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Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li By: PoisonRamune, the Apathetic Lizardman In 1994 Universal Pictures released an awful movie based on the Street Fighter 2 video games. The film starred Jean-Claude Van Damme and ended up being a horribly unwatchable video game to motion picture adaptation. Not only did the movie’s plot deviate heavily from its source material, but the acting was all around bad (aside from Raul Julia, who did make a decent M. Bison). The movie was panned by critics, gamers, and the general populous with at least half a brain as a poor attempt to cash in on the success of the popular Capcom fighting game series. 15 years later, 20th Century Fox released a movie based on the Street Fighter Alpha (pre Street Fighter 1 and 2) video games. Did they do any better than Universal those years before? In short, no; the movie is an hour and half of corny lines and cliché plot devices. Again, Hollywood decided to ditch the established storyline of the games and developed their own convoluted plot. However, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li ends up being very hilarious and entertaining in an ironic way.
If I were to teach some sort of direction in cinema class, a week of my lessons would be devoted to Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li as a lesson in what not to do in film. The entire movie is filled with predictable: lines, situations and plot mechanics. You honestly could have written this movie yourself, using all the clichés that you’ve ever seen and heard from: sitcoms, action movies, and bad cop dramas. They could have stripped the movie of all its Capcom related characters and renamed it “One Night in Bangkok” and the movie still would have worked perfectly. It was honestly less like the nebulous manga-esque story we’ve come to know and love these last 20 years and more of a sadly stock Hollywood-Hong Kong action film.
Aside from being stupidly generic and predictable, the major problem with this film was the inaccuracy in the adaptation of the story. While there are tons to talk about, I’m only going to mention the biggest and most “game breaking” offenses. My biggest gripe is Chun-Li is not a half white girl from Northern California; she is a Chinese girl from China. I mean, if Fox is so worried that their movie won’t sell if they don’t hire white; then why are they making a movie based on a popular Japanese game series. Though, it’s kinda easy to get over this, since Chun-Li doesn’t even look Oriental in Street Fighter 4.
Another problem with this story is the bosses and the way they are depicted in the film. Balrog was ok. It’s hard to screw up casting a big black guy. But honestly, when are they going to wizen up and make Balrog a boxer like he is in the game? He’s not some big Nubian mob goon and he’s not a reporter helping E. Honda (I’m looking at you, Street Fighter 1994).
In the game Vega is a graceful and agile fighter. He jumps from wall to wall, does somersaults in rapid succession, and generally avoids a great deal of your attacks. In the movie he’s somewhat bulky and haphazardly claw rushes Chun-Li, only to get his ass handed to him within about 2-3 minutes. This was one of the least fulfilling fight scenes in the entire movie (come to think of it, most if not all of the fight scenes were pretty bland). Aside from Vega not acting like himself, he also looked very different from his video game counterpart. Gone is the Latin pretty boy and in comes Shaggy from Insane Clown Posse with an even stupider looking mask.
Believe it or not, Vega and Balrog are not the worst misrepresentations of their video game selves. M. Bison is a total joke. He’s not the psychotic dictator we’ve cussed at in the arcade so many times before. He’s more of a cool dick of a mob boss. He’s like some sort of male O-Ren Ishii from Kill Bill, the guy doesn’t even have his terrorist regime leader clothes anymore (but he did have a child molester moustache and beard going on, which was just distracting). Add to the fact that Bison’s hands never glowed with psycho energy and you had one disappointing villain.
Finally, the roles of detective Charlie Nash and gangland homicide investigator Maya were totally unnecessary. All they did for the film was add a tacked on, half assed love story as an attempt for gamer dudes to have some sort of leverage in getting their girlfriends to watch this film. They also serve as in movie narrators, since their banter often explains a lot of the plot or background info; however, in good movies the scenes and peripheral dialogue should do the establishing. But in Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, the story is carried along by 2 characters that seem as if they were spliced into this film Bowfinger style.
Though I’ve bashed this film pretty hard up until this point, it was pretty enjoyable. The movie has very high camp value and is kitschy to its core. Fans of the game series will either find the poor dialogue, bad action scenes, and lack of canonical events utterly hilarious or terribly tragic. I can’t imagine many viewers finding some sort of middle ground with this motion picture. Lucky for me, the person I went to see The Legend of Chun-Li had the same appreciation for the unintentional hilarity in this movie. At about 20 minutes in, the movie became a total laughfest for us due to its ironic entertainment value. If you want a good laugh and know video game history; I suggest you check it out, even if it’s via rental or on premium cable in a few months (since this film isn’t going to last long in theatres, I’m pretty sure). Hell, at least this movie is better than that gawd awful Dead of Alive film.
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