Jump to content

Street Fighter (1994 film)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 24.23.143.90 (talk) at 15:55, 17 July 2011 (→‎Plot). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Template:Two other uses

Street Fighter
Theatrical release poster
Directed bySteven E. de Souza
Written bySteven E. de Souza
Original Story:
Capcom Co. Ltd.
Produced byEdward R. Pressman
Kenzo Tsujimoto
Akio Sakai
StarringJean-Claude Van Damme
Raúl Juliá
Kylie Minogue
Damian Chapa
Ming-Na
Simon Callow
Roshan Seth
Byron Mann
Andrew Bryniarski
Grand L. Bush
Robert Mammone
Miguel A. Núñez Jr.
Gregg Rainwater
Jay Tavare
Kenya Sawada
Peter "Navy" Tuiasosopo
Wes Studi
Ray Swenson
CinematographyWilliam A. Fraker
Edited byEdward M.Abroms
Donn Aron
Dov Hoenig
Anthony Redman
Robert F. Shugrue
Music byGraeme Revell
Production
company
Distributed byNon-USA:
Columbia Pictures
USA:
Universal Pictures
Release date
  • December 23, 1994 (1994-12-23)
Running time
102 minutes
CountriesTemplate:Film US
Template:Film Japan
LanguagesEnglish
Japanese
Budget$35 million
Box office$99,423,521[1]

Street Fighter is a 1994 American action film written and directed by Steven E. de Souza. It is based loosely on the same-titled video games produced by Capcom, and stars Jean-Claude Van Damme and Raúl Juliá, along with supporting performances by Byron Mann, Damian Chapa, Kylie Minogue and Ming-Na.

The film 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 (for instance one particular fight scene between E. Honda and Zangief pays homage to the old Godzilla films).

The film was also Raúl Juliá's last performance in a major motion picture before he died of a stroke later that year.

The film was a commercial success, making approximately three times its production costs, but was universally panned by critics and fans of the video game series alike. However, Raúl Juliá's performance as M. Bison was widely praised and garnered him a nomination for Best Supporting Actor at the Saturn Awards.

Two video game tie-ins based on the film were released which used digitized footage of the actors performing fight moves, similar to the presentation in the Mortal Kombat series of games.

Plot

A multinational military force known as the Allied Nations has managed to enter the fictional South East Asian nation of Shadaloo to combat the armed forces of a drug lord turned General named M. Bison, who has recently captured several dozen a workers. Via a live two-way TV broadcast, Bison demands AN regional commander, Colonel William F. Guile secure a $20 billion ransom in three days, or he will kill the hostages and the world will hold Guile and the AN accountable. Guile's assistant, Cammy, is only able to partially trace Bison's signal, determining that his hideout is somewhere in the river-delta region outside Shadaloo City.

Among the captured AN relief workers is Carlos "Charlie" Blanka, a peacekeeper and one of Guile's closest friends. Bison orders his henchmen to take Blanka to a laboratory, where he is to be brainwashed and turned into a mutated soldier, the first of many, which Bison plans to use to help him conquer the world. Dr. Dhalsim, a captured scientist, decides to sabotage Bison's scheme by tweaking the brainwashing process to retain Blanka's humanity.

Meanwhile, in an underground fighting arena, con artists Ryu and Ken attempt to sell fake arms to Shadaloo Tong crime syndicate's leader Victor Sagat. His plan to kill them both by having them fight his champion, Vega, is interrupted when Guile crashes into the building and takes everyone into custody for violating a curfew. Guile later sees Ryu and Ken fighting Sagat's men in the prison grounds, revealing that they may be able to help him find Bison. He presses Ryu and Ken into infiltrating Sagat's gang with a homing device by staging a prison-break and faking his own death. The plan hits a snag when news reporter Chun-Li Zang, who wants revenge against Bison for the death of her father, finds out that Guile is alive. Her partners, Sumo wrestler E. Honda and professional boxer Balrog, each of whom hold a grudge against Sagat for ruining their reputations, attempt to kill Bison and Sagat with a truck bomb, which destroys much of Bison's arms cache but fails to kill the dictator. Chun-Li and her friends are captured when Ryu and Ken seemingly turn on them, to earn Bison's trust and allow Guile to track them to Bison's lair.

Once in the fortress (which is built under a Cambodian temple similar to Angkor Wat), they free Balrog and Honda, and the four of them go to find Chun-Li, who is fighting a surprised Bison in his private quarters. Unfortunately, the arrival of the others interrupts Chun-Li long enough for Bison to escape and trap the five of them by sedating them with gas.

Meanwhile the AN is able to locate Bison's headquarters from Ryu's homing device and the explosion at Bison's camp, and since Bison's air defenses are too powerful they begin planning an amphibious assault on the base. A group of peace negotiators inform Guile that the invasion is no longer authorized, since the ransom demand is about to be paid, but Guile protests what he sees as appeasement and rallies the troops to assault anyway.

As Guile, T. Hawk and Cammy head up river, they use the weapons systems on their armored speedboat to blow up Bison's radar systems. Bison detects the boat and disables its cloaking system, then uses underwater mines to blow up the speedboat. However, Guile and his two companions narrowly escape the explosion and sneak into the fortress, where Guile is ambushed by a horribly mutated Blanka, who soon recognises Guile as his friend. Guile almost kills Blanka to end his suffering, but Dhalsim intervenes and persuades Guile not to do so. After learning from Dhalsim that Bison plans to use Blanka to execute the hostages, Guile hides in Blanka's incubation chamber and attacks Bison after revealing himself. At the same time, a huge battle ensues between Captain Sawada's AN forces and the Shadoloo troops while Guile and Bison fight their own, personal duel. Ken attempts to leave the battle, but returns to save Ryu from an ambush, and the two of them defeat Vega and Sagat after an intense fight. Meanwhile, Guile's battle with Bison rages on until Guile kicks Bison into a bank of hard-drives, delivering an apparently fatal electric shock to the crazed general, until an automatic revival system brings Bison back to life. Bison then reveals his ace in the hole: his uniform is powered by electromagnetism, allowing him to shoot bolts of electricity and fly across the air.

Guile takes a serious beating. Consumed by megalomania, Bison declares himself a god and cites a blasphemous Biblical-sounding verse of his own invention before flying towards Guile to deal the death blow. However, Guile counters with a well-timed roundhouse kick which sends Bison crashing into his gigantic monitor wall, resulting in a huge explosion. The damage causes severe electrical disturbances which destabilize the power system of the base, but the heroes find and release the hostages just in time, and everyone evacuates. Guile finds the lab and tries to persuade Dhalsim and Blanka to escape with him now that Bison has been defeated, but Blanka refuses to return to society in his condition, and Dhalsim decides to atone for his actions by accompanying him. When the temple comes crashing down after an explosion, everyone thinks that Guile was killed in the destruction, but then he emerges from the smoke. After Guile converses with Chun-Li, Ryu, Ken, Cammy, Zangief, Balrog, E-Honda, T-Hawk and Sawada, they see the last ruins of the temple fall and take their familiar win poses from the video game as the camera freezes and fades out.

In the home video version of the film, a post-credits scene returns to the ruins of M. Bison's lair, as the main computer announces that its batteries are recharging from solar power and it begins fibrillating Bison's heart with electricity. Bison's fist suddenly smashes through the rubble, and on a computer screen the resurrected dictator selects "World Domination: Replay."

"For Raul. Vaya con Dios."

Cast

Soundtrack

Main article: Street Fighter (soundtrack)

A soundtrack was released on December 6, 1994 by Priority Records featuring mostly rap music. The soundtrack found mild success, peaking at #135 on the Billboard 200 and #34 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums. Upon its release on home video in the United Kingdom, the soundtrack was given away free with every purchase of the VHS tape at branches of Tesco for a limited period. Although this was the only way for anybody in the UK to purchase the CD, "Straight to My Feet" by Hammer was still released as a single, which charted #57 in the UK.

Reception

Street Fighter received mostly negative reception from critics on its original release. One of its worst reviews came from Leonard Maltin's annual Movie and Video Guide: "Even Jean-Claude Van Damme fans couldn't rationalize this bomb, a more appropriate title for which would have been Four Hundred Funerals and No Sex (derived from Four Weddings and a Funeral)...It does, however, seem like Citizen Kane when compared to The Legend of Chun-Li."[2]

Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a rating of 13% based on 24 reviews by critics with the consensus "Though it offers mild entertainment through campy one-liners and the overacting of the late Raul Julia, Street Fighter's nonstop action sequences are not enough to make up for a predictable, uneven storyline."[3] Richard Harrington of The Washington Post noted that the film was "notable only for being the last film made by Raúl Juliá, an actor far too skilled for the demands of the evil warlord, Gen. M. Bison, but far too professional to give anything less than his best."[4] Critic Stephen Holden of The New York Times referred to the film as "a dreary, overstuffed hodgepodge of poorly edited martial arts sequences and often unintelligible dialogue".[3] In 2009, Time listed the film on their list of top ten worst video games movies.[5] However, IGN stated that the film was more enjoyable than The Legend of Chun-Li.[6]

GameTrailers ranked the film as the eighth worst video game film of all time, citing that "...the fights are awful, Guile's from Brussels and apparently, there's some cyborg soldiers we never knew about." and described the overall film as "... a total knockout."[7]

Despite the mostly negative response, the film was a commercial hit, grossing approximately three times its budget worldwide.[1][8]

It also received two nominations at the Saturn Awards: Best Fantasy Film and Best Supporting Actor (a posthumous nomination for Raúl Juliá).[9]

The film has become a subject of a running gag in the Internet reviews of The Nostalgia Critic, where he uses a clip of M. Bison saying “Of course!” from the film when he says in a review that the goal of many a villain is to “you guessed it, take over the world”. The M. Bison clip from Street Fighter then follows.

Deleted scenes

  • Chun-Li, disguised as a civilian, wanders through the marketplace and meets up with E. Honda and Balrog, both disguised and who have just acquired the explosives to use on Bison and Sagat.
  • Moments before Chun-Li prepares to set the bombs in the Black Market, she is confronted by Cammy, who demands to know where Ryu and Ken are. Chun-Li defeats Cammy in a brief fight and traps Cammy underneath a tent before escaping.
  • An alternate and extended opening scene, depicting Chun-Li reporting on the news and attempting to speak with Guile, who is preoccupied with his own business.

A one shot comic book adaptation of the film, titled Street Fighter: The Battle for Shadaloo, was published by DC Comics in 1995. The comic was drawn by Nick J. Napolitano and written by Mike McAvennie. A Japanese one-shot manga adaptation by Takayuki Sakai was also published in the June 1995 issue of CoroCoro Comics Special.

Two video games based on the film were produced. The first was a coin-operated arcade game titled Street Fighter: The Movie, produced by American developer Incredible Technologies and distributed by Capcom. The second was a home video game developed by Capcom also titled Street Fighter: The Movie, released for the PlayStation and Sega Saturn. Despite sharing the same title, neither game is a port of the other, although they both used the same digitized footage of the film's cast posing as the characters in each game.

Many plot elements of the film, such as Blanka's identity and Dhalsim's role as a scientist, were reused in the American-produced 1995 Street Fighter animated series which combined story aspects of this film with those in the games.

References

  1. ^ a b http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=streetfighter.htm
  2. ^ Maltin, Leonard (2009), p. 1333. Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide. ISBN 978-0-452-29557-5. Signet Books. Accessed June 20, 2010.
  3. ^ a b "Street Fighter - Rotten Tomatoes". Rotten Tomatoes. IGN Entertainment, Inc. Retrieved 2010-07-22.
  4. ^ Harrington, Richard (1994-12-24). "'Street Fighter' (PG-13)". Washington Post. Retrieved 2009-01-26.
  5. ^ "Top 10 Worst Video Game Movies". Time Magazine. 2008-10-20. Retrieved 2009-04-25.
  6. ^ "IGN: Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li Review". Jim Vejvoda. IGN Entertainment, Inc. Retrieved 2009-03-13.
  7. ^ "GT Countdown: Top Ten Worst Video Game Movies". GameTrailers. 2008-09-17. Retrieved 2010-03-20.
  8. ^ "Dumb and Streetfighter Doing Up the Holidays : Box office: Jim Carrey's film takes in an estimated $15.7 million, while Jean-Claude Van Damme's movie earns $11.8 million". The Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2010-12-21.
  9. ^ Street Fighter at IMDb
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Street_Fighter_(1994_film)&oldid=439963233"