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Message: [QUOTE="Strategist, post: 162897, member: 767"] [ATTACH type="full" alt="SF_FinalShot.jpg"]53740[/ATTACH] Greetings, and welcome to the first (and possibly last) edition of RGT at the Movies! Brought to you by Strategist and ATenderLad. This review came about after having a discussion about terrible video game movies in the comments of the movie article. That late night shit-talk was the genesis of this incredible joint effort. RGT members get two reviews for the price of one! For the cheap price of 100 M.Bison dollars, you can acquire this high quality review written by RGT’s best video game film critics of the highest caliber. ATenderLad brings vast knowledge of films to the table while I bring my obsessive knowledge of Street Fighter lore. Let’s begin. [CENTER][MEDIA=youtube]v993ci5Sm5Q[/MEDIA][/CENTER] [HEADING=3]Strategist’s Prologue[/HEADING] Commenting on anything Street Fighter related might seem odd coming from me, considering I don’t particularly enjoy fighting games. My memories of Street Fighter 2 are mostly traumatic. They are limited to getting my ass kicked at the arcades by the ringers and my friends kicking my ass even harder at home on the SNES. But I have a unique perspective to share specifically related to "Street Fighter: The Movie". The Street Fighter movie was actually somewhat of a phenomenon in the island of Puerto Rico. This film was to be the final movie of one of the most beloved actors from our island, Raul Julia. When I say he’s beloved, I’m not exaggerating. Raul Julia is a national hero, and there are theaters and streets named after him over here. I don’t remember all of the details, since I was a child at the time, but it was all over the news that he was suffering from a serious bout with cancer. His decision to participate in this movie was related to this unfortunate circumstance. He was usually more of a dramatic actor, participating in prestige movies but he wanted to work on a film that his kids could appreciate before he passed. That lead to him accepting the role of M. Bison in the Street Fighter movie. When he finally passed away, it was all over the news. There was a public mourning period and a public procession with thousands of mourners covered by the news. Those events boosted the profile of the movie over here to the point that my dad wanted to watch it with me. I warned him that the movie might be a stinker. Still, it was the final movie of a national hero so we all went to pay our respects. I barely remember anything about the movie except Raul Julia trying to make the best of it and hamming it up all the way to 11, and Jean Claude Van Damme was kind of fun at that time, I didn’t hate him as Guile. But that’s basically all I remember other than the general feeling of thinking it sucked. I was curious to see if it was as bad as I remembered. [CENTER] [ATTACH type="full" alt="1743752257229.png"]53813[/ATTACH] [I]Here’s a picture of Julia and Meryl Streep in a theater production of Shakespeare's “Taming of the Shrew”. Julia was an experienced theatrical actor and that influence is clearly reflected in his portrayal of M.Bison. [/I] [/CENTER] [HEADING=3]Movie Summary[/HEADING] The movie starts out with a news report of the geopolitical situation of Street Fighter. And right from the beginning the lore fuck ups are extremely noticeable, if you are at all familiar with the Street Fighter series. The movie is set in the fictional Shadaloo city, in Thailand where Chun Li Zang, the intrepid reporter (she’s supposed to be an Interpol agent) is investigating the criminal organization headed by aspiring dictator M. Bison. Guile, played by Jean Claude Van Damme, is the military commander of the Allied Nation forces. Guile hacks into Bison’s computer systems and cuts a cringe wrestling style promo on him. Dee Jay, who is apparently Bison’s tech support instead of a happy go lucky, maraca playing kickboxer, warns Bison about the hack and shuts them down. Bison has captured Guile’s best bud, Carlos Blanka AKA Charlie, and is planning to do genetic experiments on him. He captured a bunch of civilian hostages too, including a doctor to perform the experiments. The doctor is also Dhalsim for some reason. Oh by the way, Kylie Minogue [I](remember her, the pop-star who topped the UK charts in the 90’s?)[/I] plays Cammy and she is Guile’s second in command instead of Bison’s genetic experiment. [CENTER][ATTACH type="full" width="721px" alt="SF_ChunLi_Reporter.jpg"]53745[/ATTACH] [B]Ming-Na Wen, the actress who plays Chun-Li, is giving it the good ol' college try, but she is a bit lacking in the charisma department.[/B] [I][ATTACH type="full" width="745px" alt="SF_GuilePromo.jpg"]53746[/ATTACH][/I] [B]Meanwhile, JCVD is the least convincing actor to play an American since Tommy Wiseau in "The Room".[/B] [/CENTER] Ryu and Ken, the supposed protagonists of Street Fighter 2, finally get a chance to appear in their movie. They are making shady weapons deals with the bad guys though, just in case you wanted to root for them. It is especially weird that Ryu and Sagat are making a deal, they act like they don’t know each other. Apparently, the events of Street Fighter 1 aren’t canon in this movie. In the dumbest plot point possible, Ken and Ryu get caught selling fake weapons to the bad guys and end up getting captured. BTW Ken is not even blonde, his hair is kind of a light brown. They are thrown into a makeshift cage to fight to the death with Vega. The guy who plays Vega is kind of bad-ass, not going to lie. He definitively nailed the look. And the underground fighting ring looks kind of cool. Ok, I’m ready for a cool street fighting scene, give it to me movie! SWERVE, Guile runs a tank into the side of the building and ruins the fun. [CENTER] [ATTACH type="full" width="805px" alt="SF_RyuSagat.png"]53747[/ATTACH] [B]Yes, these two jamokes are supposed to be Ryu and Ken. I am as disappointed as you are. [/B] [I][ATTACH type="full" width="818px" alt="SF_Vega.png"]53748[/ATTACH][/I] [B]A street fight, in a Street Fighter movie? They can’t possibly fuck this up, right?[/B] [I][ATTACH type="full" width="818px" alt="SF_GuileBlowsUpRing.png"]53750[/ATTACH][/I] [B]Oh, yes. Yes, they can absolutely fuck it up.[/B] [/CENTER] Ryu, Ken, Sagat and Vega end up in prison together. Guile comes up with an absurd plan for Ken and Ryu to infiltrate the Bison gang by befriending Sagat. In order to complete this stupid plan, he needs Sagat to believe that Ken is a real G or something. So Ken does a drive by shooting on Guile and kills him!?! Ok, I’m really convinced this was totally real and it is not another swerve. Sagat, Ryu, Ken and Vega escape prison on a truck. It turns out Chun Li was tracking Sagat’s truck but she finds out someone else had already implanted another tracking device. For some reason, the script requires her to care about who is tracking the truck (as if it wasn’t obvious) and surprise, surprise it was Guile all along. He’s alive!!! They have this cringe, not believable at all sexual tension scene and Guile decides to detain her, but she escapes. The lack of chemistry between Guile and Chun Li is palpable. [CENTER][ATTACH type="full" width="757px" alt="SF_KenShootingGuile.png"]53751[/ATTACH] [B]American on American crime. You hate to see it.[/B] [ATTACH type="full" width="757px" alt="SF_GuileAliveAgain.png"]53752[/ATTACH] [B]With pickup lines like those, I'm surprised she wasn't tearing her clothes off.[/B] [/CENTER] Meanwhile, Bison is hosting Sagat and crew for an arms deal. They have some entertainment for the proceeding and it is painfully obvious Chun Li and her gang are disguised as part of the circus crew. Ryu reiterates the plan of tracking down’s Bison’s base to Ken, but Ken is more interested in checking out the dancers. At least that’s somewhat on character. Bison tries to buy Sagat’s weapons with funny money and shit gets real. Ken gets captured by Chun Li’s crew and they try to work together to foil Bison’s plan. I forgot to mention that E. Honda is one of the guys working with Chun Li and he’s a sumo wrestler from Hawaii, instead of a Japanese sumo. Balrog is also part of Chun Li’s crew for some reason. In any case, Ken and Ryu just randomly decide to run into the middle of the standoff of the bad guys, get captured and rat out Chun Li. In an even stupider development, Chun Li broadcasts her plan to blow up the weapons in the arms deal to the bad guys BEFORE IT HAPPENS. The bad guys run around like chickens with their heads cut off while a truck filled with explosives charges towards the pile of weapons and explodes. [CENTER][ATTACH type="full" width="730px" alt="SF_BisonDeejay (2).png"]53757[/ATTACH] [B]Bison knows the finer points of building a criminal empire.[/B] [/CENTER] Chun Li’s crew gets captured off screen for some reason. Ryu and Ken are given credit for apprehending Chun Li even though they did basically nothing. They are given positions in Bison’s army despite it clearly being noted on one of the computers that they are AN agents. I guess Ken and Ryu set the tracking device that leads to Bison’s base because the next scene is Guile planning an attack on Bison’s base on a boat. Meanwhile, Ken and Ryu get martial art gis from Bison for some reason that is clearly not fanservice. Bison and Chun Li have a private chat and catch up on the past. Chun Li’s dress from the video game is recontextualized as a sex slave outfit. At least they preserved Chun Li’s backstory from the game mostly intact. Chun Li and Bison fight, she gets captured again. [CENTER][ATTACH type="full" width="695px" alt="SF_Chun_Li_Kick.jpg"]53763[/ATTACH] [B]Lightning Kick, this is not.[/B] [ATTACH type="full" width="694px" alt="SF_KenRyu.jpg"]53765[/ATTACH] [B]Nice try, movie. Too little, too late.[/B][/CENTER] From here on a bunch of filler bullshit happens. Guile takes a quaint boat trip down a river in Thailand, the AN army invades Bison’s base, a lot of shooting and explosions. Very few martial arts fights for a Street Fighter movie, though. Oh and I forgot to mention, Dhalsim finishes his experiments on Charlie and he becomes Blanka. A security guard beats the shit out of Dhalsim for not training Blanka properly and he takes a bath in mutagens and chemicals. That's probably an attempt at a Dhalsim origin story. [CENTER][ATTACH type="full" width="712px" alt="SF_CarlosBlanka.png"]53768[/ATTACH] [B]I’ve seen better monster makeup in an Ed Wood movie.[/B] [/CENTER] Guile finally reaches Bison’s base right as he is about to execute his hostages. Guile finds the character formerly known as Charlie and the movie gets really dark all of a sudden as Guile thinks about mercykilling his friend. Before that happens, Dhalsim gets him to reconsider. Guile presses on to find Bison. As Bison is about to press the button to kill the hostages, Guile appears from an elevator and super kicks him. What proceeds next is a bunch of random chaos, gunfire and occasional fist fights. Very little of what happens resembles anything in the Street Fighter video games. In a further sign that the movie really hates Ken, he tries to escape the chaos while leaving the rest of the team to their luck. But worry not, Ken fans, it was another predictable swerve. [CENTER][ATTACH type="full" width="1030px" alt="SF_BisonNapoleonPainting.jpg"]53789[/ATTACH] [B]I could keep dunking on the movie, but ATenderLad wanted me to include this painting. It's one of the few clever references in the movie.[/B] [/CENTER] Bison and Guile finally face off and they both want to fight one on one. They fight for a while and about 5 minutes in, Guile finally delivers a proper looking Flash kick. The only move in the movie that resembles something from the game. While all of that is happening, Ken and Dee Jay try to loot Bison’s treasury. Dee Jay is successful, while Ken finally grows a conscience or something. Bison starts beating Guile with the saddest looking Psycho Crusher, while Ryu gets the shit beat out of him by Sagat and Vega. Finally in the last 10 minutes of the movie, we are seeing something resembling a martial arts fight. Ken arrives to save Ryu and we see some more moves like a Haduken. Except there’s not enough budget for a projectile of any sort. Vega does his rolling claw move, which to be fair, looked pretty decent. The vibe is ruined by Ken performing the saddest looking Shoryuken on Sagat. Both Ryu and Ken finish off their opponents with spinning kicks. [CENTER] [MEDIA=youtube]Z_tUhYza9XQ:80[/MEDIA] [B]The only time the movie comes close to resembling the video game, unfortunately.[/B] [/CENTER] I haven’t mentioned yet that Zangief is a random Bison flunky, but that’s because he does almost nothing of note throughout the whole movie. Zangief finally turns good guy after beating up on Honda for about 5 minutes, a bunch of explosions happen at the end (like every 90’s action flick) and Bison gets pinned by the debris. Everyone evacuates the exploding base but Guile. Instead of escaping, he tries to rescue his buddy, Charlie Blanka. Guile finds Charlie and Dhalsim (Dhalsim finally looks somewhat like his video game counterpart) but they both decide to be noble sacrifices for reasons. The whole crew meets outside the base except Guile. Everyone thinks he’s dead but wait! We are swerved for the 4th time! Guile is alive, everyone is happy, Chun Li hits on him in the most cringe manner, Guile hits back and they all celebrate with their victory poses. Finally, the movie is over… or is it? [CENTER][MEDIA=youtube]Kk-iTHPBpC0[/MEDIA] [B]Its always funny when a bad movie is so painfully unaware of its badness to try and tease a sequel.[/B][/CENTER] [HEADING=3]Strategist’s Review[/HEADING] Well, it turns out Street Fighter: The Movie is as bad as I remembered. If I were to distill the fundamental problem with the Street Fighter movie into one sentence, it would be this: It is more interested in trying to explain all the crazy shit in the Street Fighter universe instead of entertaining the audience. There’s more to it of course, like the bad acting, cliched script, cheesy martial arts, amateur makeup and cheap special effects. But many movies with those issues have managed to be entertaining and this one just doesn’t care to try outside of a couple of scenes. It was a pure cash grab, with little attention paid to the details of the universe. I’m not the biggest Street Fighter lore expert, but even I wrote 2 pages of notes of things the movie got wrong. In the end, there’s very little I can recommend from this movie in good faith, aside from Raul Julia’s occasional over the top performance and JCVD’s kicks. If you want to watch a film adaptation of the Street Fighter franchise, I recommend you check out [I]Street Fighter: The Animated Movie[/I] over this mess. That movie covers the same basic plot points, but has excellent animation, great action scenes and is filled with fan service. It gets what a movie about Street Fighter should be more than this one AND cares enough to get the lore right. If you are looking for a JCVD fix, watch [I]Kickboxer[/I] or [I]Bloodsport[/I]. Those movies do the underground fighting tournament trope better than this one. [CENTER][MEDIA=youtube]glTKkds10Mc[/MEDIA] [B]Here Comes A New Challenger![/B][/CENTER] [HEADING=3]ATenderLad’s Review[/HEADING] Street Fighter (1994) is like watching most of you have sex; easy to laugh at, but difficult to watch. In both situations, you have to wonder if inviting Jean Claude Van Damme was a good idea. [CENTER] [IMG size="1280x720"]https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FVnYDrs2ykcI%2Fmaxresdefault.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=a70bbc3ad6df762d4430cda79ee1c3a81a0dbec878d264c0f4364f80e5934e75&ipo=images[/IMG] [B][SIZE=5]He barely says "Hi" before he starts setting up the poles.[/SIZE][/B][/CENTER] Writer Stephen E. de Souza came to Street Fighter with enthusiasm and momentum, having turned out the scripts for movies like [I]Commando[/I] (1985) and the original [I]Die Hard [/I](1988). Trouble was, he was also the director! I won’t say the guy doesn’t know action movies – he could turn out a short story on a cocktail napkin that’s better than anything I could dream up – but for a movie about eccentric martial artists assaulting a warlord with a private army, things rarely get more exciting than an afternoon nap. The fights are brief, and few punches land without a camera edit intervening. So much of the fisticuffs happen in closeups, with the actors’ full bodies rarely visible. (It’s true in action, and it’s true in musicals; we should see the actors’ footwork). The camera often cuts before a strike lands, usually to a new angle behind the person being hit and recoiling from the blow. It’s kind of understandable though, most of the cast had little experience “selling” action. Most of the blows we do see clearly look awkward, with JCVD being the only real exception. In fairness to the cast, production troubles meant they were often unprepared for a new stunt or piece of fight choreography. Shooting on-location in Thailand, for example, meant extreme heat and restrictions from the local government that set the movie back frequently; juggling that along with accommodating Raul Julia *literally* dying of cancer meant the original schedule went up in smoke. Other issues like an extremely difficult star – I’ll get to JCVD shortly – and a severe falling out between the director and the stunt coordinator made this a miserable job for most everyone involved. (Kylie Minogue was reportedly a joy to work with though, that’s nice). [CENTER] [IMG width="510px" size="736x1102"]https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.pinimg.com%2F736x%2F85%2Fd4%2Fd5%2F85d4d5b2e496ee654e475a081b6b7c9c.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=40be299694376599cd41bd893599b0d3f2c3dde4a6bfbc67e8f0d3c380a59756&ipo=images[/IMG] [B][SIZE=5]Sometimes I see a picture and think "Could *I* look that cool with a light anti-tank weapon?"[/SIZE][/B] [/CENTER] Ming-na Wen (Mulan!) has a rough time as Chun-Li, with a somewhat bizarre role as journalist/assassin/half-hearted love interest...too many hats, really. Kylie Minogue is enthusiastic in her part as Cammy, but for my money the best “chart-topping pop diva playing a military role in a movie based on a game property” is still Rihanna in [I]Battleship[/I] (2012). Wes Studi is an amazing actor but they clearly hired him to be Sagat based on looking dangerous in [I]Last of the Mohicans[/I] (1992); he can look the part, but he’s not here to be a Muay Thai demon by any stretch. Roshan Seth – who gave a phenomenal performance in [I]Mississippi Masala[/I] (1991) just a few years prior – is pretty much in a different movie all his own, as he tries to elevate his weird subplot. Bless him for making the effort, but he delivers his speech about good and evil to Jean Claude Van Damme, looking confused and hungover. If anyone’s doing a great job, it’s the villains. Everyone knows about Raul Julia in this movie, so I won’t talk about him too much. Suffice to say, he’s asked to ham it up and chew the scenery, and Julia didn’t leave a crumb behind. RIP, you beautiful king. All of the movie’s best comedy really went to him and his minions, Deejay and Zangief. (Miguel A. Núñez Jr. and Andrew Bryniarski, respectively). Núñez is basically mugging for the camera at every batshit insane thing that happens around him, he treats being the right hand of a nefarious dictator like a day shift at Office Depot. Meanwhile, Bryniarski’s Zangief is a lovable idiot who can’t tell he’s working for the bad guys. (He gets the best line in the movie, shouting “Quick, change the channel!” at a *live* camera feed of an explosive truck heading right for him). If anyone’s doing a terrible job, it’s JCVD. Our star actor was a prima donna on set – when he bothered to even leave the presidential suite the studio had to secure for him – and his drug habit at the time was making Sylvester Stallone in the 80’s look like Sylvester Stallone in the 90’s. They even hired a handler of sorts to keep him in line, but the guy apparently lasted all of “You like to party?” before joining in, the pair of them enabling each other to new heights. [CENTER] [IMG size="1000x563"]https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.screenslate.com%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2F2022-06%2FDouble-Team.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=23e4c7e9d70eb39e7f46f4171fb0125400680410e311a3c432391d75e62b395e&ipo=images[/IMG] [B][SIZE=5]Pictured above: Jean Claude and his life coach.[/SIZE][/B][/CENTER] Consequently, in a long career of furious roundhouses and morose acting, Street Fighter is probably the worst performance Van Damme ever gave. He’s barely trying, and the lack of chemistry with basically everyone really shows. The best compliment I can give is that he can actually do the shit the movie was supposedly made for, and if the choreography were worth a damn, that would have been enough. (Actually, this is a nitpick but it’s always bugged me. The climax of the big boss fight – with Raul Julia soaring like a manic Superman – sees JCVD countering with a flying roundhouse like his last fight in [I]Bloodsport[/I] (1988), lovingly depicted multiple times from different camera angles. Why wasn’t *that* the moment to do a Flash Kick? It just seems obvious! Supposedly, the stunt coordinator picked a fight with the director over not including the moves from the games, which the director said looked too fake for live-action. I mostly agree, but this would have been a fun exception). On a positive note, the set designers has a blast with Bison’s lair. It screams *Bond Villain*, and there’s a repeated visual motif of screens to evoke the arcade cabinets. Seriously, there are screens of all kinds *everywhere* in this movie, and the opening scene actually changes aspect ratio to something resembling 4:3 for a moment. (Bison’s silly murder console also uses the arcade controls, but that’s pretty on the nose). There’s also an extended sequence involving a fancy stealth boat that needs a bit of explanation. So, Guile is in the Air Force, and the third act would have featured him leading an aerial assault as a pilot. Apparently the government in Thailand rejected their airspace being used that way, so they pivoted to a high-tech superboat in the vein of shows like [I]Thunder in Paradise[/I] (1993) or [I]Knight Rider[/I] (1982)...the latter of which Stephen E. de Sousa actually wrote for, funny enough. They even put a VHS player in the boat so Guile could take a moment to remind us he’s missing his buddy Carlos Blanka, but an actual VHS tape wouldn’t have fit neatly in his pocket; he pulls what’s *clearly* an audio cassette from his uniform instead and still gets a picture out of it. (Is this too old a reference now? Someone kill me, before time does its grisly work). [CENTER][ATTACH type="full" alt="1743746159962.png"]53783[/ATTACH] [B][SIZE=5]It still needs to *feel* like a fighter jet, so there’s his name on it. It’s a real missed opportunity for a call sign, though. Col. William “Bloodsport Is Now Available On Home Video” Guile![/SIZE][/B][/CENTER] There’s just a few other things that jumped out at me on re-watch. The introductory shot is a grandiose picture of the Earth, but if audiences didn’t know the full title of Street Fighter II was “World Warrior” it makes no sense? Also, the villains being based in southeast Asia meant that the writer drew on his only real experience with that part of the world: the Vietnam War, oddly enough! There’s a local radio DJ occasionally heard in Shadowloo City, and he’s played by Adrian Cronauer, the real-life inspiration for [I]Good Morning, Vietnam [/I](1987). He’s basically doing a Street Fighter-branded version of the shtick he did back in the military, it’s kinda bizarre! (He also drops a few jokes over the credits). There’s also a curious scene later, where the governments of the world decide to pay off Bison and cease hostilities, and Guile delivers a (very boring) speech about “staying put and finishing the job”, then taking off to lead the attack. Basic action movie scene, but the verbiage is pretty familiar. I don’t actually think de Souza was “saying* anything here, but I thought it was worth pointing out. My overall opinion is that they got a guy who delivered multiple great 80’s action movies to make another 80’s action movie. Trouble is, this property is based on martial arts films, and the rules tend to be pretty different. Even if everything had gone to plan and the production went off without a hitch, the lack of compelling fight scenes would make this hard to love. It’s an occasionally funny comedy, but it’s also so wacky that the attempts at drama never add up. It’s like penny poker; the stakes are always low. [HEADING=3]Epilogue[/HEADING] Much to my surprise, Street Fighter the Movie was a huge box office success. The movie earned 10 million on its opening weekend and proceeded to earn 99 million worldwide out of a 35 million dollar budget. Capcom claims it still earns their company tens of millions of yen every year to this day. That just goes to show the lasting appeal of the Street Fighter IP, even in bastardized form. As if it wasn't enough for the movie to be a giant stinkfest, it brought its special brand of awful to the video game realm. The video game adaptations of the movie released in the arcades first and were ported to the Saturn and PS1. The game used rotoscoped captures of the actors of the movie for the animations but way shittier than the level of quality established by the Mortal Kombat franchise. I can’t recall ever playing it but just from looking at it from afar in the arcades I knew it was crap. The console ports were even worse as they were not accurate arcade ports and were noted as buggy and suffering from slowdown. The Street Fighter movies continued after this pile of dung. They decided to bring back Street Fighter to the movie theaters in 2009 with “Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li”. I know next to nothing about the movie, other than it exists, and I don’t want to know anything about it. I can’t comment about it in good faith but I’m sure everyone tried their best. And that is all, folks! Feel free to sound off in the comments if you enjoyed or hated “Street Fighter: The Movie”. Thanks for reading. [/QUOTE]

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