Nintendo has revealed who will play Link and Zeldain its upcoming live-actionThe Legend of Zeldamovie. Both actors are relatively unknown and still quite young; however, just how young the boy cast to play Link is has begun to dawn on older Zelda fans.
Benjamin Evan Ainsworth is the actorNintendohas cast to play the role of Link. Undoubtedly, the young actor’s biggest role to date by quite some way, not only because of his limited prior credits, but because he is still incredibly young. Ainsworth was born in September 2008 and is just 16 years old. That also means, as was highlighted byTony Coffey on Twitter, the actor was not alive when theNintendo Wiiwas released.
Benjamin Ainsworth, the actor who will play live-action Link, was not alive when the Nintendo Wii was released
Three of my hairs turned grey while writing that sentence
Not only had Ainsworth not been born when Nintendo launched the Wii, but the console would have been preparing to celebrate its second birthday by the time the first-ever live-action Link even existed. That realization isn’t sitting well with a lot of older Nintendo fans, particularly those who, like me, were fully grown or close to it the first time they held a Wii Remote.
Coffey followed up by noting them sharing this hurtful piece of information to those of us over 30 isn’t their way of saying Ainsworth is too young to play Link. They simply think it’s noteworthy that the actor cast in the role is younger than Twilight Princess. Please, Tony, stop, I’m already dead.
The replies are an expected mix of people like me for whom the revelation has made them feel like they’re about to crumble into dust to, as the OP predicted, those who think they believe an older actor should have been cast as Link. Someone has also pointed out that Ainsworth was only five years old whenBreath of the Wildwas announced. I hate to break this to you,CainzJawbone, but actually, since we were first told about Breath of the Wild in January 2013, he was only four.
This on top ofthe BBC labeling the Wii a retro console. What a week.
Thankfully, Bo Bragason, the actor who will play live-action Zelda, was around when the Wii launched, although she probably wasn’t taking it in turns to bowl in Wii Sports with the rest of her family since she’d have only been two when it launched. Turns outBragason already has a history of video game actingtoo, having performed motion capture for young Lunafreya in aFinal Fantasy 15anime, a role for which they also used Bragason’s likeness.
