The Legend of Zelda: The Light of Courage
| Fan Film | |
|---|---|
| Title: | The Legend of Zelda: The Light of Courage |
| Creator: | Sexualburgerking, Cellius_18, Orquiox, Robert C. "Joe_Cracker" McGee (original script) |
| Date: | 2006 |
| Length: | |
| Medium: | CGI |
| Genre: | |
| Fandom: | The Legend of Zelda |
| URL: | Dancing Triforce(now defunct; archived 30 Mar 2010) - downloadable content Part 1 Original script |
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The Legend of Zelda: The Light of Courage is a Legend of Zelda fanfilm with intentionally bad quality that is meant to be humorous.[1] It was created to mock The Legend of Zelda: The Light of Courage, an infamous scriptfic enthusiastically written by Robert C. "Joe_Cracker" McGee, which was widely regarded as badfic.
Synopsis
Seven years after the events of The Legend of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, Link is plagued by recurring nightmares about the moon falling and destroying Hyrule, which, of course, are meant to be a warning. To save the world, Link must explore the temples of the three goddesses to obtain the power to create the Master Sword. Meanwhile, Ganon travels to an alternate universe to seek a powerful magical weapon.[2]
Background: Prepare to Get Crackasized!
The year was 2003. The most recent game in the series at that point was The Wind Waker, and along with speculation about future titles and the much-debated Zelda timeline, a popular forum topic was the possibility of a movie based on the series, with dream casting, directors, plots, etc. It was not uncommon to see fan-scripts posted on forums like Zelda Universe, with varying degrees of quality. Importantly for this story, most fans at the time hated the only official animated adaptation of Zelda, the cartoon series from 1989.
Joe_Cracker, real name Robert C. McGee, was a 19-year-old high school senior from York, South Carolina. He posted the first message in a now-infamous thread on the IGN Zelda forums announcing his ambitious plans to create an animated movie based on the 1989 cartoon series titled "The Light of Courage," with elements from later games like Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask included...
Joe's wide-eyed optimism and earnest, but naive, attempts to get his script turned into a film bemused certain forumites. He insisted that he could obtain the rights to the Zelda series via a PetitionOnline page, and imagined an all-star cast, including Whoopi Goldberg and Britney Spears. One forum user nicknamed "THESPOTLIGHT" attempted to inject Joe with a sense of reality.
- 📷Date Posted: 9/9/03 2:46pm Subject: RE: The Legend of Zelda: The Light of Courage - A working progress
- Joe Cracker Said:
- "Once I am done with the screenplay, I want to submit to the right people that will help me get the Legal rights to do whatever I want with it and re-asemble the original voice cast."
- I say:
- I bet you don't evem know WHO the RIGHT people are! There isn't a team of people looking for amature screenplays to turn into low-budgeted movies. The rights to do a Zelda movie alone costs OVER A MILLION DOLLARS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- NO PRODUCER IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WOULD EVER LISTEN TO YOU OR YOUR PETITION.
- I just being honest with you. I know what it takes and you don't have it. You may be creative but it takes EXPERIENCE to make a good 90 min movie.
- The Cracker will crumble under the pressure.
Undaunted, the Cracker persisted, handing out flyers in his hometown to get people to sign his online petition. Unfortunately, less than 20 people signed. Out of a combination of frustration and pity, Spotlight agreed to help Joe as a script doctor, but Joe interpreted this arrangement as allowing himself to promote the as-yet-incomplete film online rather than working on his script. Throughout 2004, Spotlight was essentially subject to Cracker's demands and rewrites, being treated as an unpaid employee rather than a partner [...] Spotlight went offline several times, only to poke his head back out and complain about the poor quality of the script and how he was essentially having to re-write it entirely, but Joe brushed off all criticism and insisted the final product would be "Crackasized." By October 2004, the beleaguered co-screenwriter Spotlight abandoned the project, finally done humoring Joe. However, a trio (Triforce?) of trolls emerged to take his place.
The first of the trolls was sexualburgerking, who posed as a genuine fan of Cracker's work, pretending to create purposefully-bad fan art for use in the Light of Courage project.
The second troll was Cellius_18, who created a parody of Joe's project called "The Beacon of Courage," while pretending that it was an earnest attempt to make an animated Zelda movie, as Joe's project was. The reveal of this "knockoff" of course drove Joe bananas, but was intended to get him to work harder on his project.
The third troll was orquiox, another user pretending to help with the animation and scripting. Together, the three trolls impersonated John Grusd, who was producer of the 1980s Zelda series, and convinced Cracker that DiC Entertainment was open to producing a full-length Zelda movie (that the rights to the IP ultimately rested with Nintendo went over Joe's head). Joe_Cracker sent "John Grusd" his script, and the movie ultimately got produced as three CGI-animated shorts with intentionally-amateurish animation, with dialogue taken straight from Cracker's script, misspellings and grammar errors and all. They released throughout 2005 and 2006, with a promised fourth short languishing in development hell, with the producers jokingly saying it will be finished in 2035.
The three videos soon became comedy classics on Zelda boards, with the now-defunct website "Dancing Triforce"[1] set up to host them. Lines such as "My son keeps getting stronger and more braver every day," and "I cased over the moon" became memes among the Zelda fandom in the late 2000s.[3]
An updated version of the third short was released in 2008 with annotations explaining the inside jokes and backstory that had led up to this point.[1]
The Light of Courage has been used in several YouTube Poops and other parody videos.[1]
Resources
- The LEGION OF SUPERFANBOYS MEMBER #1: JOE CRACKER!
- The Light of Cracker [2] (now defunct, archived 27 Jan 2007)
- Know Your Meme
- [The Legend of Zelda Fandom] Joe_Cracker and the Light of Courage: A naive fanboy's screenplay becomes a classic fan-animation and later part of a campaign for Congress, Archived version by Historyguy1
- TV Tropes: web animation, script
References
- ^ a b c Know Your Meme. The Legend of Zelda: The Light of Courage. (Accessed Feb 2021.)
- ^ TV Tropes. The Light of Courage. (Accessed Feb 2021.)
- ^ Historyguy1. [The Legend of Zelda Fandom] Joe_Cracker and the Light of Courage: A naive fanboy's screenplay becomes a classic fan-animation and later part of a campaign for Congress, Archived version, posted to r/HobbyDrama on 5 Feb 2021. (Accessed 16 Feb 2021.)