#street fighter the movie

[videogamepolls]

Requested by anon

[could-they-be-a-pro-wrestler]

How successful would Zangief…

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[lamazmorradelandroide]

'Street Fighter: The Movie' Sega Saturn (1994)

[broken-clover]

you did it! you finally performed the most holy act of street fighter fandom, watching the really weird and pretty bad live action movie. It's bad in the best ways possible honestly and I'm glad you agree Julia was the best part. Also thank you for giving Ming-Na Wen her dues, people tend to overlook her performance because she too gave this trainwreck more effort then it deserved

Like yes, it's easy to say that the movie is bad, but it's bad in such a myriad of such puzzling ways that calling it 'bad' almost feels like a disservice, weird as that sounds. I think that's why it's so easy to advocate watching it despite knowing how questionable it is, there's so much going on that's hard to describe that it's best to witness it firsthand and experience the chaos

I'm probably gonna make a longer post later once I have a little more time to analyze and organize my thoughts, but I think I can say with relative certainty that the cast in general was one of the highlights. Like, yes, very few of them resemble their canon counterparts, but I felt very few of them gave a half-assed performance. A couple of characters like T Hawk, Cammy and Blanka didn't get to do much, but for the most part I feel like everyone either gave a decent effort or had a few good moments that stood out and I can respect.

I really appreciate Chun-Li being a major character since at the time she had one of the more major ties to Bison, and while I was a little annoyed at the beginning how it seemed she was just gonna be a reporter with a vendetta while Honda and Balrog did the heavy lifting, MASSIVE respect for that literally being part of the narrative, with her playing the part of an overconfident damsel specifically to get Bison's guard down, only to try and beat the shit out of him. Actually I think she's like one of three characters that actually got to physically fight him hand-to-hand? Tbh wish there was a bit more direct interaction between them bc Julia's dramatic hamminess vs Ming-Na Wen's colder, more serious and bitter performance was a really compelling contrast that gave this mostly campy movie a bit more depth and some grounding, bc despite Bison being a power-mad dictator the silliness makes him a little unthreatening before the final sections, so it did really well for his character and the movie's tone to emphasize that this man has directly murdered people and left long-lasting mental scars on their families. Legitimately solid stuff

[megahorous]

Poison visits the Dungeon stage in Street Fighter: the Movie: the Game ! [Arcade]

[sunyot]

Cinematic Moments - Street Fighter Alpha The Animation 2001

[freakingtheworld]

[bottlepiecemuses]

Of Course, They Want To Aim Big

(Cue Old Nostalgia Critic Running Gag)

[domono08]

I’m totally not going to miss the epic crossover between MC Hammer and Colonel Guille!

[poz-patrol]

IL Duce Benito Mussolini as M. Bison

[mraartworks]

[tiphares]

street fighter 7/10 so many miscasts and yet some of them so dead on.. so much drama behind the scenes, coked out van damme whos havin an affair with THE kylie minogue who plays cammy lmfao ryu is chinese ken isnt blond and e.honda is hawaiian! but chun li is great, zangief is dead on sos vega and obviously raul juila is an amazing bison rip! these photos r gr8 tho a+ cosplays XD

[wozaction]

Shoutout to the Street Fighter movie for giving me the knowledge on being able to answer this trivia question in Street Fighter Duel.

[rondo-of-blog]

Change Alone is Neutral

Today I watched Street Fighter: The Movie. The live-action one, where Ming-Na Wen is Chun-Li and Guile is French.

For the uninitiated, Street Fighter: The Movie bears a surface-level resemblance to its namesake (or, the sequel to its namesake, rather) but diverges dramatically in various ways. Balrog's a good guy, Chun-Li's a journalist, and Zangief's... still a good guy, but he's VERY confused & susceptible to propaganda - relatable, amirite?

Now, when movies based on video games get talked about, the prevailing narrative is that they would be just peachy were it not for how many pesky CHANGES get made in the process of adapting the source material.

The primary audience for a video game adaptation ought to be the fans of the source material, after all, right? No Street Fighter fans went to theaters to see Street Fighter: The Movie in hopes of seeing, I dunno, Ryu entering into a found-family with his small-town cop bestie.

That all makes some amount of sense, but the truth isn't as simple as "is change good or bad?" That's yet another binary contrived to make sense of a chaotic world that defies description at its most beautiful.

No - to get to the heart of this, we're gonna have to take what I think I'll call a "step into the grey." Leave black-and-white behind and focus on what's in between it all.

So Street Fighter: The Movie is different. So what?

For one, it means we have an hour and 42 minutes of Balrog getting the heroic turn he's not gotten in the games in his 30+ years of character history. What they did to poor Grand L. Bush's hair in the film aside, I'd call everything in his depiction in the film a step up.

Gone are the constantly bugged-out eyes, gone is the characterization that (in the words of the Street Fighter fan wiki) paints him as a "greedy American boxer who loves booze, gambling and women." In the film he's a consistently-sympathetic figure who the audience is meant to root for, along with Chun-Li and E. Honda.

Now, is there anything wrong with Balrog being a villain in the actual Street Fighter games?... Not on its own but, in lieu of opening that can of beans, I'll just say it was refreshing to see him portrayed so positively.

The film setting itself apart from the games also means that the face of the damn series, Ryu, gets sidelined in favor of Jean-Claude Van Damme's Guile.

Now, am I gonna sit here and say I didn't enjoy Guile in the film? Of course not - he gets some of the best lines in the film and has an absolutely-magnetic presence on-camera, and Van Damme does an excellent job with the material.

... However.

Guile has never mattered like Ryu has mattered in Street Fighter. Ryu is the one on the covers, front-and-center, and would it have killed the film to let the big Hollywood name actor take the role of a memorable side-character (à la Ben Kenobi) while a fresher face - in this case, Byron Mann - takes the lead? I don't think so!

Just look at the 1995 Mortal Kombat movie! I hear it did pretty good doing pretty much that!

Does every movie need to be the same, then? Obviously not, and Street Fighter: The Movie would inevitably have been very different if Ryu took on a more central role. Could it have been closer to the games? Perhaps. Would that have made it better? Were the writers on the film even equipped to write a good movie centered around Ryu?

All questions I will happily shrug in response to, because I wasn't there and I can't know about things that never happened.

That's just two examples of where the film made changes to the source material as it adapted it into a movie, anyway. One positive and one negative, at least as I've presented them so far. But, getting back to the grey, let's take another look at both.

Balrog's heroic turn is nice and all, but it's not automatically good on its own. Its execution is what truly makes it great. Conversely, while I dislike the principle of him being sidelined, Ryu is still a lovable character in the film - even as he and Ken are randomly con men.

This is all very basic stuff, I realize. "Thing isn't bad on its own, it can be good if it's good" isn't exactly setting the world on fire for philosophizing. It's good to talk about this stuff anyway, I think, since it can be so easy to forget the simple things sometimes.

As far as change goes, has something I like ever changed to be something I didn't like? Of course! Several times!

When people get bogged down in rigid binaries though, which I see happening often, it can be a pretty awful scene. Conservatism is founded on a resistance to change, flatly painting any change taking place as straying from a grand old path - or 'GOP,' if you dig acronyms... and enemies of basically everything good in the world.

When something changes, that can be an opportunity to take a look at what you liked about it before so you can figure out why you don't like it now. Did it change, or did you change? If it changed into something you don't like, does that make it worse or just different? All questions that can lead to a better understanding of what you love.

I don't ask that you love every change that comes your way, all I ask is that we not flatten the conversation. Real-life exists on more than two dimensions and, while 2D can be fun for video games, I like it better this way. :)

[broken-clover]

So after rewatching with the director's commentary (yeah, technically I watched the movie twice in two days, but the second time I mostly had it in the background while doing other stuff) and having some more time to collect my thoughts, I think I'm just deciding to do a list of all the things I thought the movie did really well, expected or otherwise. Like, everyone knows about the bizarreness and the so-bad-it's-good memery but I want to highlight some stuff I thought was genuinely admirable

-In watching the director's commentary, it seemed that he had a pretty realistic and relatively grounded and familiar understanding of the source material, which is inherently more than the live action Mario movie did. Even if it didn't pan out like expected, it's cool to see that passion went into it and he had a sense of respect for the games instead of writing them off as childish and trying to 'improve' it

-Likewise appreciate the director sharing petty grievances with the film, it humanizes things quite a bit. In fairness I also want those swizzle sticks and Bison dollars and would've been bummed if I was the only one who didn't get any.

-100% will always respect practical effects and physical set design. There were a few areas where CGI was used but for the most part it's all tangible

-Also!! Practical fighting!! Yes it's easy to make jokes about Van Damme's accent when playing someone so cartoonishly American but in a movie like this that relies so heavily on fight scenes he's exactly the sort of person you'd want to cast.

-(Perhaps an odd aside but upon reflection and trying to see other peoples' opinions on the film I think @ninewheels makes a very solid point in that having an immigrant Guile subtly works in the narrative's favor while also downplaying the plot's 'white savior' element to a degree)

-Again, discarding the canon divergences, Honda and Balrog had some terrific moments as a comedic duo, and for as little screentime was they had they managed to make their characters compelling. It's made completely understandable that given all three having their lives ruined by Bison in some form that they and Chun-Li would gravitate towards and work together. Unironically would watch a whole side series just about the three of them they bounce off of each other in a strangely natural way

-Likewise, Dhalsim!! Was not expecting to find him so compelling. I know it's a steep deviation from canon but at the very least they gave him his own little character arc, and the desire to use his skills for the betterment of humanity does sound a lot like canon Dhalsim behavior so I'm fine with it.

-Like I mentioned before, I was quite shocked at how well done Vega's presence was in the film, being rather spot on visually and personality-wise. As I found out while looking up more info, apparently his actor was still learning English at the time, so it's understandable why he only had a few short lines. However, just about everything else makes up for it. The costume design was near-perfect, and even without dialogue his body language did a terrific job of having him come across as condescendingly smug and dismissive. I see a lot of (absolutely deserved) praise for Mr. Julia but Jay Tavare did a fantastic job and absolutely deserves more credit

-On that note in general a recurring sentiment I kept having was that the silent/gesture comedy in this was really, really sharp. Some of the funniest parts in this movie were ones with no dialogue whatsoever

-This movie was funny on purpose!! I've seen some people describe the memetic moments in this and make it sound as though the whole thing is a straightforward action flick, but there were a whole lot of actually intentionally comedic elements and most of them landed perfectly well!

-Zangief is another underratedly terrific performance. Even if he's much duller than he is canonically it's played with so much gusto and enthusiasm that it's so enjoyable to watch him in action.

-Raul Julia. No explanation needed.

-Ming-Na Wen. Slight explanation needed bc WHY DID NOBODY TELL ME SHE WAS SO GOOD IN THIS. Woman did her own stunts and gave the movie a dose of colder realism that worked excellently with the somewhat unsteady tone

-Bazooka Cammy. Also as iffy as I was initially at having a pop star acting in this Kylie turned in a pretty solid performance.

-Gun Ken. I don't have much elaboration for this one it was just funny. Super magical spirit karate from living in backwoods Japan for like a decade with some old guy and you just decide to use a gun. We brought back Neck Snap Cammy from the II OVA for 6 so we can totally bring back Gun Ken for SF6 too right?? Please?? Don't even have to do anything too fancy just take regular Ken and give him Gun.

[megahorous]

I played Street Fighter the Movie [the Game]! It was nice

-- I played as Ryu, Ken, Chun Li and Honda so far! Chun Li is probably the only character where I prefer the movie version, for obvious reasons

-- I was hoping it would have the dungeon stage, but that appears to be exclusive to the arcade version! Lame! They should bring that one back

-- And it seems Guile can handcuff his opponent in at least one of the versions[?]; that's interesting. I think it's more polite to buy them dinner first?

-- I was watching the AVGN re: Mortal Kombat ripoffs the other night before bed and this one happened to come up

-- I 'll have to try more guys later, if I have time