Street Fighter

Next up in the series of awful video game adaptations is “Street Fighter.” For those who have never played Street Fighter, I’ll fill you in on a little history. Street Fighter is a fighting video game franchise developed and published by Capcom. The first game in the series focuses on Ryu, a martial artist who competes in a worldwide martial arts tournament that takes place in five countries and 10 opponents. The second player is Ryu’s American friend, Ken Masters, who can do all the same moves that Ryu can. These are basically the two most playable characters in future installments that were released. However, in 1994, they made a terrible adaptation, loosely following the story of Street Fighter II: The World Warrior.

The basic story is about Colonel William F. Guile (Jean-Claude Van Damme) who wants to take down General M. Bison (Raúl Juliá), the military leader and drug overlord of Shadaloo City who wants to, you guessed it, take over the world with an army of genetic supersoldiers. To help out, Guile gets the help of street fighters Ryu Hoshi (Byron Mann) and Ken (Damian Chapa).

Now our first problem is that even though they got the character of Guile down almost right, why focus on this character that despite his theme song going with everything didn’t really have that much going for him. Also, the reason why he wanted to take down Bison’s Shadaloo City was because Bison killed his best friend, Charlie. However in the movie, Sergeant Carlos “Charlie” Blanka, played by Robert Mammone, is a hostage who is ordered by Bison to be used as a test subject in his lab to turn into the first of his supersoldiers. The doctor and scientist on this test is named Dhalsim, played by Roshan Seth. Hold the phone here!!! What are you people doing!? First off, Blanka was once a human whose plane crashed in Brazil but he mutated into a savage with green skin, orange hair and with the ability to generate electricity. Charlie Nash first became a playable character in Street Fighter: Alpha Warriors’ Dreams as a member of the US Air Force who was charged for finding Bison and destroying his organization, who also happened to have the same fighting style as Guile. Also, Dhalsim is a yogi, husband, father and pacifist who goes against his beliefs by enlisting in the World Warrior tournament to raise money for his village in India.

Guile has the help of two Army Navy people, Lietenant Cammy (singer Kylie Minogue) and Native-American Sergeant Thunder Hawk, or T. Hawk (Gregg Rainwater). First off, Cammy was once a clone assassin working for Shadaloo before breaking free and becoming a caring MI6 operative for the British government. Second, T. Hawk is a Native American fighter from Mexico whose family home was taken over by Shadaloo, resulting in his exile!!! GET YOUR FACTS RIGHT!!!!

What really makes me livid is that Ryu and Ken are changed into con artists in the movie. ARE YOU SERIOUS!?!?!? They both are best friends, rivals and sparring partners who trained under the same master, Gouken. Also, Ryu and Ken compete in the tournament to test their strength against the tournament’s champion. We also have Viktor Sagat, played by Wes Studi, who is turned into a rip off arms dealer in this movie. Ok, since you people do not get these characters right, Sagat is a famous Muay Thai expert from Thailand who is famous for his strength and height that works for Bison!!

Jay Tavare plays Vega, a cage fighting champion, who is one of few characters who they got almost right here, except for the fact that Vega also works under the rule of M. Bison in Shadaloo. Also, Ming-Na Wen plays Chun-Li, a news reporter who wants to get Bison for killing her father. Another character that they got almost right, except for one thing: SHE IS AN EXPERT MARTIAL ARTIST AND INTERPOL OFFICER!!!! On Chun-Li’s crew is former Hawaiian sumo wrestler Edmond Honda (Peter Tuiasosopo) and boxer Balrog (Grand L. Bush), who want revenge against Sagat for ruining their careers. ARE YOU SERIOUS!?!?!? First off, Honda is a sumo wrestler from Japan, like Ryu, who enters the World Tournament to make the world more aware of sumo wrestling!!! Also, Balrog is a disgraced boxer who works for Bison!!! GET YOUR FACTS RIGHT!!!!

Bison’s computer expert is Dee Jay (Miguel A. Nuñex Jr.) and bodyguard is Zangief (Andrew Bryniarski). YOU PEOPLE ARE IDIOTS!!!! ARE YOU SAYING NO ONE ON YOUR TEAM EVER PLAYED ANY OF THE VIDEO GAMES!?!?!?! Dee Jay is a Jamaican kickboxer and karateka, along with being a recording artist and breakdancer. Zangief is a Russian professional wrestler who fights to prove Russia is superior over all the other countries fighters!!!!

Why have all the characters from the game but only have a select few that you get completely right!? If you want to include all of the characters, fine, but GET THEIR CHARACTER TRAITS RIGHT!!!

Why would you even cast Van Damme as Guile? Seriously, it’s hard to understand most of the stuff he says. You couldn’t find anyone else!? The biggest slap in the face is having Raúl Juliá casted as Bison. Especially since in the game, Bison wanted to control the world’s governments through Shadaloo, not create supersoldiers!!! Although rumor has it that Raúl Juliá’s children wanted him to play Bison, and the poor man died of a stroke two months before the film was released, making this, sadly, the man’s last film he acted in.

Like always, the fight scenes are terribly done, seeing how they don’t have any of the special moves that you like doing in the games, although a few of them are done very poorly. Also, the acting in this movie is just straight up atrocious and just a pain to sit through. The writing has some of the worst ever in a movie. Except for one funny line where Zangief says “Quick, change the channel!”

The part that sucks the most is that the post-credit scene shows Bison revived in his ruined command center to try his world conquest mission again. IS THIS ANOTHER VIDEO GAME ADAPTATION THAT LEFT US OFF ON A STUPID CLIFFHANGER!?!?!? I think it was, and that just sucks big time!!!!

Bottom line: don’t see this movie, especially if you’re a fan of this video game franchise, which is famous for its speed and gameplay.

We sadly did get an intended reboot, “Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li,” released in 2009, which is much worse than the first one. The problem starts with casting the dead-eyed, sleepy-voiced, personality-weakened robot Kristin Kreuk (who you might remember from the trashy “Smallville” show) as the main piano-playing/fighter, and they continue with every other terrible façade of the production. Nathan Rabin said in his review, “Kreuk delivers her lines like a first-grade Sunday-school teacher addressing her students, and she boasts the energy and magnetism of a department-store mannequin.” She’s not even the film’s most miscast actor. That goes to “American Pie” alum Chris Klein as a joking Interpol agent. Rabin said, “It’s hard to say what’s sadder: that Klein aspires only to recapture the Jack Nicholson For Dummies smarty swagger of Kuffs-era Christian Slater, or that he fails miserably.” Like the film, Klein goes low, but still misses his point.

Rabin said, “Kreuk plays a big-hearted ivory-tinkler drawn into a web of intrigue after she receives a mysterious scroll beckoning her to Bangkok, where her father (Edmund Chen) has been kidnapped by sneering underworld kingpin Neal McDonough. Kreuk travels east in search of justice, and becomes the eager disciple of an enigmatic mentor prone to delivering pseudo-mystic mumbo jumbo.” Klein co-stars as a tough lawyer who helps Kreuk in wanting to bring McDonough down.

“The Legend of Chun-Li” should have a great blueprint for its action scenes where the typical fights of the classic videogame franchise that inspired it. Rabin noted, “Instead, director Andrzej Bartkowiak (Doom) stingily doles out generic, choppily edited fight scenes, so as not to distract from the parade of bad actors stiffly reciting wooden dialogue while inhabiting characters somehow less complex and multidimensional than their arcade counterparts.” “The Legend of Chun-Li” takes forever to start, wasting great fight scenes with weak exposition and “Dead or Alive” one-liners. Rabin said, “The film’s title should induce wistful nostalgia for lost, Mountain Dew-fueled afternoons manically punching buttons and maneuvering joysticks, but the dreary, joyless, indifferently directed film quickly squanders that goodwill.” I’m not surprised to know that “The Legend of Chun-Li” wasn’t screened for critics, but it shouldn’t have been released in theaters either. I don’t even think Uwe Boll would have done a better job because I hear that his video game adaptations are some of the worst films out there, and people have declared that his films are the worst video game adaptations. Remember, this is from what I heard, I've never seen an Uwe Boll movie, nor do I want to.

Final result: these two Street Fighter movies were doomed from the start. I played Street Fighter II: Turbo at my cousin’s house and I loved the game. Just seeing these movies and not having anything good in them is a giant slap in the face for those who are fans of this franchise.

Look out next week when I review two other horrible video game adaptations. They are sequels, but one movie people seem to love, but I don’t, but the sequel everyone agrees is far worse. Just stay tuned to know what I mean in “Video Game Adaptation Month.”