Hello and welcome to ToriJ's Video Game
Reviews. Last February I reviewed Street Fighter II for Fightbruary,
but before that I vowed to review the movie adaptions of the games I
played whenever I got around to actually playing them, leading me to
the 1994 film directed by Steven E. de Souza (interesting name):
Street Fighter!
We have Jean-Claude Van Damme, we have
Raul Julia, we have Asian characters played by REAL Asian people! At
least for the most part. Why is E. Honda Hawaiian? Did they get
their casting director from the WWF?
My beret is
better than Jill Valentine's!
The movie
starts off with a news broadcast by Chun-Li (just go with it)
explaining that the Allied Nation Forces led by Colonel Guile are
fighting against the militant of General M. Bison in Shadaloo
City. A.N. relief workers were captured by Bison who demanded twenty
billion dollars for their release. Guile uses Chun-Li news broadcast
to goad Bison into responding so they can track the signal back to
his base. Unfortunately, Bison cuts off before they can discover his
whereabouts. During this exchange between Guile and Bison Guile has
some strong words for the General.
“Dick head!” That's right, you read it here, Colonel Guile calls
General Bison... a dick head! Careful, Colonel, you might provoke
him! Can you imagine if we had this guy talking with other terrorist
leaders? Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. “Dick head!” Ayman al-Zawahri.
“Dick head!” Sirajuddin Haqqani. “Dick head!” We should just
hire him to be our terrorist negotiator from now on. He has a gift.
But like an idiot he
says the name of one of the hostages in Bison's possession indicating
that they're close and Bison manages to put two and two together
taking Carlos “Charlie” Blanka to the lab to be experimented on.
Thank you, Guile! You're the best! Guile is of course less than
thrilled they were unable to track the signal and takes it out on
Chun-Li coming across as misogynistic, when in reality he just
doesn't like journalists.
Ah, before
cage fighting became popular.
We're then
taken to Ryu and Ken who try to con Viktor Sagat by giving him
fake weapons. Ryu looks fine, Sagat looks fine, even Vega looks
fine. He doesn't wear his mask as much as I would like, but he took
it off in the game so I'm not going to be picky. I know Bryon Mann
isn't Japanese, but at least they got the race part right. Ken looks
nothing like his video game counterpart. Damian Chapa looks more
like he should be playing Johnny Cage then Ken, what the hell?
This whole scene and the
following cage match is just ridiculous. Sagat's men hits Ryu and Ken
with soft balls, a woman drops a Vega's sign when she sees Ryu
shirtless, and Guile drives into the place in a fucking tank! Was
this meant to be a comedy? What does it say on IMDb?
I knew it!
Would have been funnier if it said drama, but I'll take it.
You look good
in blue, boys.
Ryu and Ken
gets a chance for freedom if they can infiltrate M. Bison's base, so
they stage a prison break with Sagat and fake the death of Colonel
Guile in order to earn his trust. A ploy that is discovered by
Chun-Li after finding him in the morgue. Boy, he really is committed
to the bit. Was he just waiting for somebody to come by so he could
scare them half to death? Chun-Li reveals that she isn't just a
reporter, but has actually been tracking M. Bison down for years for
revenge. At least they got her storyline right. But Guile decides
that there's no time for personal vendettas besides his own and has
her arrested, only for her to escape leading to even more strong
words from the Allied forces: “What a screw up!” Oooooh! Play us
off, Guile. “Dick head!”
This time
around Chun-Li is paired off with E. Honda and Balrog who all want
revenge against M. Bison. So much in fact that they're not against
driving a car bomb into them killing hundreds of people. Vengeance:
bringing people together since the beginning of time! Now, I know
what you're thinking, wasn't Balrog one of the bad guys? Well, he
was, but they changed it. I'm not too bothered by this change. If
that was the best way to add Balrog into the film then whatever.
What are their motivations? Bison killed Chun-Li's father, E.
Honda's sumo career was ruined, and Balrog's boxing career was
ruined. Although specifics are never given on the last two.
I cannot help
but notice that you are standing on the sidelines. There will be no
fence sitters in Camp Bison!
Eventually,
Ryu and Ken gets inside the base at the expense of Chun-Li and her
group building up to the grand finale. Though I'm not sure what the
whole point of the infiltration was if they were just going to raid
the place all along. Hell, had they stayed out of it Chun-Li would've
gotten Bison killed, anyway. Problem solved!
Despite
being reduced to a comedy, most of the characters look the part, and
even those who don't plays them just fine. Unfortunately, Zangief is
portrayed as a complete idiot because I guess big brutes somehow
equal stupid henchman. The characters who get the biggest shaft has
to be Dhalsim and Blanka. Dhalsim is nothing like his video came
counterpart, and when he randomly adopts the attire from the game he
dies! Blanka, the strongest character from the games equal only to
E. Honda, gets all this buildup from being created and then he does
fuck all! He chokes Guile, throws some Bison soldiers around, and
then dies with Dhalsim. That's it. What a rip off!
Raul Julia
may not be able to be as intimidating as game Bison, but I swear he's
the only one having any fun in this movie, and he's a hell of a lot
better as Bison than Neal McDonough. Whoever made that casting
decision needs to go die in a fire. Every scene he's in is actually
entertaining to watch. Raul Julia as Bison would've been great for
something like Saturday Night Live or a parody. You know what? I
think it's in all our best interests to just assume that this was
meant as a parody of Street Fighter than an actual adaption because
I'm having a hard time believing anyone seriously thought this was
going to be good. Sadly, Raul Julia passed away two months before
the movie was released. Unfortunately, Raul Julia would pass away
from a stroke two months before the movie released. Even God didn't
want him to be exposed to this crap.
KICK HIM!
KICK HIM!
The movie
does have some pretty fun match ups at the end. You have Guile versus
Bison, Ryu versus Vega, Ken versus Sagat, and Zangief versus E.
Honda. A couple of them are leaned out to comedy like a Godzilla
joke for Zangief/Honda, antics with a punching bag, and Guile
banging Bison's head on a giant bell, but overall enjoyable. The
ending of the Guile/Bison fight is pretty stupid as Guile could have
avoided those flying charges of Bison's a lot sooner than he did,
but now seems like a bad time to expert high quality from this film.
In a
surprise twist, Bison manages to kill Guile, defeat the A.N. forces
and takes Chun-Li as his love slave after he finally conquers the
world giving the movie a surprisingly dark and depressing ending
that contrasts the lighthearted comedy that accompanied it up to this
point. NAH! The good guys win, bad guys lose, and everybody lives
happily ever after. Except for Dhalsim, and Blanka, and Vega.
However, Bison and Sagat did survive for the sequel that will never
be.
What the fuck
kind of pose is that, Van Damme?
Is it a
good movie? That depends on what your definition of good is. If your
definition of good includes a well thought out plot with compelling
characters and takes itself seriously, you're not getting that here.
If by good you just mean something that you can enjoy watching for an
hour and forty minutes, then actually, yeah.
Street
Fighter is better than the Super Mario Brothers movie and while it's
goofy and has plenty of bad parts, it's just entertaining enough to
keep you through it at just how amazingly goofy it can be. There
actually was SOME attempt at staying true to the original source
material. They set this up for a release date around Christmas, so
it's obvious what they were going for: a fun family film that kids
could enjoy, and since a lot of us were kids when we were introduced
to Street Fighter I'd say it balances out.
Try it
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