Clearly, neither actor is a newcomer. Yet, they aren’t nearly the marquee names that some were expecting for such a highly-anticipated projects. Popular fancasts included Euphoria‘s Hunter Schafer or Anya Taylor-Joy as Zelda and Jacob Tremblay or Justice Smith as Link.
However, there is precedent for picking relative unknowns to play iconic characters. Christopher Reeve, Henry Cavill, and now David Corenswet were hardly household names when they were picked to star as Superman. Conversely, controversy surrounded the announcement that Chris Pratt and Charlie Day would voice the titular siblings in The Super Mario Bros. Movie, precisely because their onscreen personas threatened to overshadow the video game heroes they portrayed. By picking actors without a lot of cultural baggage, Nintendo ensures that we’ll think only of Zelda and Link when we watch Bragason and Ainsworth.
Further, the bigger questions surrounding The Legend of Zelda relate more to the version of the characters we’ll see instead of the people portraying them. The Zelda game series has a famously convoluted chronology, with branching timelines and varying versions of the adventuring Link, the magical princess Zelda, and their enemy Ganon.
Miyamoto’s casting announcement doesn’t give us much information about which direction the movie will take. The earthtones worn by Ainsley in the photos accompanying Miyamoto’s post recall the tunic that Link traditionally dons, although his dark hair is quite a departure from the traditionally towheaded character. Bragason certainly looks like Zelda, photographed in front of a green wood and wearing a blue top that doesn’t look that different from the outfit that the princess has in Breath of the Wild, one of the more beloved Zelda games.
Will we see Ainsley carrying around a Sheikah Slate in The Legend of Zelda? Will time-travel shenanigans mean that we’ll see older versions of the characters at some point? Will someone tell Link “I am error?”
Obviously, the announcement doesn’t answer any of those questions, nor does it address the remaining casting concerns. Although Link and Zelda have faced off against a variety of baddies, the big boss of the games tends to be some variation of Ganon, and it wouldn’t be surprising Nintendo go for a bigger name in the villain role (not unlike getting Gene Hackman or Nicholas Hoult to play Lex Luthor, to go back to Superman analogies). More importantly, we still don’t know who will play Tingle, clearly the most important Zelda character.
