Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li

The general cliché is that adaptations between films and games are never of worthwhile quality. No other gaming franchise exemplifies this better than Street Fighter. What is considered one of the finest and, at one point, most popular gaming franchises had, in the ’90s, put out a profoundly bad film starring Jean Claude Van Damme and the late Raul Julia. It held a plot that was paper thin, poor acting, and action scenes hardly worth remembering. It did, however, have kids flocking to theaters to see their favorite game characters on the big screen, and probably some other non-gaming fans in it for Kylie Minogue’s ass. Shortly after, to further prove the cliché correct, a Street Fighter game was made based on that movie. To sum: a game was made based on a movie based on a game. It delved deeper into a downward spiral that no other franchise, film or game, has dared touch.

Over a decade later, some people somehow held onto the idea that this series was worth a film reboot and created Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li. Not so coincidentally, the film’s release was in tandem with a brand new game, Street Fighter IV. Does this second go-round make right what no one really expected to be right? No… not really.

It’s barely worth explaining the plot. Chun-Li has an important businessman father who is kidnapped by Bison, who uses his business connections to carry out his evil domination-of-Bangkok-the-the-world plans. There’s something in there about demons and fathers and daughters and it’s all probably meant to ebb into something thematic and significant, but it doesn’t. Heck, even if it did, when the title of your film is Street Fighter, no one will care. Someone in the filming process, assumedly the director, Andrzej Bartkowiak, did, and the way the story unfolds, it seems he didn’t have too many on his side. And why would they? Not even the game has a very deep and involving story. So acting is subpar, with Kristin Kreuk’s Chun-Li showing less emotion than a picture of a Pokemon, and Neal McDonough putting almost no effort into an accent from… somewhere.

That leaves presentation and spectacle. The appeal of moving pictures. Specific to this film: fight scenes. How are they? Decent. You’ve seen better. This has all the kicks and high jumps and flips you’d imagine there to be, and nothing that particularly stands out. There’s a fireball effect that probably consisted of a large portion of the budget (and Chun-Li learns of it from Gen, played by Robin Shou, who starred in the Mortal Kombat films), but even that’s none too special. You also get chase scenes and some destruction, and it’s all marred by cheaply done visual effects that were clearly tacked on in post processing. At one point, a rocket is fired into a building with debris flying everywhere and flames billowing. However, the building itself, behind that translucent explosion, is fully intact. Even a shattered wine bottle has digital wine splashing in a bad guy’s face.

The film ends with suggestions for sequels, and that just shouldn’t happen. It’s not a good film. Someone somewhere probably hoped it would be, but it’s hard to imagine anyone imagining this actually being worth something. Its only real audience is video game fans who will watch it for a laugh before playing the actual game, which received a lot more care, time, and consideration in its creation. Consider it for a bad movie night… but little else. The cliché continues.

No related posts.

blog comments powered by Disqus