Street Fighter (film)
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Street Fighter is a 1994 action movie based on the hugely popular fighting game Street Fighter II by Capcom. It was written and directed by Steven E. de Souza.
Although it was based on the first SFII game, the movie also features characters from Super Street Fighter II. It starred an international and multicultural cast that included Jean Claude Van Damme (in the role of William F. Guile), the late Puerto Rican acting legend Raúl Juliá (as General M. Bison) and pop singer Kylie Minogue (Cammy) along with Native American actor Wes Studi (as Victor Sagat) and Chinese American actress Ming-Na (as Chun-Li).
The movie altered the plot of the original game and motives of the Street Fighter characters. It also significantly lightened the tone of the adaptation, inserting several comical interludes into the mix (for instance one particular fight scene plays homage to the old Godzilla movies). When released, the movie was panned by critics, fans of the series, and moviegoers alike. It is regularly listed on the IMDB's bottom 100. However, even though the movie was a flop, it has gained a substantial cult following by those who enjoy the cheesy dialogue, hammy acting, the general B-grade feel of the movie and some other reasons as well.
A based on the movie was released in the arcades and later for the PlayStation and Sega Saturn consoles, all versions by Capcom. It used digitized footage of actors (with the cast's faces superimposed onto their bodies) performing fight moves from the film, similar to the presentation in the Mortal Kombat series of games. It was also panned by critics and fans.
Taglines:
- The ultimate battle.
- Adventure is the name of the game.
- The ultimate challenge begins this christmas in theaters everywhere.
- The fight to save the world begins 12-23-94.
- Get ready for the ultimate street fight!
- This christmas, shop early. The streets won't be safe.
- The ultimate battle is about to begin.
- The problem.
- The solution.
- The fight to save the world is on!
Plot
There are several major players in the plot of the movie: Guile, Chun-Li, Ken & Ryu, Dhalsim & Charlie (Blanka) and Bison. The plot described below follows primarily Guile.The movie takes place in the fictional nation of Shadoloo in South East Asia (the movie was shot in Thailand). After months of fighting, a multinational military force of the Allied Nations has managed to enter the city. The AN is fighting against the armed forces of drug-lord turned General M. Bison, who has recently captured a couple of dozen AN workers.
Bison makes his demands in a live two-way TV broadcast with William F. Guile, the commander of the AN forces. If he is not paid $20 billion in three days he will kill the hostages.
Guile's assistant Cammy is only able to partially trace Bison's signal. From that it can be determined that Bison's hideout is somewhere in the river-delta region outside Shadoloo. After one of the thugs of Victor Sagat, head of the Shadoloo Tong, attempts to assassinate Guile, which Guile himself quickly foils, he figures out that Sagat is the arms-supplier for Bison.
Guile attempts to infiltrate Ryu Hoshi and Ken Masters, two foreign operators who were arrested along with Sagat while fighting a cage match, into Sagat's gang. He decides to stage a prison-break and his own death in order to find out the location of Bison's hideout. Guile's plan hits a snag when a GNT News Reporter Chun-Li Xiang (spelled "Zang" in the film; played by Ming-Na), who is out for Bison's blood, finds out that Guile is alive and with the help of her partners, Sumo wrestler E. Honda and professional boxer Balrog, attempts to kill Bison and Sagat with a truck bomb while they are engaged in arms trade. The explosion destroys much of Bison's arms cache but fails to kill the dictator. The plan thus fails (in part because Bison and Sagat are tipped off by Ken), and Chun-Li and her friends are captured. Ryu and Ken, who first alerted Bison and his cronies to Chun-Li's plan, are welcomed as Bison troopers. Ryu and Ken free Balrog and Honda, and the four of them go to "save" Chun-Li, who is delivering an unexpectedly severe beating to a naive Bison. Unfortunately, the arrival of Honda, et al. interrupts Chun-Li, giving Bison a chance to escape and trapping the five of them in a room flooding with gas.
A bug Ryu and Ken carry with them is tracked by satellite, and the AN is able to locate Bison's headquarters in an abandoned temple. Since Bison's air defenses are too deadly, Guile orders an amphibious assault on the base. As the troops comprising the strike force stand in salute and are preparing to march out, a group of peace negotiators arrives to inform Guile that the invasion is no longer authorized, since the ransom demand is about to be paid. Guile protests what he sees as appeasement and decides to go ahead with the assault.
Meanwhile Guile, T. Hawk and Cammy head up river to lead the attack in a stealth-boat. Bison notices the attack and manages to compromise the boat's stealth-mode, making Guile a perfect target. The boat is blown out of the water but luckily Guile and his comrades escape in time.
Guile heads in to Bison's fort alone while T. Hawk and Cammy stay and wait for the rest of the attack-party. Guile falls in to the laboratory of Dr. Dhalsim where he encounters his friend Carlos (Charlie) Blanka who has been warped in to a powerful beast. After realizing that Bison attempts to use Blanka to execute the hostages he hides in Blanka's incubation chamber and takes Bison by surprise. Unfortunately he is not able to prevent "red-alert" from going off and Cammy and T. Hawk end up in a tight spot. Luckily the attack party is not far behind and the battle begins.
While some of the heroes try to free the hostages (and Ken & Ryu wind up fighting again with Sagat and Vega), Guile and Bison engage in a one-on-one fight. Guile seems to be winning, but then an automatic revival system brings Bison back to life and charges his body with great amounts of electromagnetism, allowing him to shoot lightning bolts and fly across the air. After taking a serious beating, Guile manages to kick Bison and sends him flying against his gigantic Monitor wall. As he crashes, there are severe electrical disturbances and the base is about to be destroyed. As the base sounds its last alarm, the heroes find and release the hostages just in time, and everyone evacuates.
Guile manages to talk to Dhalsim and Blanka one last time before he is forced to leave them behind; Blanka cannot return to human society changed like this, and Dhalsim decides not to leave Blanka to die alone and to pay for his own part in having done this to him. When the temple comes crashing down everyone thinks that Guile is dead, but then he appears from amongst the smoke.
The movie ends semi-humorously, after Guile converses with everyone they see the last ruins of the temple fall and take their familiar win poses as the camera freezes and fades out.
At the end of the credits it shows a panning view of M. Bisons lair, and the main computer voice muttering in slurred power voice of batteries recharging. it then shows a close up of a computer that goes " initalizing... run programs... world domination, Replay" and this follows with M. Bisons fist smashing through the rubble, as a female computer voice says "Welcome back General M. Bison"
Cast
| Actor/Actress | Role | |
|---|---|---|
| Jean-Claude Van Damme | General William F. Guile | |
| Raul Julia | General M. Bison | |
| Ming-Na | Chun Li Zang | |
| Damian Chapa | Ken Masters | |
| Kylie Minogue | Cammy | |
| Simon Callow | A.N. Official | |
| Roshan Seth | Dr. Dhalsim | |
| Wes Studi | Victor Sagat | |
| Byron Mann | Ryu Hoshi | |
| Grand L. Bush | Balrog | |
| Peter Navy Tuiasosopo | E. Honda | |
| Jay Tavare | Vega | |
| Andrew Bryniarski | Zangief | |
| Gregg Rainwater | T. Hawk | |
| Miguel A. Núñez Jr. | Dee Jay | |
| Robert Mammone | Carlos "Charlie" Blanka | |
| Kenya Sawada | Captain Sawada |
Other movies
- This is not the first movie to feature Street Fighter characters. The 1993 Hong Kong film City Hunter, directed by Wong Jing, featured a fantasy martial arts fight in which the main character (played by Jackie Chan) hallucinates and imagines himself fighting against his enemy after getting shocked by landing on the arcade machine in the Street Fighter II arcade room. City Hunter first changes into Honda and then Chun Li; his enemy (Gary Daniels as Pony-tail Thug) represents Ken; and two of City Hunter's helpers fight as Guile and Dhalsim. Sound effects are from the SNES version of ' and ', including Ryu and Ken's Hadouken attack, Chun-Li's Hyakuretsukyaku attack, etc.
- Another Hong Kong film loosely based on Street Fighter, directed by Jing and released in the same year as City Hunter was Future Cops. In this action-comedy, the main characters are modelled after characters from Street Fighter II, and have their special moves from the games. However, this time the rights could not be secured so they were given new names that fit in with the comedic style of the movie (for example, Guile was known as "Broom-Head"). Although the plot of the movie has nothing to do with Street Fighter, it contains many references to the games.
- There is also a B-grade Japanese action movie called The Street Fighter that was released in 1973 and starring martial arts star Sonny Chiba. It also gained two sequels called The Return of the Street Fighter and The Street Fighter's Last Revenge. None of these movies are believed to have any connection with the Street Fighter series.
Trivia
- Street signs and labels seen in Shadaloo are in Esperanto, typeset with an ornate font to give it a Southeast Asian "feel"; also background speech and even the anthem of Shadaloo, sung in the movie, are in Esperanto (which is a frequent choice for fictional country language in movies [link]).
- Fei Long wasn't in the movie. The reason is that the producers thought that he was too "generic." So he was replaced by Captain Sawada. The surname Sawada has since been attributed to Fei Long by fans, but this is strictly non-canonical, as the two are meant to be different characters.
- Raúl Juliá died in October 1994, two months before the movie's release. Right before the closing credits, the filmmakers added a tribute to Juliá: "For Raúl: Vaya Con Dios", which translates roughly as "go with God" (additionally, some fans refer in jest to Street Fighter as the movie that "killed Raúl Juliá"). Following the movie's release, a critic from the San Diego Union-Tribune jokingly compared Juliá's role of Bison to "Gomez Addams doing Hitler." This was a reference to Juliá's portrayal of Gomez Addams in the first two Addams Family movies.
- In fact, its very evident that Juliá had lost a vast amount of weight when he appeared on screen in this movie, and his appearance was very suggestive of underlying HIV/AIDS disease, although this has never been confirmed or denied.
- Juliá had originally turned down the role of Bison. He later accepted the role at the request of his young children who were fans of the series.
- During the holding yard brawl with Ryu and Ken, there are barrels that have "Capcom" painted on them.
- The voice of legendary DJ Adrian Cronauer is heard occasionally during the course of the movie and the closing credits. Cronauer was the subject of the 1987 Barry Levinson movie Good Morning, Vietnam.
- Vega only has three lines during the entire movie, all of which were spoken when his mouth was obscured or he was off-camera, leading to speculation that the actor who portrayed him (Jay Tavare) could not speak English. For instance, Vega says, "I told you we couldn't trust them", off-camera, the audience only realizes it's him when Bison directly refers to him. Before his final battle with Ryu he says "Where were we?" and "Die!" while wearing his mask.
- The lines "Are you man enough to fight with me?" and "Anyone who opposes me shall be destroyed" are straight out of the game (Guile and Bison's win quotes, respectively).
- The US Street Fighter animated series, borrowed several elements from the movie, such as Guile's full name (William F. Guile). Guile, along with Chun-Li and an English-speaking Blanka, were designated as the main characters.
- Capcom has made fun of the movie a few times. The first time was in X-Men vs. Street Fighter. In one of the stages, Blanka is in the background. However, when Charlie is fighting on the stage, Blanka is replaced by The Beast. The second time was in Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike, one of Chun-Li's win quotes is: "Hey, leave me alone! I'm a fighter, not a news reporter!"
- Guile's line, "Come out from behind the curtain, wizard", is clearly a reference to The Wizard of Oz.
- Many of the characters use signature moves from the games, except when the moves are too fantastic (i.e. fireballs, electricity, etc) to work. The sole exceptions are Bison, who uses devices built into his costume to produce electricity similar to his Psycho Power, and Ryu, who fires a single Hadoken during his second battle with Vega. Inexplicably, this Hadoken is cut out from the US broadcast version (shown regularly on USA and Sci-Fi Channel) along with most of the fight with Vega (including Ryu's scarring of his opponent using a furnace). The version of the movie that aired on the canadian sci-fi channel Space, however, kept these scenes intact.
- The above-mentioned "hadoken" attack was created without special effects: Byron Mann simply mimed the action, and the screen went entirely white for a frame or two, creating the illusion of a flash.
- In spite of the film's negative reviews, it did make a profit. It made $33 million in the United States and an additional $66 million worldwide, earning almost triple its production budget of 35 million.
- Towards the end of the film as he fights Guile, Bison says "You come to fight a madman, and instead find a god? Do you still refuse to accept my godhood? Keep your own God! In fact, now may be a good time to pray to Him! For I beheld Satan as he fell from Heaven LIKE LIGHTNING!" Whether the script writer knew this or not, the end ultimately derives from [Luke Chapter Ten Verse 18], which, according to the King James version of the Bible, reads, "And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven." In the context of the film, this has two possible interpretations. As it was Jesus that spoke that verse, Bison, not unlike Hitler, might imagine himself a Messiah, albeit an evil one. That is supported by the fact that earlier Bison spoke of fighting for good by bringing the world into "the loving grip of the Pax Bisonica." The second interpretation is that Bison believes himself to be an Anti-Christ figure, knowingly and deliberately doing evil for evil's sake. This is supported by the fact that, at that moment, Bison was renouncing God and seemingly lauding the Devil. It should also be noted in support of the latter, that Bison was shooting Guile with lightning like electrical powers as he was proclaiming his "godhood."
External links
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