Out in theaters today, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li is Capcom and 20th Century Fox’s latest attempt to reboot the Street Fighter film franchise. The film wasn’t screened for critics (never a good sign), and with only 15 reviews currently on rottentomatoes.com, not one critic deemed the film “FRESH”.
With all of the success that the release of Street Fighter IV generated, the movie could possibly salvage some kind of a decent box-office performance. But if this movie goes down in history as a colossal failure like the original 1994 flick, then I have some advice for Capcom and any studios who hope to capitalize on the venerable video game franchise: STOP TRYING.
Street Fighter is a wildly successful game franchise due to its tight controls and incredibly deep fighting gameplay. The game’s storyline was never particularly fascinating (any movie about a crime syndicate that holds a massive fighting tournament will pale in comparison to Enter the Dragon), which is why I don’t think it translates to film very well. The most popular face of the franchise, Ryu, is a loner who doesn’t say much, doesn’t have much charisma and is really only likable because he looks cool and he’s relatively easy to use. Those aren’t really the characteristics of a starring movie role, so why do you think they threw Kristen Kreuk (mmm…) into a film about Chun-Li?
The 1994 animated film, Street Fighter II, was well-received, but I’m still not sure how popular that hand-drawn movie is without the infamous Chun-Li shower scene. Yeah, that scene was really up there for me in terms of animated hotties, right along with Ariel’s seashell bra in Little Mermaid.
So here’s my final plea to all movie studios: Street Fighter just doesn’t play out well on film, especially American film where it’s just going to end up looking like a boring Action vehicle. If you’re going to make a movie like that, it’s already been done in 1994, and that movie is probably better than anything else that will come out in the future.
It also had one of the greatest movie speeches of all-time:
“Greatest Moment in Cinematic History” indeed.
I did a presentation for the Berklee video game music club about fighting games, and I HAD to show that clip. I swear any excuse to watch that thing and I'm all over it.
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah nice little write up on why video game movies are terrible
Guile = American
ReplyDeleteJean Claude Van Damme = I look fine (Fresh Prince)
anyways, Guile was an extreme American soldier being played by a frenchy, but yet managed to pull it off somehow. For some odd reason, Jean Claude was always capable of playing the good guy over evil roles pretty well. I guess during that era, Jean Claude was probably the best fit. Flashkick > Haoduken in that movie. lol.
i've been watching too many good movies lately, so i feel like i should watch something terrible like street fighter just to keep things on an even keel.
ReplyDeletethat speech though, is still inspirational speaking at its best
not gonna lie, my 10-year old self thought ryu was pretty hot. but then again i also had a thing for the fox from Disney's Robin Hood
ReplyDelete