Street Fighter
Dir: Steven E. de Souza
1994
*
Street Fighter was a phenomenon back in the early 90s that I’m not sure kids these days can really appreciate. Not because it’s the best game ever made, but more the way in which we used to play it. I’m talking arcade. Everyone had their spot and the mission was to be the high-scorer at that spot for the rest of time. My spot, or I should say, my arcade machine, was located in the back room of my local independent video rental shop (another thing kids these days probably won’t appreciate). There were three or four machines back there in total, I can’t remember what the others were, but during the summer holidays of 1991, Street Fighter was king. I have no idea how I was able to afford it or how much a go used to cost but I literally spent every day of every week in that little back room. I think I was top of the table twice but not for very long, but I was however, always in the top ten. My name was pretty safe too, with two entries if I recall, giving me the opportunity to excel at fighting as more than one character. Years later, when I got a home console with the game, I was terrible and never managed to get the hang of it – to be honest, it just wasn’t the same. The arcade, the video shop, the smell…. how I miss them. Literally the only thing that got us kids out of the arcade and spending money on something other than gaming back then was the cinema. There was a lot of rubbish out then, nothing really for kids in their early teens - which they were allowed to see legally anyway. So when our favourite video game was suddenly adapted into a big Hollywood action movie it was a no-brainer, we had to go and see, and see it we did. It really was a no-brainer. Street Fighter only ever had a loose story, I felt that the possibilities were fairly endless for a film adaptation, all you needed was a good cast, some great design, attention to detail and loads of great fights. The film had very few of these things. I’ll start with the good, it won’t take long. There were tiny flourishes, blink and you’d miss it details, which were very pleasing to a hardened Street Fighter. The gold statue in Sagat's business parlor (the lady lying on her side) is the same statue that can be seen in Sagat's backdrop in the game, the fresco found in the training room of Bison's base of a tsunami is a reproduction of the stamp found in Honda's stage, on the wall of a bathroom, in the game and when M. Bison is in his podium at the end of the movie you can see that it is controlled by arcade buttons and a joystick – a lovely touch that was appreciated by us fans. My friends at the time were of differing levels of obsession, some were pleased with the variations in costumes, while others were horrified that Guile was wearing his blue tank top/camouflage pants, which was based on his Street Fighter II Turbo variation and Chun-Li was wearing her red lady dragon dress, which was based on her Street Fighter II: Champion(ship) Edition variation. Even at the wise old age of fifteen, I realised that the costumes were the least of the film’s problems. I think the biggest problem I had, apart from the awful story they came up with, was the lack of one-on-one fighting – Street Fighting basically. I wanted to see my favourite characters brawl and fight it out against each other – seeing as that’s what the game is literally all about. A fight between E. Honda and Zangief should have been epic, and while I appreciated the Godzilla homage, it was totally out of place and made very little sense to me – especially as E. Honda was Samoan in the film, rather than Japanese as he is in the game. And why did Zangief turn good? Why was he depicted as being a fool? He was my favourite player goddammit! E. Honda did slap him at one stage but I wanted to see his proper full on ‘Hundred Hand Slap’ attack like in the game. Ryu did a ‘Hadouken’ move early on but didn’t make the noise – so it doesn’t count, he also does his hurricane kick while Vega gives him his rolling stab, but neither are very exciting or convincing. I think Ken did a shoryuken but again, no sound effects mean it doesn’t count. Guile’s flash kicks look nothing like they should and only Bison’s psycho crusher looks like it does in the actual game. I wanted a sonic boom goddammit! They could have at least smashed a car up half way through the movie. I was looking forward to seeing Dhalsim stretch his arms to punch Vega in the face (as I had made him do a thousand times before) but he didn’t. He totally could have, the film was camp and over the top, a few ridiculous special effects would have been a huge improvement and could have made the film something of a cult classic. Dhalsim doesn’t look anything like he does in the game until the end of the movie, in his second-to-last scene his arm is splashed with chemicals, which is clearly referencing (or foreshadowing) his stretching-limbs move which I’m guessing, was intended to appear in the sequel. A fairly arrogant move, assuming a sequel when they’ve put little money of effort into it. Director Steven E. de Souza claimed he was a big fan of the game and blamed many of the film’s restrictions/issues on Capcom – makers of the game and co-financiers of the film. Capcom required that they approved every aspect of the production before it was actioned, but I can’t see them denying certain basics of the game. They did enforce a strict filming schedule and I think this was a big factor on the lack of story, as Souza himself admitted he wrote the script in one night, knowing the Capcom people would be in town the following day. I can’t help but think he must have been a cheap director. Capcom had always wanted Jean-Claude Van Damme as Guile and asked him to be cast. He actually turned down the role of Johnny Cage in Mortal Kombat to do it, which is like jumping a shark only to land in the mouth of a killer whale. After Van Damme was cast and Raúl Juliá was cast as the villain Bison, most of the casting budget had been spent. Van Damme's fee alone took nearly 8 million dollars of the film's 35 million dollar budget. This meant that the majority of other parts had to go to little-known or unknown actors. Kylie Minogue was cast as Cammy as a result of the Australian Actors' Guild wanting Souza to hire an Australian actor. By the time he received the request the only part not cast was that of Cammy. De Souza first learned of Minogue from her cover photo on a "World's 30 Most Beautiful People" edition of Who magazine. Japanese actor Kenya Sawada appeared in the film as a part of a promotional contract with Capcom, it was all about the money at the end of the day. The MPAA gave the first submitted cut of the film an R classification which was unacceptably high for Capcom, who had stated from the start that it should be a PG-13 film. I would love to see all the scenes cut from the original movie, it’s probably a much better film with them but we’ll never know. There is no getting around the fact, Street Fighter the movie is awful. The only wonderful thing about the whole film is Raul Julia. Julia, who knew he was terminally ill with cancer, asked his young kids what his last movie should be. He wanted to leave them with something, a film and a performance for them, and they chose Street Fighter. Bloody kids. Of course Julia honoured his promise and he gave it his all, even though it was clear he was in pain and weak. His performance is spot on, it’s just sad that this was to be the great actor’s last film. His brilliant performance didn’t really help the film much though, as his brilliance only highlighted the terrible acting of his co-stars. Because his condition wasn’t initially known to Souza, his schedule involving world karate champion Benny Urquidez and stunt coordinator Charlie Picerni didn’t quite go to plan. Picerni took the job with the condition that he would need ample time to train the cast. Initially plans were to shoot Juliá's less intensive scenes first while the rest of the cast would train with Picerni, however upon seeing Juliá, de Souza realized that they could not show him in his current weakened state and was forced to switch the filming around. This meant that the cast would generally be trained only right before their scenes—sometimes only hours ahead. I can forgive the film a lot because of Julia’s selfless act. It’s not often a wonderful story comes from such an abysmal film, so I forgive the absence of Fei Long, I am no longer upset that Fabio was replaced in the role of Vega and I can overlook the final scene and the recreation of the collective character’s ‘Win’ screen. However, I cannot forgive them for what they did to Blanka. What in the name of all that is holy, was that? Unforgivable, and like that, I rate 1994’s Street Fighter with the shameful one star it deserves. Horrible.