A Year of Garbage Movies #80 and #79, “Street Fighter: The Movie” (1994) and “Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li” (2009)
At first when I saw that these two movies were adjacent to each other in the list, I thought “Well that only makes sense”. However as I actually watched them I realized that they’re not sequels or really related in an way, and while the first is pure 90’s cheese that can largely be forgiven for its stupidity, “The Legend of Chun-Li” is just a rambling mess with few redeeming qualities. However, I’m pretty lazy and so I’m going to review them both in the same post.
Street Fighter: The Movie
The first thing the movie tells us is that the protagonist, Col. Guile (Jean-Claude Van Damme) is basically the worst friend you can possibly have. In the opening act, he delivers a message via a live news broadcast to a group of hostages held by General Bison, who has helpfully been given a quasi-Nazi uniform to indicate that he is the bad guy For some reason, Guile feels the need to call out his close friend in particular during this message, thus painting a nice fat target on his head as a prime candidate for one of Bison’s super-soldier experiments. As if this weren’t bad enough, the very first time Guile sees his friend later on (at this point a hulked-out monster with orange hair, for reasons never made clear) his first instinct is to have a “look at the rabbits George” moment and try to shoot him in the back of the head before another character floats the crazy idea of, you know, maybe waiting to see if he’ll be alright? It’s easy to imagine, as kids, that Guile was the guy who gave you the crappy controller when you were at his house, but then insisted on the nice one at yours because “he’s the guest”.
The douchebaggery bleeds over into his professional chops as well. In his wild campaign to take down Bison regardless of the collateral damage, he comes up with a contrived plot to fake his own death. Keep in mind that he’s leading U.N. forces and is based in a huge military compound with hundreds or thousands of personnel. He tells almost nobody about this plan, so the fact that the people who are integral to it aren’t cut down by the very real machine-gun fire that ensues is pure dumb luck. His dedication to the ploy can’t be questioned however. After faking his own death, he apparently lies motionless and alone in the compound’s morgue for several hours…only to arise at the one moment that the person he intended to fool is present.
I’ll point out that the only reason this plot was even necessary was to secure the release of two fighters that he arrested when he drove a tank through the side of a building full of civilians because they violated a 7pm curfew. Although I guess they got off lucky, because earlier the announced penalty for curfew violations was being shot on sight. This is the good guy, remember?
But that’s enough about good old Guile, frenemy to the world. Let’s look at the actual antagonist.
General Bison is a megalomaniac intent on creating his own country. To further this agenda, he has captured a couple hundred (later seen to be about 50) hostages and is demanding $20 billion for their release. The U.N. actually agrees to pay this.
In one fairly rapey scene, Bison attempts to woo the captured Chun-Li, who he has dressed in her signature kimono and hair buns from the video game. To set the mood, he changes into a robe that looks just like his Nazi uniform, but more billowy. He keeps the hat.
When his base is being stormed, he controls the defenses using the controls from a video game cabinet.
Pros:
- Raul Julia does a pretty good job as a crazed dictator
- A few memorable lines, such as the famous monologue wherein Bison remarks on how the defining moment of Chun Li’s life was just another Tuesday for him. Also the “you’re getting paid?” line from one of the goons.
- Is not the worst Street Fighter movie made.
Cons:
- More than half of this movie didn’t need to happen. Chun Li nearly defeats Bison but fails because, in the middle of the culmination of a decades-long revenge quest, the sight of her friends walking into a room distracts her for several seconds. Also, the whole thing with Guile’s friend only happened because he’s an idiot who can’t keep his mouth shut, and ultimately contributes nothing to the plot whatsoever.
- This movie made money, which I feel is the reason for at least three more of the movies I have to watch on this list.
Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li
This movie is bad for a lot of reasons.
Even before we get in front of the camera, things aren’t off to a great start. Somehow, the studio saw fit to have this movie directed by Andrzej Barkowiak, whose previous movie was DOOM (2005). The thought process must have been something like: “Hmmm, he kind of made a mess adapting one of the most recognizable video game franchises ever made, but surely this time things will work out great!”
As I said earlier, this reboot/prequel/non-canon installment to the franchise lacks the good-natured campiness that makes the 1994 movie somewhat watchable. For a movie that was practically a direct-to-DVD release, a ton of money was flushed away on a few recognizable actors and shooting on location in Bangkok. However, not enough to outweigh the garbage writing.
Case in point. Early on we are introduced to Chris Klein as jackass Interpol agent Nash. Over-acting as hard as he can, Nash says the following of Bison’s (now an Irish businessman raised in Thailand instead of, well, a Thai-born military leader) slipperiness: “He is the man who walks through the rain-drops”. You’re not missing any context here, the line still means absolutely nothing, but Klein says it with a great deal of gravitas and the other characters pretend like something normal was said.
Judging from the cover, you might assume that Vega, the dude with the Freddy Kreuger claws and the mask, is an integral part of this movie. Judging from the scene where Vega is sent after the main character and they go to great pains not to show anything above his chest, I think that genuinely was the original intent. I have to assume, however, that somewhere along the way things got screwed up, because by the time that scene plays out, Vega has already been shown working for the bad guy and killing a bunch of dudes, so the slow reveal doesn’t really make any sense.
In the end, he has about 3 minutes of screen time, then gets his ass kicked and is never seen in the remaining half of the movie. Also, he is played by Black Eyed Peas member Taboo. Yep.
My favorite part, hands down, has to be the action scenes. It’s pretty uneven, but in some places they seem to have done some actual choreography, unoriginal though it is. There’s quite a lot of pointless fight-dancing and arm-waving but that’s every karate movie. In other parts, however, I guess they ran out of wire for the actors to hang from or something because they cut the scenes in such a way that the actual strike is never seen. At one point, Chun Li is fighting a bunch of hench-men in a club after seducing one of Bison’s secretaries by making crazy faces at her on the dance floor. She tries to take out 4 of them at once by standing on her head and doing some sort of helicopter kick. They show her slowly spinning on her head with her legs splayed out, then cut to a CGI clip of the pendant on her necklace spinning rapidly in place, then cut back to a shot of the 4 dudes being thrown backwards while she stands almost motionless on her head. The Matrix, this is not.

There are also some bizarre mechanics and plot devices that are sort of introduced with no real explanation and forgotten until convenient. Apparently in this world you can charge up energy balls and fire them from your hands, like in Dragonball Z. This takes a frustratingly long time, however, so you can only use it after you’ve basically won a fight when either a handgun or a solid punch would have done the trick just as well. Also, it can selectively be used to heal wounds, but only if you’re soaking in a bathtub for some reason. Chun Li’s whole journey begins with a scroll she can’t read being delivered to her. She ends up taking it to a street market, and is ushered into a shop staffed by the one lady who can actually read it by the disguised leader of some secret organization (that apparently has just himself as a member). Apparently it just tells her she has to go to Bangkok and then chill out until the dude she just saw turns up. It doesn’t mention having to live on the street there, but she does anyway for some reason. Also, the one bag she takes with her defies the laws of physics, as it is roughly the size of a school bookbag but contains 17 different outfits. The origin of the scroll, as far as I could tell, is never brought up. Nor why it was written in ancient Chinese. Nor mentioned again after this.
Finally, there’s the thing that’s fairly obvious in the first 3 minutes. Chun Li has a Chinese father and a vaguely European mother (presumably British but I don’t think it’s ever stated). Kristin Kreuk, the actress who plays Chun Li, has Chinese ancestry. This is not super obvious from looking at her. This also would not be a problem at all…had they not cast a fully Chinese child actor to depict her for the first few minutes of the movie. I think they tried to sort of cover that up with a second child actor who briefly depicts her slightly older, but it still doesn’t quite work.
Pros:
- Michael Clarke Duncan seems to be having a really good time in this role, which is all I could ever want for John Coffee
- For the most part, this put an end to Taboo’s acting aspirations
Cons:
- Almost everyone integral to the plot in Thailand is either American or European. They try to throw in a few “I was raised here for some reason” lines to try to justify it, but aside from the Interpol agent none of it really makes sense. Was abandoning your kids a selling point in Thai tourism advertising in the 80s or something?
- Is the worst Street Fighter movie
Later on I’ll fight the temptation to copy-paste all of this when I have to watch the Mortal Kombat movies.
