Street Fighter The Movie – Who Made This Anyways?

Scroll below and enjoy

presents a
Random Rant
Street Fighter: The Movie
Who Made
This Anyways?

Sonic BOMB!

“QUICK, change the channel !” Man… if only movie theaters came with remotes when I saw this during release I may have actually taken up old Zangief and flicked away from this awful disappointment. To this day, I’m still trying to figure out who made this unfaithfully atrocious film anyways (I’m sure it’s probably a group of corporate suits who have no idea what a flash kick or hundred-hand slap is but I digress. Street Fighter the movie FAILS on so many levels from start to finish that its got me feeling like the Red Cyclone after an all-night vodka binder. “That was beautiful .”

To put this movie in its proper context as a hyperbolic travesty of epic proportions (…my opinion at least), we’ll have to go ALL the way back to the radical recklessness of the early 90’s – a time beset by quarter devouring arcade machines and box-office action films as far as the eye could see! Starting off on the video game side of things, Street Fighter II: The World Warrior SLAMMED into the Earth like a comet from space and left a crater of influence in the world that is still feeling reverberations today! Was there even a Street Fighter 1? Of course however its EXTREME rarity was surpassed only by its chunky execution as it faded away into the sea of oblivion. Meanwhile, its sequel caught lightning in a bottle satisfying the rising tide of popularity that had cascaded within the fighting genre as it became the standard of excellence to measure all others against!

If you walked into a mall arcade or Chuck E. Cheese’s in the 90’s, a typical bombardment of random bleeps and bloops would rain down upon your ears instantly creating an inventory in your mind of what games were available however no sustained sound perked-up my quick-discernment senses more than the ultra-distinctive symphony of Street Fighter II’s dialogue like “Hadoken” (yelled by either Ryu or Ken as they throw their projectile attack) or “Tiger Uppercut” (Sagat’s vertical-themed special punch) which let you know that a World Warrior cab was loitering nearby. Whenever this occurred, it would draw me straight to it like a moth to a flame and I got swept up into the fighting fever as much (or more) as any other kid during this period! A lot of times, it had a crowd around it as it was one of the most fun and attractive arcade games of that generation presenting a daunting yet rewarding challenge from either the computer or opposing players. The home versions were equally cool as being able to have tournaments with your friends became a staple of many ‘tude era kids weekends. While there were a boatload of other great fighters at this time, Street Fighter II provided homes and arcades with arguably the top fighting game ever made.

Now we’ll take a look at the motion picture portion of this equation. Action movies were a dime a dozen during this time, producing boatloads of awesome heroes willing to do whatever it takes to stop the bad guys and deliver a happy ending to the audience . While most of these films serve as guilty pleasures and fun unintentional comedies now, they were cool as all hell back then and for us living in the ‘tude era, these superstars fueled our imaginations when the credits started to roll carrying through afterwards when we started slammin’ games into our consoles.

Now of course, there were movie licensed games for the home systems such as Judge Dredd and Predator but for the most part these games sucked and did not provide the same kind of fun action experience that the movies did. This was primarily due to poor level design and consistency issues with the film that the game is based on. It was at this time that many of us turned to a radical, up-and-coming genre, to get our movie-to-game fix that had rose up in the arcade world like a bursting volcano – Fighting games.

Fighters such as Karate Champ and Yie Ar Kung-Fu would sate our hand-to-hand lust a little after watching martial arts movies like Enter the Dragon and Bloodsport ( “Aren’t you a little old for video games “?) despite lacking a feature film tie-in but they were still just an appetizer compared to Street Fighter II, which entered the lexicon at just the right time during this heyday of action and fighting movies. One of the biggest martial arts superheroes of this period was the star of the aforementioned Bloodsport, Jean-Claude Van Damme, where he played as the seemingly unbeatable Frank Dux plowing through a litany of world warriors on his way to winning a kick-ass samurai sword for his master. Sounds like a similar plot to Street Fighter to me… therefore, watching this movie (one of my favorites of all time I might add and probably the best example that could be used for this kind of topic) has always inspired me to want to play the best fighting game ever made, either at home or in the arcades. Naturally, this progressed into many crossover ideas as imaginations ran wild with dreams of grandeur.

“What if they made a Street Fighter II movie based on the game dude” was discussed many times by me and my friends at the cafeteria table and on the school bus. At the time, it seemed like it was maybe one of the coolest ideas ever but perhaps a little too farfetched since video games hadn’t reached a mainstream status… yet. Little did I know though, there were pieces coming together for a film and when I first saw sneak previews of Street Fighter the movie in my new issue of EGM, I was stoked beyond belief… VAN DAMME!!! One of my favorite stars from the ‘tude era was going to get top billing in what I thought was going to be one of the most insanely awesome movies ever made. AHHHHHHH !!! After that, I ate up as much Street Fighter news as possible and couldn’t wait to further speculate with friends about how rad this film was going to be!

Would it be presented as something like Bloodsport with a tournament setting pitting all the world warriors against each other? Will they use cool special effects to give the real-life characters fireball projectile moves similar to their video game counterparts? Is Van Damme going to grow a blonde flat-top? No matter where our imaginations took us, just knowing that they were making a Street Fighter movie (and it was starring Van Damme) got a bunch of us extremely excited and we simply could not wait for the film’s release.

Months went by and my anticipation continued to build patiently waiting for the movie to come out. The day finally came and I glowed with anticipation as I sat down in that theater seat to watch the brand new movie that I knew was going to define my generation. *rubs hands together* “Here we go!” … (approximately 1 hour and 42 minutes later) Ummmmm… what the hell did I just watch ? This movie is beyond dumb! Honestly, I tried to view this atrocity again before writing this and I can say with absolute certainty that this film has sucked at every stage in its life. It was nothing like I expected (which can sometimes be good in movies but definitely not this time) and boring… boring… BORING!

First off, before I proceed with Sonic Booming this into the farthest reaches of my lost memories, I have to give Raul Julia’s M. Bison some love . This guy’s performance is WAY too good for this dung pile of a film. “For you, the day Bison graced your village was the most important day of your life. But for me, it was Tuesday.” This guy is so much fun to watch and every scene he’s in has something entertaining in it .

Okay, so that’s pretty much the only thing I like about this trash heap so let’s call it a day… oh, I haven’t talked about the ridiculous plot (why the hell aren’t they just fighting each other???) or the fact that the acting and choreography was beyond b-rated. I truly can’t understand what Van Damme is saying in this movie either. I know he’s from Belgium and has an accent but for some reason he sounds more muffled and throaty than he usually does, making most of his lines sound really stupid – “Bison, your off the air !!!” Hell, come to think of it, everyone has stupid lines in this movie – “… You got paid ?” … well, except for Zangief but I digress.

Also, some of my favorite characters from the game act nothing like they should such as Ryu and Ken, who are more like sleazy hustlers in this and less like the kick-ass, world traveling warriors that we’re used to. Some very questionable character designs for the film as well. How did we go from this to this anyways (T. Hawk??? More like T. Pigeon… *taps mic* This thing on?)?… Who knows? Bottom line is Street Fighter is complete crap from start to finish and it has served as one of the biggest and most reality inducing disappointments for me in my young and impressionable life.

I’m still not sure who made this anyways in the sense that most of our idea’s as kids were much better than what we got. Obviously, it would be a challenge to incorporate a large cast into a 1 1/2 – 2 hour film but it would be a task that I’m sure many people would have been willing to take without a doubt. I think a big part of Street Fighter’s problem is the fact that it tries to squeeze every last character into the movie (do we really need Dee Jay in this?) when they could have just focused on maybe 3 or 4 characters. This would have certainly allowed for more street fightin’ and less plot development (it’s a fighting game… people don’t want to watch them talk).

Also, I think it would have been mega cool if instead of trying to shoehorn Van Damme into an already established character (he doesn’t fit with any of the Street Fighter II roles in the game really), why not introduce some killer new Belgium fighter in the movie that later on becomes a playable character in the game? Whatever dude, I’m done reminiscing! This movie blows and now only exists as a sad memory of what could have been. Time to send it reeling to the abyss for good – SONIC BOOM!!!!!!!