The Trailer
and
The Appropriate Tune - "Guile's Theme", by Isao Abe
Film and video games are the young ducks of art, and because of that we have a much better sense of its conception and history. We can look to the Lumiere brothers, the Great Train Robbery and Edison’s Frankenstein and see the embryonic form of cinema, and Space Invaders, Pong and modded RADAR detectors for video games. We can even go a level deeper with video games, where we can point out the moment that genres formed and movements happened. Take Street Fighter II, for example. Not the first game that you could call a ‘fighting’ game to be sure, but it is the game that pioneered what a fighting game would be defined as. The mechanics of positioning and movement, how characters were developed, Street Fighter II was the road upon which the genre traveled, on top of being one of the most successful games of the decade. Most people don’t even know Street Fighter I even existed, that’s how overwhelmingly popular Street Fighter II was.
With success often comes franchise expansion, and while some companies can be very miserly with their IPs, I don’t think you could say that about Capcom and Street Fighter. Most enjoyers of cult cinema will be familiar with the live action Street Fighter movie, with the late great Raul Julia as M. Bison and the very Belgian JCVD as the very American Guile, but I didn’t feel like doing that one. It’s cheezy, we all know it’s going to be cheezy, so whatever, throw it on the backburner. How about instead I do something with a bit of a better reputation?
In Street Fighter II: The Movie, there is a name that strikes fear in the heart of governments the world over: Shadowlaw. A criminal organization unlike any other, run by the mysterious M. Bison and his subordinates Balrog, Vega and Sagat. Assassinations, terrorism, Shadowlaw has its hands in a lot of fires, but Bison’s goals are beyond ill-gotten gains. He wants something more, he wants the power wielded by the Japanese fighter known as Ryu, who defeated Sagat in the past. Well, if there’s anything that attracts fighters, it’s more fighters.
To make a Street Fighter movie, you must hold one thing above all else: the fights. People bought the game, people played the game because they liked seeing these certain characters fighting each other, so any story is going to have the fighting take precedence. The folks behind SFII:™ understand this, and they give the fans exactly what they expected --the Street Fighter characters, having street fights. Some of them get speaking lines, some just a bit of screen time, but above all else they’re fighting and that’s what’s important.
That the fights look good is also very important, which is theoretically a lot easier with an animated movie than otherwise. SFII’s animation is solid, some hinky bits but it does the job when it comes to action. I’m not as pleased with the art design; Everyone is recognizable, but some folks have this bulkiness to them that doesn’t look quite right. Hell some folks just look kinda ugly, like they did my man T-Hawk dirty in this movie, Honda has no nipples and Ken really should have trimmed his eyebrows at some point.
Finally, it’s worth mentioning that there are different versions of SFII that you could watch. The one I watched was the original English dub that was released on home video in 1995, which is notable mainly for filling the movie with alt-rock and electronic artists. If you want to see Ken driving around to “Them Bones” by Alice in Chains then this is the version you’re gonna want to see, but purists will probably want to go for one with the original soundtrack and different voices.
Does Street Fighter II: The Movie properly represent the spirit of Street Fighter II? Sure. Does it offer much for those who aren’t already familiar with the characters and their relationships? Eh. Some of the action scenes look cool, but in terms of being memorable I’d say the live action Street Fighter actually has the edge. That’s up to you to decide for yourself though. Thumbs up.
STATUS: RECOMMENDED
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