Well, seeing how I’ve done not one but two major retrospectives on the film adaptations of the hit video game series Mortal Kombat, it’s only fitting that I now give the same kind of attention to its longtime rival in the fighting game genre, Street Fighter. After all, 2026 has proven to be quite a big year for both franchises as they’ve both gotten new cinematic releases. Mortal Kombat saw its highly anticipated sequel, Mortal Kombat 2, come out to great success earlier this year, and now the time has come for a new take on Street Fighter with the series’ third live-action film adaptation. And so, to prepare for that, let’s delve into the other iconic fighting game franchise of the 90s, starting, of course, by going through everything that led to it becoming the pop cultural staple that it is, especially since it has quite an interesting history behind it. While most associate Street Fighter’s rise to fame with its second installment, the series technically started in 1987 with the release of Capcom’s arcade fighter Street Fighter, in which one or two players partake in a series of 3-round one-on-one fights. Player 1 would play as Ryu, a Japanese martial artist who seeks to become the greatest fighter of all time by traveling all over the world and fighting the best of the best, while Player 2 would play as Ken Masters, Ryu’s American rival and best friend. The original Street Fighter would end up being responsible for inspiring some major staples of the fighting game genre, such as special attacks that were performed by a series of button commands that weren’t directly advertised in the game itself, thus requiring players to learn them themselves through tons of practice, and a six-button control scheme that certainly must’ve been easier to control than the game’s ‘deluxe’ model’s control scheme that revolved around a pair of pressure-sensitive pneumatic pads that often caused many injuries.
But while it was ultimately a decent success from a sales
perspective, this series didn’t truly come into its own until four years later
in 1991. That, of course, was when Street Fighter II hit the market,
effectively improving upon the controls of its predecessor, introducing another
fighting game staple in combo attacks, and giving players more characters to
choose from, thus launching the series’ eclectic collection of fighters
(everyone from the patriotic Colonel Guile to the Russian wrestler Zangief) who
all partake in a World Fighting Tournament held by the sinister warlord M.
Bison. Whereas the first game did decently as far as arcade game sales are
concerned, Street Fighter II was an undisputed juggernaut. With over
200,000 arcade cabinets and over 15 million units of its home console ports
sold, it’s a title that has made over $10 billion across all its various
releases, easily making it one of the best-selling video games of all time. It’s
widely regarded as the series that effectively revolutionized the fighting game
genre, thus paving the way for other popular fighting game franchises such as,
of course, Mortal Kombat. But as for Street Fighter, it’s
led to the series continuing on for many years, and not just with sequels (at
the time of this post’s publication, its sixth mainline installment was
released in 2023) but also through updated ports of practically every mainline
entry that added in new gameplay features and more characters to the
franchise’s expansive roster of playable fighters. And, of course, this has
also led to some on-screen adaptations as well on both the big and small screen.
Now for today’s retrospective, we’re only going to be
focusing on the three Street Fighter films that have gotten a theatrical
release. In doing so, we will be skipping over a couple of direct-to-video projects;
most notably, a pair of anime films based on the Street Fighter Alpha series,
first launched in 1995 and set before the events of Street Fighter II.
In 2000, there was an OVA, Street Fighter Alpha: The Animation, and in
2005, there was Street Fighter Alpha: Generations, both of which were
primarily based on the Alpha series’ second video game installment,
1996’s Street Fighter Alpha 2. While I have reviewed Mortal Kombat’s
direct-to-video releases, the Mortal Kombat Legends films, I usually
don’t cover a franchise’s direct-to-video releases whenever I do one of these
retrospectives, and so that’s the reason why we won’t be covering the Alpha
films here today. We’re also not going to cover the various Street
Fighter TV series and web series that have been released over the years,
both from a live-action and animation standpoint. In the case of the former,
there were a pair of web series developed by actor/stuntman Joey Ansah, 2014’s Street
Fighter: Assassin’s Fist and 2016’s Street Fighter: Resurrection,
both of which ran on the now-defunct media network Machinima. And then, for the
latter, there were a pair of animated shows: Street Fighter II V, a
29-episode anime that premiered in 1995, and Street Fighter: The Animated
Series, which ran for two seasons on the USA Network around the same time
as Mortal Kombat’s animated spin-off, Defenders of the Realm. So,
with all that info dumping out of the way, it’s time to select your favorite
World Warrior and join us here at Rhode Island Movie Corner as we look at the
film adaptations of the hit video game franchise Street Fighter.
STREET FIGHTER II:
THE ANIMATED MOVIE (1994)
I’m sure some of you might have expected me to start today’s
retrospective off with the live-action Street Fighter film from 1994…
but the thing is, that wasn’t the only Street Fighter film that hit the
scene that year. Whereas the live-action film was a December 1994 release, fans
had been blessed with another cinematic release back in August of that year by
way of an animated Street Fighter film, Street Fighter II Movie. Directed
by Gisaburō Sugii,
director of the 1985 film adaptation of the 1934 Kenji Miyazawa novel Night
on the Galactic Railroad and the highly rated anime series Touch,
the film was animated by Sugii’s production company Group TAC. When the film
was released in North America, several edits were made to tone down some of the
more mature aspects of the film to achieve a PG-13 rating, such as various
instances of bloodshed and, perhaps most infamously, an extended shower
sequence involving series lead Chun-Li with explicit on-screen nudity. But upon
its home media release, both the PG-13 cut and an Unrated cut more in line with
the original Japanese cut (albeit with the pop music-based American score
rather than the Japanese’s synth-based score) were made available in the U.S.,
resulting in a rather unique situation regarding this film’s various cuts
across different regions. The most recent Blu-Ray and 4K releases of the film
come with the special feature of selecting any of the film’s regional cuts,
including both the PG-13 and unrated US releases, an unrated UK release that
sees some characters drop some F-bombs, and even an English cut that’s synced
to the original Japanese soundtrack. We won’t be delving any further into the
differences between these cuts, but I did want to at least note that, for the
purposes of today’s retrospective, this review is based on the film’s unrated
American cut with its American soundtrack.
The film follows the various characters from the world of Street
Fighter II as they contend with the threat of M. Bison, the leader of the
criminal organization Shadowlaw who has been hypnotizing many of the world’s
greatest fighters in their plot for world domination, with their latest target
being the elusive martial artist Ryu. The plot itself is, admittedly, the very
definition of basic as it’s largely just a series of fight sequences that jump
from character to character. But from an animation standpoint, Street
Fighter II: The Animated Movie shines with its fantastic animation that
delivers some spectacular fight sequences notably choreographed by renowned
kickboxers Kazuyoshi Ishii and Andy Hug. From a character standpoint, the film
perfectly translates the cast’s designs from the original Street Fighter II games
to the screen while their expressive facial animations result in some of the
film’s best comedic moments. As for the film’s voice cast, the American dub
includes some notable names from the world of voice acting such as Steve Blum
as the Native American warrior T. Hawk and Richard Epcar as Japanese sumo
wrestler E. Honda. The biggest name, though, is easily Bryan Cranston as the
Bruce Lee-esque action film star Fei Long; yes, before he was Walter White on Breaking
Bad and even before he was Malcolm’s dad Hal on Malcolm in the Middle,
Cranston’s acclaimed career primarily started through voice acting, which also
included a stint as various characters during the first season of Mighty
Morphin Power Rangers. In short, Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie is
an undeniable must-watch for Street Fighter fans. Sure, it can arguably
be seen as a case of ‘style over substance’ in some places, but compared to the
other films we’ll be looking at today, it’s also the most authentic of the
bunch when it comes to superlatively conveying the over-the-top yet highly entertaining
vibes of Street Fighter’s globe-trotting action-packed escapades.
Rating: 4/5
STREET FIGHTER
(1994)
Now, we come to the one that I’m sure a lot of you were
waiting for: the 1994 live-action film adaptation of Street Fighter directed
by Steven E. de Souza in his first big-time directorial outing (not counting
his ‘official’ directorial debut, 1973’s Arnold’s Wrecking Co.) after making
a name for himself as a writer on iconic projects such as 1982’s 48 Hrs.,
1985’s Commando, and 1988’s Die Hard. But despite that genre
pedigree and the involvement of action superstar Jean-Claude Van Damme in the
lead role of Col. Guile, this film endured a notoriously troubled production.
We could be here all day going over everything that went wrong here (this Polygon
article goes over every single detail of the story), but for the sake of
brevity, I’ll do my best to focus on the most vital facts. For starters, Capcom
pressured de Souza to include as many characters from Street Fighter II as
possible; while de Souza initially managed to convince Capcom to limit it to
just 7 characters, Capcom ultimately won out, forcing de Souza to include all
but one (Fei Long) of the 16 characters from the game’s 1993 update Super
Street Fighter II: The New Challengers. As a result, de Souza struggled to incorporate
these characters into a single story to the point where he often had to alter
their characterizations from the games, such as having the mystical yoga
fighter Dhalsim be a scientist forced to work for M. Bison or by merging Guile’s
military friend Charlie Nash with the electrically charged mutant Blanka. He was
even forced to create a film-exclusive character, Capt. Kenzo Sawada, to
appease Capcom’s demands to include actor Kenya Sawada in the film. While Capcom
originally wanted him to play Ryu, Sawada’s limited English vocabulary prevented
that, hence why Bryon Mann was cast as Ryu instead and Sawada was given his own
unique role, albeit still necessitating the need for him to be dubbed.
Once production began, de Souza and company immediately hit
a roadblock due to the film’s other lead, Raúl Juliá,
having recently undergone surgery after being diagnosed with stomach cancer (for
the record, this was ultimately Juliá’s final film as he passed away before its
release). To ensure that Juliá’s health would be where it needed to be for the
shoot, the production schedule was drastically reworked to film anything that
didn’t involve him first, thus resulting in frequent on-set conflicts between
de Souza and the film’s stunt coordinator, Charlie Picerni, and often forcing
the cast to learn their fight choreography on the fly. Add in the inadequate
quality of the film’s interior sets in Thailand and the consistently egotistical
behavior displayed by Jean-Claude Van Damme and you have what was, by all accounts,
a miserable shoot. And then, once the film hit post-production, de Souza was then
forced to heavily cut down on the film’s action sequences when the initial cut
was given an R-rating by the MPAA which, in de Souza’s opinion, was the result of
heightened media scrutiny in the wake of a recent school shooting in Wickliffe,
Ohio (similar situations affected the likes of films like 1999’s Idle Hands and
2000’s Scream 3 in the wake of the even more infamous Columbine High
School massacre in 1999). With Capcom insistent on a more marketable PG-13 rating,
de Souza toned down the violence (often causing some major continuity issues
while also preventing the use of the characters’ famous special moves because
they didn’t have time for special effects) to the point where the film somehow
landed the lowest rating of all, G, before a few additions of profanity ensured
that PG-13 rating.
Upon its release, Street Fighter was a solid commercial success, making nearly $100 million worldwide on its $35 million budget. But
from a critical standpoint, the film was downright savaged by both critics and
fans of the Street Fighter franchise, thus becoming one of the prime
early examples of mediocre film adaptations of popular video games. That said,
though, in the years since its release, this film’s reputation has somewhat
improved thanks to those who grew up with it and consider it a ‘guilty pleasure’…
and having now seen it in full for the first time, I can certainly see where
they’re coming from as this is a highly entertaining 90s popcorn flick. However,
to be perfectly clear, that statement must come with a HUGE asterisk next to it
because this is quite arguably a Street Fighter film ‘in name only’.
Sure, it has nearly all the characters from the games, but the film takes them
out of a storyline involving a global fighting tournament and puts them into a
war film that radically alters some of their established characterizations from
the games. There are a couple of the franchise’s trademark one-on-one fight
sequences, but they’re largely reserved for the finale and, as noted earlier
when we addressed this film’s various production issues, do show signs of having
been cut down significantly to appease the MPAA. But when it comes to pure entertainment
value, this film largely makes up for that with its rapid pace and its
unabashedly goofy sense of humor.
Casting-wise, we should probably address the elephant in the
room that is Jean-Claude Van Damme as Col. Guile. Instead of maintaining the
character’s excessively stereotypical American persona from the games… the film
has him played by the ‘Muscles from Brussels’ who doesn’t even remotely try to
hide his Belgian accent that constantly leads to some unintentionally hilarious
line readings that, by all accounts, he infamously never rehearsed before
filming. Still, for what it’s worth, this version of Guile does provide some decently
entertaining moments mainly thanks to the goofy yet distinct onscreen persona
that legitimately made Van Damme a notable star of the action genre in the late
80s and early 90s. But, of course, as any fan of this film will tell you, the
biggest star of the show is easily Raúl Juliá as the nefarious warlord M.
Bison, a role that he took on knowing that it’d be his final film role as a
tribute to his children, who were fans of the games. What comes out of this is
one of the most gloriously over-the-top villain performances in cinematic history
as Juliá happily revels in chewing the scenery every time he pops up, resulting
in a pure gold mine of quotable lines (“OF COURSE!!!”). As for the rest of the cast,
you have some other enjoyable standouts here and there, such as Miguel A. Núñez Jr. and Andrew
Bryniarski providing many of the film’s best humorous moments as Bison’s henchmen
Dee Jay and Zangief (“QUICK, CHANGE THE CHANNEL!” – Zangief).
In conclusion, one’s stance on the 1994 film adaptation of Street
Fighter will undeniably vary depending on their history with its source material.
For those who are mega-fans of the Street Fighter games, you’re more
than likely going to be disappointed with this film as it barely tries to be in
line with the games, both in terms of maintaining accurate portrayals of the
franchise’s eclectic cast of characters and for ultimately being more of a war
film with very few instances of the characters partaking in actual fight
sequences. But if you’re like me and you’re more of a casual fan of the Street
Fighter games (or even a complete newcomer to the series), then you’ll probably
find this to be, if anything, a delightfully cheesy and all-around entertaining
90s blockbuster. I don’t like using the term ‘guilty pleasure’ in film
discourse as I personally feel that one should never be ashamed of the films
that they like, but in this case, I guess that you could apply that term to how
I feel about this film. Street Fighter is by no means the best film that
has ever been made that was based on a video game, but as far as this infamous
subgenre is concerned, there have been FAR worse films compared to this one. This
one, at the very least, benefits from being the exact type of fun and bombastic
big-budget blockbuster that very much defined the film industry in the 80s and
90’s, which shouldn’t be that surprising given that it was directed by a
filmmaker who played a major role in creating some of the most iconic blockbusters
of that time. Sure, this may have also ended up being the only theatrically
released film that Steven E. de Souza ever directed (the only project that he
directed after this was a made-for-TV horror film, Possessed, that aired
on the premium TV network Showtime in 2000), but if you’re willing not to judge
this one too harshly as an adaptation of Street Fighter, then you’ll
find yourself with a film that ultimately works the best as a casual crowd-pleaser.
Rating: 4/5 (I
know that some of you might find that rating to be absurdly high for this film,
but to be perfectly blunt, this is ultimately a case where I’m rating it based
on its entertainment value rather than its overall quality)
STREET FIGHTER:
THE LEGEND OF CHUN-LI (2009)
Despite the loss of Raúl Juliá,
a follow-up to the 1994 live-action Street Fighter film was considered for
a few years that would’ve reportedly added the likes of Dolph Lundgren to the
cast. But by the mid 2000’s, the film rights shifted from Universal to 20th
Century Fox and a different Street Fighter film was ultimately put together:
this one would not only reboot the franchise but be a prequel-type plot revolving
around the series’ most prominent female protagonist, Chun-Li. Thus, we have Street
Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, directed by Polish cinematographer turned
director Andrzej Bartkowiak, whose cinematography work had him collaborating
with the likes of Richard Donner, John Huston, and fellow European cinematographer
turned director Jan de Bont. Bartkowiak also notably came onto this project
with some genuine experience directing a video game-based film as he previously
directed the 2005 adaptation of the hit first-person-shooter series Doom.
But despite that film featuring the likes of Dwayne Johnson, Karl Urban, and
Rosamund Pike in its cast and even a sequence that was a direct homage to its
source material’s first-person aesthetic, Doom was yet another critical
and commercial dud for one of cinema’s unluckiest genres… and as you might have
guessed, the same exact fate ended up befalling The Legend of Chun-Li. It
made less than $13 million at the box office on a $50 million budget and its
Rotten Tomatoes score is in the low single digits, putting it down there with
the various films that Uwe Boll has made as one of the genre’s worst-reviewed
releases. In fact, one could say that this film was to Street Fighter what
the infamous 1997 disaster Mortal Kombat: Annihilation was for the Mortal
Kombat franchise.
Say what you will about the 1994 Street Fighter film,
but at the very least, that one benefitted from being a studio-backed, decently
budgeted action flick with a bunch of fun performances from its cast. The
Legend of Chun-Li, on the other hand, is the exact antithesis of all that.
Ironically, calling it Street Fighter’s Mortal Kombat: Annihilation is
ultimately the most appropriate descriptor to use in this scenario as it too is
a film that technically has a higher budget compared to its predecessor but is
an all-around cheaper-looking production with poorly filmed fight sequences and
laughable CGI that’s handled by a largely wooden cast. And whereas the 1994
film maintained a largely upbeat tone and swift pace, The Legend of Chun-Li is
sluggishly paced and a bit too damn serious for its own good. This is
especially the case if you’re watching its Unrated Cut that was released on
home video where the ‘Unrated’ additions aren’t improvements to its editing or
notable sequences that were taken out of the theatrical cut… but, instead, are awkwardly
comped-in CGI blood splatters that feel out of place in a Street Fighter film.
And yet, seeing how this film controversially reimagined M. Bison as a generic Irish
businessman, is it any surprise that this is arguably even more of a ‘Street
Fighter in name only’ film than the 1994 adaptation? Whereas the 1994 film could
at least coast by on its success in being an enjoyably goofy 90’s popcorn
flick, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li is an all-around poorly
conceived attempt at trying to revitalize Street Fighter’s cinematic output.
Rating: 0.5/5
Well, this little
retrospective may’ve ended on a low note with the notoriously lousy Street
Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, but fans of this iconic video game
franchise have a new and exciting film adaptation to look forward to this month that will hopefully do its source material justice. Thanks for following along
with us on today’s Street Fighter journey and be sure to sound off in
the comments below to share your own personal experiences with this franchise.
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