Main Menu

Street Fighter

Started by clockworkcanary, November 25, 2006, 04:09:49 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Gruber

Please,
Street Fighter is the GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD.

Pinoy Metyal Fan

On of the worst movies ever made.  BUT, it is one of the funner movies to make fun of.  The animated (Japanese animated movie, not that stupid T.V. series made in the U.S.) one was better that this crap.  Hell, even Street Fighter II V series (the Japanese T.V. series realesed on video here first and shown on cable later) was better than this, and that was excruciatingly slooooooooooooooooow!!!

Biggest gripes?  Guile's too European, Honda's too Islander (as in Pacific Islands), Cammy's too old and fat, Hawk's too skinny, Sagat's too short and un-Asian, Ken's too poor, Ryu's too Southern (as in too "below the island of Okinawa" Southern), Vega's not effeminate enough, and where the hell is Fei Long?  I'm glad Capcom decided to make an anime more serious than this.

Steven E. de Souza (writer/director) wrote better movies than this (e.g., Die Hard, 48 HRS), so what the hell?  Maybe he was going for this, oh well.

Hadrian Wolff

O.K. guys. We're all here because we like bad movies. I'm going to rent it at some point and enjoy every minute of this B movie gem.


asimpson2006

Needless to say, I enjoyed the film myself.  It's corny, but you have to laugh at the corny ness that this film offers.  If you take films like this seriously, you miss the enjoyment out of it.

John

"a combination of Apocalypse Now and Ben Hur"

Maybe he took the whole pig after pig, cow after cow thing too seriously!    :teddyr:
It was a bad campy corny movie that is worth a watch. I enjoyed it in all it's ignoble glory!

Castroph

This movie was terrible, though it made me laugh a couple times when Van Damme spoke.

Kooshmeister

#21
Recently I finally saw this and I didn't think it was anywhere near as bad as everyone says it is. Then again this is probably because I've never seen or played any of the games (although I did own an M. Bison action figure as a kid for some reason). Just a few things:

-I had absolutely no problem understanding what Jean-Claude Van Damme said. Yes, he has a thick accent, but I found him 100% intelligible.

-According to the DVD commentary (more on this in a second), the reason they called them the AN and not the UN is because Capcom stupidly asked the UN if they could use their logo/name in the film; according to De Souza, you don't need the UN's permission, or the permission of any army or government organization, to depict them in film, fictionally or otherwise.

Nevertheless, because Capcom asked, the UN balked at the idea of them being used in a violent action film (nevermind that it portrays them in a mostly good light, what with rescuing hostages and dethroning an evil dictator and all) and sent a "strongly worded letter" (if I remember De Souza's wording correctly) to Capcom. As a result, they had to repaint all of the U's in "UN" on all the uniforms and vehicles to become A's for the fictional Allied Nations.

-Whoever said Cammy is "too old and fat" is a shallow a***ole. Sorry, but even though I'm not heterosexual, the words "old" and "fat" do not come to mind when I look at Kylie Minogue. That's just...well, as I said, shallow.

-The DVD commentary is actually nothing more than a carryover of the laserdisc's audio commentary, which was recorded by De Souza shortly after the completion of the film and before it had a chance to be ripped to pieces by enraged fans and critics. This makes it a very unique commentary. Usually commentaries for bad movies (like Batman and Robin) have the director, or writer, or whoever, profusely apologizing for the film, which gets annoying after a while. I don't want excuses and whining, I want the actual reasons behind why such decisions were made, and the De Souza commentary, unpoisoned by the hatred this movie garners, offered a ton of insight, both good and bad.

Complaints about Jean-Claude Van Damme as Guile and Raul Julia as M. Bison? They were the first choices for those roles from day one. To hear De Souza tell it, they never had anyone else in mind to play either character. Make of that what you will.

Amongst other things the commentary would seem to explain why it has so many humorous bits and why it doesn't follow the game's storyline. The humorous stuff is certainly a "take it or leave it" situation; De Souza just wanted to make a fun action movie. As for the story, I think it was pretty clear that they wanted to ground the film in reality as much as possible, by turning it from a game about a fighting tournament with superpowers and overly flamboyant characters into a story about turmoil in a small foreign country with what passes for the UN attempting to overthrow an evil drug lord turned dictator. The humor isn't needed and is sometimes a bit jarring, but at least it's not the kind of sick gross-out humor we get in movies today (apart from the thinly-veiled prison sex joke between Honda and Balrog when they're in the torture chamber, and at least that was cleverly written).

Does this work? In a sense, yes. Taken on its own (even with the humor), Street Fighter is a mostly coherent movie with a beginning and an end. Erm, sort of. For me the movie's only real shortcoming is the end, which is abrupt and leaves a lot of loose ends. Why did they show the AN official's helicopter flying to Bison's fortress if they're not going to have him show up? Why does Guile not try harder to make Blanka and Dr. Dhalsim come with him? Why does he get over their apparent deaths so quickly? What happens to Vega, last seen unconscious on the floor? Did Sagat just leave him?

The ending aside however I found the story very easy to follow on repeat viewings (for instance I only noticed on my second viewing that it was a disguised Chun-Li, Honda and Balrog performing in Bison's tent). M. Bison attempts to conquer Shadaloo and is repelled in a coup assisted by Allied Nations troops. He takes some hostages including Guile's friend Carlos Blanka, who he experiments on. Guile with the help of some con men infiltrates the gang of a Shadaloo crime lord who supplies Bison with guns, to learn where Bison has holed up. While this is happening, a news team comprised of people who all have personal vendettas against Bison use this as an opportunity to attempt to get revenge on the evil would-be dictator, but they are captured. In the end there is an all-out assault on the bad guys' fortress, Guile loses his friend, who chooses to remain in Bison's exploding base rather than face the world as a mutated beast, but Guile gets his vengeance by defeating Bison in a ludicrously over the top fight, the hostages are rescued, and everyone is happy.

I fail to see anything wrong with that story as a whole. But, from what little I know of the games, it isn't Street Fighter. Not that I care much. I guess in the end, Street Fighter is a movie that (despite what De Souza claims) is aimed at people who have never played the games. If you changed the names of all of the characters and changed the title, would this film even get the amount of hate that it does? Like Super Mario Bros. (another much put-upon video game movie I happen to enjoy), it's not faithful to the source material, but the story is fun, so if people would get over their petty complaints (like Cammy being "too fat") and just enjoy it for what it is, rather than whining about what it isn't.

WingedSerpent

Be interesting to see if the new one aout Chun Li's origin will be much better or worse. 
At least, that's what Gary Busey told me...

Andrew

There is one part of "Street Fighter" that I think is genius:  Bison talking to Chun-Li about the day he destroyed her village and killed everyone she loved.  He says something to the effect of, "For you, that was the most important day of your life., but for me it was just (a) Tuesday."  I love that line.  It made me laugh at the time, but I have grown a lot fonder of that genius bit of dialog over the years.
Andrew Borntreger
Badmovies.org

Chris McAvey

Y'know, if you're still waiting for that Dig Dug movie, I've got something that might interest you:

http://black20.com/black20-trailer-park/dig-dug-rise-pookas-1

The scary thing is, Hollywood probably would do something like this.

alexkl5

I can't believe you left out the quotes "Quick!  Change the channel!"  and "But for me, it was Tuesday!"

Moviefan

The only thing that makes someone sit through this disaster is that it is so campy and funny that you can't help but laugh at it, from the bad quips from JCVD to the presence of Raul Julia who somehow lights up the screen each time he shows up with his campy acting during this movie. Those  wanting to see a serious adaptation would rather watch the animated movie which was at least serious despite the horrible english dubbing.

Vik

The Sony Chibba Streetfighter trilogy is awesome.

Felicity

Leslie Nielsen did play a Bisonesque villain in Surf Ninjas.

Street Fighter was OK.  Jean-Claude van Damme was actually very good as Guile.  Sometimes the movie seemed kind of plastic and cold, not really trying to speak to its audience, and that can be depressing.

Wes Studi may not be Asian, but he's a dead ringer for my friend from Hong Kong, so I completely buy him as a Shadalooan.

I love the terms "Bisonopolis" and "Bison Dollars."

Why Raul Julia?  They were probably going for a combination of the fascist menace he radiated in Moon Over Parador with the silliness and absurdity of his Addams Family performances.  General Bison = Gomez Straussman.