming for the feature-length, non-profit film began in August 2004 and the movie was completed in 2008. It premiered in various theaters worldwide, including in New York and Los Angeles, and then became available online in the middle of December, before it was targeted by Nintendo's legal team. As both an avid Zelda fan and an appreciator of independent works, I was extremely disappointed in Nintendo's strong-arming of a noncommercial adaptation to the Game of the Year for 1999."
We all know you wouldn't get anywhere with Micky Mouse, why should a game character be any different?
Without these evil fans they have no sales. Pricks. And I'm not even a gamer.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Got a link?
Surprised it took so long for them to take the thing down, what with it having been in theaters and all.
"We live in a global world" - Harvey Pitt, former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman
... on your favourite bittorrent search engine.
They took so long to enforce it as part of the agreement. If they don't enforce their trademarks, they lose them. Waiting to take it down was the best they could have done, honestly. Props for waiting.
I hate grammar Nazi's.
I don't get it... Nintendo let the (completed) and arguably much better Light of Courage Zelda series stay up. Why would they take this one down?
It's bad enough Nintendo shut them down. Forcing them to put out a "mea culpa" statement like this (no doubt with hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars of lawsuits promised if they did not) is absolutely disgusting. Even if they did manage to put a little edge in it.
The owner of the copyright has the *exclusive* right to make derivative works.
That includes everything, for-profit or not-for-profit.
If you want to make a derivative work of someone else's stuff, you have to ask for (and receive) permission first.
I realize the slashdot crowd doesn't agree with all that, but it is the existing law.
Wow, after viewing the trailer, it's like we dodged a bullet there, the world is looking a lot brighter now. Thank you Nintendo!
Now I'm curious and I'm going to have to hunt down a copy of that movie, that I would never have heard of had Nintendo just let it be.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Maybe people should learn that you simple have very little rights to do anything with other people's IP. Yes it does not seem fair but that's how it is.
Use and leverage things which allow you to exploit them, like open source software or creative commons licensed works.
Personally I want to see the copyright holders become more vigilant so that the world can realize the dangers of IP and maybe from that we can learn to have a more constructive society with more open-IP.
For the time being, don't take the IP others, leverage what is available in the community.
I understand that these people are fans, but I don't get why they put all their energy into creating a project that was going to shut down?!
Instead, why didn't they create a work influenced and inspired by Zelda and put that out instead? People might remark that it was derivative, but it would be far better than a project that was doomed to be forced underground.
I know some people will say that they wanted a Zelda movie, but Nintendo don't want to make one, but that's Nintendo's tough shit really, though - they'll not see any of their fan's money because of it!
The fan spends four years in production. The film is screened in New York and L.A.
It never occurs to him at any point along the way to ask Nintendo for their permission and support. It comes as a surprise when the rights holder pulls the plug.
There is a way to get it right:
The Hunt for Gollum
I'm not sure why Nintendo would want to do this - it's only a negative for them, spreading all this ill will. Look at Star Trek and Star Wars. Lucasfilm and Paramount generally don't "crack down" on fan films or most other fan works, as long as they're nonprofit ventures. And fan films are more comparable to Lucasfilm and Paramount products. Nintendo primarily sells interactive products, so a noninteractive fan film would not be in direct competition with well, anything they sell. That is, unless they decide to develop a full length Zelda film. Remember how well Super Mario Bros. turned out?
Freedom is drinking a beer in the park when you're supposed to be at work.
Reminds me of when Sqeenix decided to shut down that Chrono Trigger fan game.
The Hero of Time will probably be the next Zelda story-line game Nintendo releases... it was a pretty good story line IMHO. It would not surprise me that Nintendo compensated them for the story (I'm sure not much for it being infringement) and will mangle it for their own liking. Any takers?
"...to keep their property unspoiled by fan's interpretation of the franchise..." Are they serious? Nintendo doesn't even have a consistent timeline for the Zelda games, plus they're currently running the franchise into the ground (Link as an engineer, anyone?). So what the hell are they complaining about? They should be thankful they still have such loyal fans willing to put so much effort into something out of love for the franchise, even though Nintendo has done almost everything to alienate both hardcore gamers in general and their fanbase alike. Nintendo, you used to be cool. Get your shit together.
Seriously- what does nintendo have besides zelda? Mario- thats it!
The acting was so bad I couldn't get through the first 15 min of it... No wonder it got canned!
Rename it to Legend of Grizelda, parody the character names and rerelease it as a parody.
Joke em if they cant take a F**k! The gall! Screw with your fanbase and lose your old friends like Metallica.
I bet they woulda ate poo if the takedown lawyers told em to. Damn, question authority even if it is as silly and insignificant as a video game company.
If no one gets feisty, this will get as bad as the stinkin NFL and their fans art. At least they can always watch hockey instead of pansy pad football.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Just another example of how companies shoot themselves in the foot, strangle interest and circumvent a prime method of promoting their product; all in the name of that false idea of "protecting themselves". Had some one in their executive management pulled their head out of their ass, they could have capitalized on this to no end. Not that I care one way or another how this played out. It just seems one of the major problems companies have is the; not invented here syndrome.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
Without these pricks, the fans would have no Zelda.
Whether Nintendo is right or wrong, all of the heartbreak could have been prevented in advance of all that work if the makers of the movie had done one simple thing first...ask permission. Of course, I'm also smart enough to know why they didn't do that...they knew they probably wouldn't get it.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
thats why it is there. and, fuck nintendos strong arming legal team. if anything, they made the company lose much more in value in PR than they made save in zelda's image.
Read radical news here
the nintendo party i mean ? by creating a stampede which the net community wouldnt like, they had advertised the thing in a way they couldnt even if they have spent tens of millions of bucks
Read radical news here
For those interested, there are several links to download the film on this thread:
http://www.legendofzeldaseries.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=10488&sid=18caba8996498f0b9de3aa34d9d2718d
There are torrent and Mega Upload links. Thank you, Nintendo, for generating the press to alert me to this work which I never would've otherwise found about.
...torrent traffic sees huge spike for previously unheard of movie.
I for one never heard of this film and now just started the torrent.
I even named my cat Zelda, so I want to see this film ;-)
---
I am certainly going to hunt down a rogue copy of this forbidden film, and dust off my old Zelda games. When is Nintendo releasing the next Zelda game?
An internal system operation returned the error "The operation completed successfully.".
I can see how it's mechanically like the Streisand Effect -- try to silence something, end up drawing more attention to it. But the reason for the suppression isn't that the thing being taken down is embarrassing or otherwise damaging to them, so the consequence seems... inconsequential.
I also doubt it's deliberate. They probably just don't care. More people downloading the movie from torrent sites is less important than them throwing their legal weight around. The only downside is how we feel about them for doing the take down. Which is the "corporations are jerk-asses" effect, not the Streisand Effect. :P
The enemies of Democracy are
...I had never even heard of this movie/project until I read this story. I am now happily downloading the torrent for viewing. Several orders of magnitude more people will now see this movie than otherwise would have. Way to protect your IP, Nintendo!!
... next time, make a movie of Ys.
It seems that Desilu didn't register the copyrights properly for the first season,
At least in the US, copyright is the automatic default. Anything you do is automatically copyrighted. Registering it is useful, especially if you want to prove it's yours, but not necessary.
Now, trademarks are different, as are patents. But these are completely different bodies of law.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
If the geeks at Nintendo were even half way awake they'd have noticed this thing brewing a long time ago.
Wait until the fans sink all their investments into the movie, then blow it out of the water with a lawsuit after they're too low on the budget to fight back.
Whereas Nintendo was protecting their franchise with the release of the CD-i rapes of Zelda. I'm sure whatever the amateur fans made couldn't have been as bad.
http://screwattack.com/videos/AVGN-CD-i-Part-2
http://screwattack.com/videos/AVGN-CD-i-Part-3
You just created the first Streisand effect of 2010. That's almost as good as FRIST POST. Your legal team should be very proud of itself. /sarcasm
Game of the Year 1999? I thought we were talking about a Zelda game, not Metal Gear Solid... Anyways, I really don't see the hoopla here. These folks made a movie using Nintendo's property. It wasn't like Nintendo sued them into oblivion, as many companies would've done, they came to an agreement with the filmmakers, and even let them ride it out through the end of the year. If anything, this should serve as an example to other companies about how to gracefully pull this kind of thing off without looking like a total wanker. Of course, this is /., and at least 3/4ths of us will demand we go French Revolution on Nintendo's executives.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ComiketComiket, where characters from all walks of ... from variety of different genres are regularly spoiled in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DoujinshiDoujinshi, often in ways not for the faint of heart.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Nintendo leaves almost exact clones of their games intact, even with copyrighted art if they're not making money. Scale is also a factor - this was airing in *theaters*, and some non-fan moviegoers could *perhaps* get the wrong impression of LoZ.
Nintendo has always been stalwart when it comes to protecting their copyrights. Nintendo has a long history of comments about fair use, personal backups, and so forth that might even make Ken Kutaragi, Mr. "PS3 gamers should get a second job", laugh out loud. Their actions are usually quite in line with their statements.
But, something I have never heard about, despite trawling some of the darkest parts of the internet, is Nintendo going after creators of porn based on Nintendo IP. This has always confused me--I'm not really for nor against them going after the artists, but considering the potential harm they might do to Nintendo's brand, you'd think it would be of a higher priority. Even more astounding, at least to me, is that as far as I can tell THOT was being given away for free, while there are plenty of toon porn sites out there that charge for their content (though piracy often slips around this). I would think it almost a no-brainer for Nintendo to go after the commercial sites and more popular/notorious artists to scare off the little guys. And, yet, I've never heard of a single case or even a C&D.
In fact, I've never heard of any company acting upon toon porn (and any cosplay porn that may exist.) Why is this? Are they somehow not aware it exists? Rule 34 is a popular enough concept at this point that I would think the idea would have at least entered their head from somewhere. Are they scared of bringing the world of drawn pornography to the limelight? After an Iowa man was thrown in jail for kiddie toon porn ("shota yaoi"), Nintendo (and other similar companies) could get even more help from the FBI and local police forces (looking to make a name for themselves) going after the artists of any underaged characters. Nintendo obviously isn't going just for profit makers (Neither is Disney), so their lack of action in this regard leaves me scratching my head. ..Oh, and, uh, boo copyright, overzealous corporations, fish, fish, etc.
I cant believe I'm saying this about George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, but perhaps Nintendo would have been better served to take a lesson from them and embrace this fan production for what it is an homage to a great franchise? Anyone remember the fan made "remake" of Raiders of the Lost Ark? They could have even gone so far as to sponsor it, offer it as a download on the Wii or a bonus feature on the next Zelda game, instead all they managed to do was alienate some of the very fans they rely on for their success.
Let me google that for you.
Nice of *The King* to invite us over for *Dinner* eh Luigi?
"Ma Boi, that's what all true warriors want..."
Does anyone else find it interesting that this movie can open in theaters worldwide, and in major American markets like Los Angeles and New York, without a peep from Nintendo, but the moment it goes online, the beast awakens?
Did Nintendo even know about the film before it was posted for all on the web?
There may be nothing to it, but it does appear, at least, that Nintendo doesn't have any feelers at all in the real world, while actively hunting on the web.
I'm not usually one to buck the mob, but today is an exception.
Yes, I actually rushed to download and watch the movie before the legal warriors started trying to get it stamped out, expecting to see a great work of art saved from suppression by corporate greed.
But after watching the mp4, I think I have a pretty good idea why Nintendo would want to suppress this.
The movie...freaking...SUCKED!
Way too many deviations from the canon plot of the game, cheesy scripts, and "Darunia" was a complete ditz for a rock-solid "prince of the gorons". He reminded me of a cross between Spock and Jar Jar Binks, in fact, and coming from a trekkie like myself that's saying something. Where's the Zora King? Hell, Epona wasn't even white maned, or even named IIRC. Link? Um...when did he get ADD?
I could go on...
In their shoes I wouldn't want my precious mascotts trotted out by amateurs either.
I am an avid fan of the series and I could barely bring myself to finish watching it. It was sad.
If Nintendo had had the foresight to make the movie themselves...with a professional cast and a corporate backed budget, you can bet your iron boots they'd have made a fortune on it. They'd have done it right, if they'd have bothered to do it at all.
The thing that really gives me the shudders about this is the 1984-style public recantation: "We understand Nintendo's right to protect its characters and trademarks and understand how in order to keep their property unspoiled by fan's interpretation of the franchise, Nintendo needs to protect itself -- even from fan-works with good intentions." You can just imagine the tearful, contrite speech through broken teeth ...
Personally, I think fan-art is reserved for those with little creative ability, but plenty of time and desire.
Every time I see fan-art, no matter how good, I end up asking myself "Why don't they just come up with their own works/stories/plots that don't rely on the creativity of others?". The only reason I can come up with is they are incapable.
My own daughter, a graphic artist, does the same thing. She spends hundreds of hours creating fan-art that has no possible monetary value, then complains that she can't find a job in graphics.
Does that mean my daughter is not creative? To some extent, yes. But here is the difference. She CHOOSES not to be creative by not even trying to do something outside the franchises of others.
So, I guess the real question is whether or not people are doing it for "fun", or trying to make a living out of it.
Nobody is 100% creative. Nobody.
Every major work of art borrows from many other influences.
Name any piece of creative work and all the influences can be identified without difficulty (that is part of the routine work of the critics in the respective creative fields).
Creativity is transformation, Picasso learned by emulating Goya, Andy Warhol literally ripped off publicists, musicians all around the world use themes from other musicians for their own work.
It is a testament to the pernicious cunning of the lawyers of the cartels in the Music and Movie industries, that many people like you conceive creativity like existing in a perfect vacuum, when the reality is that nobody can create anything without learning and copying from others.
The other day I was watching a nature program in which an older chimp was teaching a younger one how to use a stick to get ants for a delicious meal.
In the derided world of the "creative" industries, the first chimp should withhold the information for its own benefit instead of spreading the knowledge as widely as possible. This is clearly perverse, but is this perversity where the cartels want us for their own benefit.
These asinine restrictions on creativity are against human nature, and it is sad to see a father misunderstanding so completely the creative process and indicting, horribly, wrongly, his own daughter as non creative for doing what creative minds do: copying.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
http://torrents.thepiratebay.org/5224637/The_Legend_of_Zelda_Movie__The_Hero_of_Time_(fanmade)_(avi).5224637.TPB.torrent
Haven't watched it yet.
This then is the problem with a lot of these so-called "creators". They assume that their "creative" work was "created" in a vacuum, as if they their stories are 100-percent original and didn't incorporate elements from already existing works. Isaac Newton, a much greater intellect than 99.99 percent of these glorified hacks, had the humility to say: "If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants."
shitting in the faces of your fans. Whatever happened to "the customer is always right"? Hello, these people are your customers! If you don't treat them with dignity and respect, then they will no longer be your customers. Also like above, the only ones they seem to have problems with are true adoring fans. They have no qualms with hentai porn makers or other people even when their works are derogatory or illegal, but the real law-abiding citizens and fans are where their hatred lies. I've tried and tried again many times to like Nintendo. Between the n64 and psx, I chose the n64 first. Out of the 128 bit systems I chose the Gamecube first and out of this generation I chose the wii first. I think that qualifies me to some respect from nintendo for beo loyal, but me and others like me are be defecated on by nintendo and though many times by the other two, to a much lesser extent. All they see when they look at us is money and we are nothing to them. There, I said it. Nintendo, you better make a Zelda movie or else I will shun you from my household "for all and eternity".
Hey, did anyone here ever see the ign.com April Fools joke trailer for 2008? Watch it here. Compare this with the YouTube trailer for The Hero of Time movie (alternate version). You will immediately notice a difference in quality (in IGN's favor). Nintendo probably didn't pursue IGN for their joke trailer, but that may be due to the fact that IGN wasn't actually making a movie, just an April Fools trailer. But, if I were Nintendo, and I were inclined to grant trademark lenience, having seen both of these samples, I would choose the IGN version, because the Hero of Time movie looks puerile by comparison (and, yes, I do mean that it looks like a child filmed and post-produced it).
Without you I'd never knew about this movie!
But... the future refused to change.
I sure hope nobody posts anything like this
I saw the trailer, It doesn't look like a big loss to the world that it was shut down.
BECAUSE IT SUCKS!!!
I watched it, and it really sucks.
Well excuuuuuuse me, princess, but I'm not entirely convinced that Nintendo could make a better movie.
Thank Codd I've already downloaded it!
I'm a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar...
-Lucy-