Street Fighter was my most anticipated movie of the year. Now that I’ve seen it, I have to say it’s one of the most bizarre feelings I’ve had walking out of a movie. It’s not easy to reconcile feeling pleased and extremely disappointed simultaneously.
The film starts out quite strong with the first of many of the movie’s animated sequences. The animation shows the events of the first World Tournament (AKA the events of the original and mostly overlooked Street Fighter game) with the grand final of Ryu defeating Sagat. It does a great job setting up the movie’s main plotline of Ryu being vulnerable to the evil power that is the ‘Dark Hadou’, the temptation to let ultimate power consume you. The fight is fast paced, bloody and intense and establishes the tone of the film quite nicely with larger than life characters and supernatural martial arts abilities. I allowed myself to get my hopes up.
Initial posters and trailers got my hopes up.
The good times continued with the switch to live-action, and some early-90’s styled fake TV commercials and programs. Yes, the 90’s nostalgia is a bit on the nose, but I didn’t care. The film is ultra-stylised, so playing the era for laughs is fine in my books. So far, so good.
As the film starts to introduce the cast of characters, my enjoyment started to gradually wane. Dan Hibiki is introduced, and much like the games, he’s the butt of a lot of jokes. Then Guile is introduced, and he’s also a silly character that says dumb things. Then M Bison is introduced, and he’s also a silly character that says dumb things. Then Balrog is introduced, and is made to look silly by saying something dumb. Then M Bison says more dumb things with some weirdly out of place dialogue again. Then Blanka is introduced and he’s yet another a silly character who… well you get the picture by now.
The animated scenes seem to be nearly universally loved, and with good reason.
Humour definitely had a place in this movie, and Capcom already provided the filmmakers with a perfect avenue for it; Dan. Dan has always been a parody ‘joke’ character. He’s relatively bad at martial arts, wears a pink gi and is more concerned with taunting than honing his fireball throwing talents. If Dan was the comedian in this film and the rest of the cast were the straight men to bounce off him, I think I would have adored Street Fighter. Unfortunately, just about every character seems to be winking at the camera and determined to remove any emotional investment I had in the story or action, because this film is silly. Note, I said ‘silly’ and not ‘funny’.
I thought Blanka was the weakest looking character in the film…
When I saw the trailers and all the cast dressed in lovingly accurate costumes, stylised lighting and fight effects and lots of action, I thought this was going to be the movie that bucks the awful trend of insincere, self deprecating writing that seems to affect a number of recent adaptations. Case in point; the awful looking Golden Axe streaming series that seemingly was collectively memoryholed by everyone in existence the nanosecond it released. Apologies to readers who have now been forcefully reminded of it (thankfully this blog isn’t particularly popular so it’s probably only two people. Hi mum!). Unfortunately my expectation that Street Fighter was going to ‘play it straight’, so to speak, was incorrect. It wasn’t long into the film that I realised Street Fighter suffered from the same strangely insecure need to make sure everyone watching knew they were ‘in’ on the joke.
Did anyone actually watch this? Or was it some elaborate practical joke?
As I mentioned earlier, just about every character in the movie suffers from regular moments of weapons-grade cringe. When I’ve quickly been conditioned by the movie to expect a gag or moment of humour in every single scene, that moment has to be very very funny to elicit a laugh. Making a weak masturbation innuendo, or expecting me to laugh because M Bison has (seemingly inconsequentially) developed a foot fetish isn’t going to cut it. I don’t even want to call these moments ‘jokes’ as there’s no set up or punch lines, it’s usually just a character saying something peculiar or awkward and expecting us to find it hilarious. Before anyone asks, yes there’s also a few ‘Well that just happened’ style lines too, the favourite punching bag of all contemporary, snarky, internet critics (yours truly included).
There were, to the film’s credit, even some moments of decent gags. A great example is Ryu fighting E-Honda in the bath-house. At one point in the fight Ryu gains the advantage by pulling off E-Honda’s towel. Honda quickly has to pause the fight to grab another one in the name of modesty. It works in the context of the scene, it’s brief and it doesn’t make either character look ‘dumb’, and is something Ryu would do in a fight against a friend rather than injure him. Unfortunately these moments are few and far between.
I did notice by the end of the film that my favourite characters were Chun Li, Cammy and Juli. The fact they look absolutely fucking incredible in their costumes notwithstanding, they also seem to be the characters that suffered the least from failed attempts at humour. Chun Li has the occasional out-of-place line of dialogue that I could overlook, Mel Jarnson hams it up as Cammy but the character is otherwise consistently competent and brash, and Juli is essentially completely without dialogue and instead her interactions consist mostly of scowling looks and some slick martial arts moves. It’s no accident that the characters that had the advantage of being played straight were the ones I enjoyed the most.
It’s when Street Fighter is taking itself seriously that I very much enjoyed it. The fight scenes were all enjoyable and I love that they leaned into the video games’ abilities and special moves. There’s no attempt to replicate a ‘real fight’ here, with absurdly powerful and unrealistic attacks (complete with special effects) being served up almost immediately. Whether it’s a one-on-one fight or a battle against multiple enemies, the fights were always enjoyable and well put-together. In particular I must note that the destruction of the scenery as these fights took place really drove home the fact that these aren’t normal fighters, and I never got tired of seeing someone kicked through a concrete wall and just brush it off seconds later.
Cammy was one of the few characters I found endearing from start to end. And yes, it was more than just the costume…
The plotline was also surprisingly good for a movie of this kind, with the friendships between Ryu, Ken and Dan being fairly well fleshed out, and the looming threat of the ‘Dark Hadou’ being a good enough thread to pin all the fight scenes onto. M Bison was somewhat a secondary baddie, but considering how inconsistent that character is in this film, that’s probably for the better.
This is in a nutshell the reason I’m so utterly disappointed by the movie, if they had removed the awkward and relentless attempts at humour, the movie absolutely stands on its own as a kung-fu film. Visually great from start to finish, I loved every location and costume (except the weirdly CGI heavy Blanka). I didn’t need to be reminded with a metaphorical wink and nod every scene that ‘hey, this movie is wacky, please don’t take it seriously’.
The movie then, unfortunately ran very hot and cold with me, which is the reason I felt so strange leaving the theatre. To paraphrase a famous quote; one foot in fire and one foot in ice means that on average, you’re comfortable. Comfortably numb, perhaps in my case. While I adored so many aspects of the movie, it just couldn’t avoid putting itself down. To this effect, I tell the director, the crew and all the stars of the movie; I wish you had backed yourself more to deliver the movie without any irony. Everything looked and sounded great, and this might have been my movie of the year if it wasn’t for the fact I was constantly having to hold back sighs of disappointment when yet another one-liner missed the mark and landed in a heap on the floor.
So where does it leave my thoughts on the film? A potentially great experience for me, ruined by a few poor decisions, and the film just gets a passing grade. Maybe when it hits streaming or Blu Ray, I’ll be able to fast forward the bits I don’t like and knock it up a star or two.
Rating: ⭐⭐★★