*sobs* I did it... I watched the Street Fighter movie

[Aussie2B]

I love the Street Fighter movie. It's pure cheese at its finest.

I'm gonna shuffle this over to Classic Gaming too.

[WulfeLuer]

My friend nabbed this on VHS at a flea market something like 15 years ago. We both have a taste for gloriously bad movies so we went for it. I can't say much for the heroes since they felt like 80's GI Joe characters stuck IRL but Bison...Bison amuses me greatly. Raul Julia just trashing the scenery like the ideal blend of two decades of cartoon villains was awesome.

Super Mario Brothers is that rare crappy movie that everybody was so clearly having a blast making anyway. You want a surprisingly decent video game flick, try In the Name of the King. We went to go give it the MST3K treatment and wound up honestly liking it a lot. Went back something like twice.

[Steve W]

I've never had any interest in watching this movie, the only thing that piques my interest is Kylie Minogue dressed as Cammy. I can't imagine there's any other reason to watch.

[TonyTheTiger]

It is an unironically excellent movie. Street Fighter is a flawless live action adaptation of 80s era Saturday morning television. I'll never understand how people can sing the praises of Transformers, He-Man, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and G.I. Joe and in the same breath talk shit about this film. It takes every single major theme present in those cartoons and distills them to their purest form. It is actually a perfect movie, which is what I'd expect from the guy who wrote Die Hard.

[Zama]

It is the answer to Anti-Life Equation

[Edmond Dantes]

It is an unironically excellent movie. Street Fighter is a flawless live action adaptation of 80s era Saturday morning television. I'll never understand how people can sing the praises of Transformers, He-Man, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and G.I. Joe and in the same breath talk shit about this film. It takes every single major theme present in those cartoons and distills them to their purest form. It is actually a perfect movie, which is what I'd expect from the guy who wrote Die Hard.

You just love talking to me, don't you? ^__^

I can kinda see where you're coming from (especially with the G.I. Joe comparison.... and I guess someone back in the day thought so as well since when we got Street Fighter action figures, they were marketed as a G.I. Joe sub-series, and then the US animated series was produced by the same team behind G.I. Joe which explains a lot...) but while it might have similar themes, ultimately I kinda felt it was just that: A collection of things-you-might-recognize-from-elsewhere but often feeling just kinda thrown in as if they were random afterthoughts.

Granted I've become more forgiving ever since hearing some info and finding out that the production was rushed and experienced tons of setbacks, so it probably could not have come out any better than it did. Which is kinda sad, I would honestly enjoy this if it were more fleshed out. As it is, I'm with most people in seeing Zangief and Bison as the highlight... and it does make me wanna re-watch the US animated series.

.... on a semi-related note, I'm kinda sad that movies both like this and like the anime movie could never be made today. The Street Fighter canon (which people would demand any new production stick to) is just too convoluted now. Seriously now there's something about Ryu having an evil side and channeling the power of the Sensui no Hado or whatever its called. It's just like the Marvel Universe--basically the way to make it fun again is to pretend everything after 1990 never happened, and that's something none of the current showrunners or licensors are ever gonna do. At best, we get some Alt Universe with a clean slate, but they always screw those up... and there's a tendency to reintroduce the lame elements anyway (like how Ultimate Spider-Man STILL had a Clone Saga, even though NOBODY likes the Clone Saga).

Part of me actually liked the original idea of Street Fighter III, that it was gonna be all-new characters, but between fan complaints and corporate cold feet, that wound up out the window... just like Raiden in Metal Gear Solid 2 replacing Solid Snake.

[TonyTheTiger]

Back in the Street Fighter II days, most fighting games were inspired by action movies of the era. It was a heightened reality but still grounded in something recognizable. That's what made the characters from SFII, Fatal Fury, and Mortal Kombat so relatable even though we didn't really know anything about them aside from maybe a brief bio and a 10 second ending. People didn't need a lot of backstory or explanation. They walked up to the cabinet, saw Ryu or Zangief and like magic they'd just "get it." That kind of elegance in design doesn't seem to exist in modern fighting games anymore now that the anime cliches have taken over.

[Edmond Dantes]

It wasn't really the character designs that started to bother me, more just how the story started getting kinda dumb. It's a thing... the more complicated a character or story gets, the more braindead it gets as well. It happens a lot with manga and comic books. Scott Summers as an over-serious dude who shoots eye lasers is fine. Scott Summers as literally the center of the universe is dumb. Attack on Titan as a survival story regarding kaiju zombies is interesting, now its all this dumb stuff about conspiracies. Slenderman stories when they're just dudes getting chased by a weird paranormal figure are interesting, but then they introduce the proxies and the various "rules" and such, it gets dumb.

That being said I do dislike how anime has gotten so "out there," I prefer more down to earth. I don't mind dudes with oversized swords when they're a one-off or meant to be exceptional even in-universe, but show me a Tetsuya Nomura design and I'll show you a sign saying "no thanks."

But yeah, I liked Ryu more when he was just an eternal traveller and not a guy haunted by some dark power who the universe literally revolves around.