Ocarina of Time Returns, and Navi Never Left

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Coming up on Spotlight: a 1998 classic rebuilt from the ground up, with one of its original voices back by pure accident. Plus Keira Knightley and Ben Whishaw fighting over the car stereo, The Pitt and ER headed for a courtroom, and Bob Dylan in a hoodie at the Vatican.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is out today on Nintendo Switch 2, a full remake of the Nintendo 64 game that showed how Zelda could work in three dimensions. The story is the same: a forest kid named Link, a magic ocarina, a leap seven years into the future, and Ganondorf waiting at the end. Nearly everything around it is new.

Link finally has a jump button, where the original only let him hop at set ledges. There's a free camera, a quest tracker, and quick item swaps. That last one sounds minor until you remember the Water Temple, the dungeon that became shorthand for misery because you kept pausing to pull iron boots on and off. The Verge's Andrew Webster says he didn't find it difficult at all this time, calling it a well-designed dungeon held back by the technology of its day. Eurogamer's Christian Donlan gave the remake five stars and called it astonishing, with the Water Temple reborn as a drowned Art Nouveau palace and the Forest Temple as a parquet-floored murder mansion overtaken by trees. His one reservation: a few later areas could pass for any big modern fantasy game.

Nintendo's developer interviews add two lovely details. About a year ago, producer Eiji Aonuma walked over to the director's desk to point out that the Switch 2 has a microphone. So now you can hum a song you've learned, and Link plays it back on the ocarina. Aonuma admits it doesn't make the game any easier. It just sounds delightful.

And for the first time, the cutscenes are fully voiced. To protect sounds people already carry in their heads, starting with Navi's famous "Listen!", the team held blind auditions for the Japanese cast, with every actor's name hidden. One voice they chose turned out to belong to the same actor who played that character in 1998. Nintendo didn't say who, but Eurogamer reports the credits point to Kaori Mizuhashi, Navi herself. Twenty-eight years on, the best Navi soundalike was Navi. In English, Matt Mercer returns as Ganondorf, Erica Mendez plays Zelda, and Link, as always, keeps his thoughts to himself.

On Netflix, Black Doves is back today with six new episodes. Keira Knightley plays Helen, a spy who married into British politics, and her husband has just become prime minister. Ben Whishaw is Sam, the assassin who happens to be her best friend. The Hollywood Reporter's Angie Han opens her review with four operatives, a trunk full of grenades, and a fight over the playlist: party music for the young assassins, slow piano for Sam, and for Helen, maybe Olly Murs, or early Beatles. Han's verdict: sometimes funny, sometimes sad, always charming. She finds the big flashback reveal weaker than the rest, but singles out newcomer Ambika Mod as hilariously abrasive.

The Pitt may be headed for a jury. On Wednesday an appeals court ruled that Michael Crichton's widow, Sherri, can keep suing Warner Bros. over the show. Crichton created ER, and his contract barred spinoffs or reboots without his approval. Her suit argues The Pitt began as an ER reboot and changed course after she said no. Warner Bros. says they're different shows. The three judges unanimously found "clear and numerous similarities": the emergency room, the pace, the jargon, the graphic injuries, and a shaky young doctor fresh out of medical school. They did dismiss the claim against Noah Wyle, John Wells and R. Scott Gemmill personally. Unless there's a settlement, a jury could end up deciding whether The Pitt is ER by another name, while season three keeps shooting.

Godzilla Minus Zero opened in Japan on Tuesday, and Toho says it sold five hundred ninety thousand tickets on day one. That's the biggest opening day ever for a live-action film in Japan, foreign or domestic, and about three times what Minus One managed. It opens in North America tomorrow, where Variety projects around thirty million dollars for the weekend.

For a discovery, file away Cherry and Virgin, an independent anime that premiered at the Tokyo International Film Festival. Ryo draws erotic manga but has never even held a woman's hand. Ami draws boys' love fan art. IndieWire calls it fantastic, and the hook is visual: each is drawn in their own style, Ryo in scratchy black and white, Ami in glossy color, and as their first date warms up, the styles start to blend. Ryo's father even appears as Evangelion's famously terrible dad. It's still looking for an American distributor.

And finally, Bob Dylan met Pope Leo the Fourteenth at the Vatican on Wednesday, in a black hooded sweatshirt. Vatican News describes a brief meeting with a few lighthearted exchanges. The Pope gave him a rosary; Dylan gave the Pope his memoir, Chronicles: Volume One. Leo had already quoted Dylan this summer, borrowing lines from Go Away You Bomb, a 1963 song Dylan never officially recorded. Dylan plays Rome tonight, on a tour that bans phone recording, so if you're there, keep the phone in your pocket.

That's Spotlight for today. If you're picking up Ocarina, try humming to it at least once. See you tomorrow.