Image Credit: Paramount Pictures / Legendary Pictures / Capcom
Chapter 1: Introduction to the film
Well, my big takeaway is Street Fighter 2' make a pretty sweet animated movie again because that already exists. But this is mostly a new live action Street Fighter movie. So, let's talk about that. So, Street Fighter is a new liveaction adaptation of Street Fighter 2 cuz they know they know that's the one. Yes, there was a Street Fighter before Street Fighter 2. But when you say Street Fighter you think Street Fighter 2.
Chapter 2: Plot and character dynamics
Though Street Fighter 3: Third Strike and Street Fighter Alpha 3 are my favorites. Technically speaking, I have the most memories of the iterations of Street Fighter 2, Street Fighter 2, Street Fighter 2 Turbo, Super Street Fighter 2. Let's kill it off. Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, but since we had a Super Nintendo, we didn't have that. So, in this mixed bag of a Street Fighter movie, the whole film revolves around Ken and Ryu. They're the heart of the film. That's the thing about Street Fighter. There are so many characters, plots, and subplots that intersect and tie into Bison. You kind of have to pick and choose where the film's going to focus. Long story short, Ryu is the champion of the original Street Fighter tournament. Few years later, it's 1993 now, and now Bison is holding a new Street Fighter tournament, but he has super nefarious means. All dealing with psycho energy. Now, everyone's going to converge fighting this tournament. It's going to skip over a lot of that tournament play for the sake of well, no other way to say it. The movie is quite a mess. This film revolving around Ken and Ryu, I thought those guys did a good job. It ends up being Ken, Ryu, and Chun Lee. You know, it's paths that converge. Yeah, they were solid and glad for that because they are the center of the film. They actually embody Ken and Ryu as I know them. Ken's a little more exaggerated than I took him as, but it works for what they're going for on screen. Ryu being the super honorable one with darkness in him that we know as the playable character, Evil Ryu from Street Fighter Alpha 3 on the PlayStation. Was he in another iteration first? First time I saw him. And Ken, the martial artist that went super Hollywood. Now he's trying to find his honor working with Ryu in this new tournament. Right. And when we first get to Bison's super evil science lab layer, I was like, "Okay, this is clearly a cheesy '90s bee movie. The film's going to lean into that. Cool. I'm on board. It wears it like armor. It can never be used against it."
Chapter 3: Directing and acting quality
So says Tyrion Lannister. What he failed to illustrate was when wearing it like armor so it can never be used against you, you have to commit to that. This film, it really doesn't. Sometimes it's going for cheesy '90s action movie, cheesy bee movie, heartfelt drama, kick-ass action movie, comedy, sticking with what I like. Some of the fights were really cool. They are stylistically over the top, but the films primed you to accept that as its reality, and I had fun with that when it happened. It's really weird to me that this revolves around a Street Fighter tournament. You see the matchup, you see the lineup, and you're like, "Okay, here we go." Then it comes back with Eric Andre being like, "That was crazy. All right, he lost. So, who's next? Would have liked to have seen that fight." Some of the characters you might have wanted to see on screen are only in one scene. Or they're in a few scenes, but have no character whatsoever. Vega and the Vanam Street Fighter, which I've come to call the RL Julia Street Fighter at this point because who are we kidding? Much more of a character in that film than he is here. here. He's just kind of there. I mean, he fights, but he's just kind of here. Andrew Schultz and Eric Andre actually surprised me at their commitment to this film. They live it up. They know what the movie is. Andrew Schultz actually has a couple moments of heart in here, but he's a comedian. I have found that comedians can transition to drama or at the very least having a moment of heart in an action film easier than non-comedic actors can be comedic. So, there's a lot of comedy in this movie that lands flat on its ass. Not only is Cody Rhodess not a good actor as Guilele. Guile's not even a real character in here. He's just
Chapter 4: Visuals and production design
kind of a with a weird haircut and that's that. Some of you might say, "Yeah, so he's Guile." But Guile fans out there, they know what's up. They're like unacceptable. He was how I beat Vega. Cuz when Vega was crawling on the fence, it was like, "Okay, hold down for a couple seconds. You're going to get it when you try to There you go. Flash kick, baby." And Guile is actually put up against Vega in here. I don't know if that was a reference to that, but coincidentally it was how I beat Vega. And it's not just Guile's look, but I'm going to use Guilele as an example here. Guile on screen is really accurate to the game. A lot of the characters in this movie are really accurate to the game, but they still kind of feel like it makes sense that this was released in October because this might very well be a cross promotion for the Spirit
Chapter 5: The portrayal of M. Bison
Halloween store resting in the bones of a warehouse near you. It's what it feels like so many times in here. I was like, "That's screen accurate." Also looks like Spirit Halloween. David Doss Maltchin as M. Bison is a generational miscasting, which is a bummer. I really like David Doss Maltin. I've liked seeing his career grow from Dark Knight to here or slightly before here and then whatever he does after this. Hearing him talk at Cineon, he seems consciously aware of all of it. He was talking about how this isn't Bison as you know him from the game. He was treating this as the origin story of Bison and he was really doing deep dives into cult leaders. You know, he wanted to really get into the mindset of why would these people follow MB Bison and put their lives on the line for him. I remember thinking that's awesome that you care that much. I don't think this is going to be that kind of film, but I think it's great that you care that much. Sure enough, that cult leader element is in this movie, but it doesn't treat it as important as David Dos Mulchin apparently did. And maybe this being the origin story, if he gets really jacked and yolked out for the next movie, Street Fighter 2, which I guess would follow the plot of Street Fighter 3, I actually is Street Fighter 4. The Street Fighter chronology is really confusing maybe, you know, and that physicality is important for embodying a character. This film seems to understand that because a lot of the characters have the look, the physicality, the size, the
Chapter 6: Retro aesthetic execution
assets. You know that over-the-shoulder dialogue camera angle where a character's facing the screen talking to the character facing away from the screen. It's that, but for Cammy, a lot of the times it's much lower. Bringing those '90s kids back to spamming the pause button after they press kick him as Bison. Bison origin story it may be or not. I just didn't see it with Bison. There were humorous moments that didn't land. It felt like they were trying to capture the lightning in a bottle that is R Julia as Bison. He even has a but for me it's Tuesday joke in this movie further solidifying this bison being in the shadow of RL Julia's bison for Street Fighter which feels like allegory for this movie itself and a thing I see a lot with these modern movies that want to throw back to '90s movies. They want to throw it back to '90s action movies but they don't know how to make it feel natural. '90s action movies feel like '90s action movies. They don't feel like '90s action movies trying to
Chapter 7: Animation and music choices
be '90s action movies. They're just movies that came out back then. So, when movies want to throw back, they can run into the trap of things being heavy-handed, the humor being forced, not landing right, such as the case with Street Fighter. Unexpectedly, as I referenced this in the beginning of this video, there are animated sequences in here. Does it for a lot of the setup, the exposition dump, the flashbacks, the whole time I was like, why isn't the whole movie this? It would probably be cheaper and better because those sequences were pretty awesome. This movie is packed with nods and Street Fighter references, and that's always fun. a reference here. A background conversation you hear in passing there. Mixes of the iconic Street Fighter stage music when a character walks out or a fight's about to happen. I mean, that was cool. Nothing gets you jacked up quite like Street Fighter 2 music. I'm just saying it works. It makes the whole thing feel like it was made by a Street Fighter fan, someone who knows Street Fighter
Chapter 8: Final verdict on the movie
Okay, this is nitpick territory. Nitpick territory. But it's my nitpick territory, and it just bothers me. This movie takes place in 1993, so it's going to have music to illustrate that. So many music tracks in here were indeed released in the '90s, but after 1993. So many times I was like, "That's 1995. That's 1996." And it never feels like it's playing to us, and the characters on screen don't hear it. It's intro music for characters coming out to Street Fighter. It's music playing in a bar or something. It's music they, the characters, are listening to in their world. the music they're listening to should illustrate and reflect the time that this takes place in. The music they would have access to at that time, 1993. Now, it just that bothered me. Music illustrating exactly when a movie takes place as a timehonored cinematic tradition. You can't have people thinking Street Fighter 2 takes place in 1996. That'd just be madness. That's Street Fighter Alpha at that point. Alpha 2, actually. All this culminating with a big CGI Jason Mimoa as Blanca. And the movie's a mess. Sometimes it's a mess. Sometimes it's a cool Street Fighter mess. When the animated sequences were happening, it was awesome. When the fights were going down, it was pretty fun. When it was exploring lore that sounds good on paper in execution here, it just comes across as boring and shoddy. By the end, I was like, "This is another movie." Should have been a half an hour
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