Horrendous Adaptation of Iconic Video Game Gets a Movie Reboot (Again)
We are going to see yet another game-based movie, even though we never asked.
There are movies that demand our attention even though they are absolutely terrible.
One such example is Jean-Claude Van Damme's 1994 movie Street Fighter and its later reboots. It has been announced that Legendary has acquired the rights to Street Fighter for film and television and is developing a new project.
Let's see why the movies based on the game were so bad and if this reboot is even necessary.
Conventionally, the movie Street Fighter was based on the 1991 arcade game Street Fighter II: The World Warrior. The movie takes place in a fictional country in Southeast Asia ruled by the dictator Bison.
The villainous Bison takes a group of rescuers hostage and demands an exorbitant ransom. While world leaders decide what to do, a military unit led by Colonel Guile, played by Jean-Claude Van Damme, is sent to destroy the tyrant.
Major video game company Capcom, which owned the rights to the story, wanted Jean-Claude Van Damme to play the lead role.
They got their way, but Van Damme's fee was $8 million — almost a quarter of the film's modest $35 million budget.
As a result, most of the cast of Street Fighter, other than Van Damme and Raul Julia, were relatively unknown and were not outstanding actors.
Kylie Minogue, who played a significant role in the movie, found her way into the adaptation by chance.
Since the filming took place in Australia, the local actors' guild wanted their performers to have a prominent roles in the movie but only the British soldier Cammy remained an unfilled character.
Once director De Souza flipped through a magazine and saw the singer Kylie Minogue.
Van Damme's behavior didn't do the movie any good, either. The actor regularly came to work late and sometimes did not show up at all, preferring to stay in a hotel or fly off for a few days to party in Hong Kong.
One day, he got into a fight with a crew member who accused him of bringing a bottle of champagne to the set.
As a result, the adaptation turned out to be a caricature action movie that was not appreciated by critics, ordinary viewers, and received an even worse welcome by fans of the game.
In 2009, a reboot, titled Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li hit the big screen. The movie, directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak, was panned by critics. In 2014, a third action film, Street Fighter: Assassin's Fist, followed.
It was a short web series, later adapted for television, which received a more positive response than the previous movies.
At this point, the adaptation of the game seem to be cursed, with the movies being so bad. On the one hand, many want companies to finally give up in their trying to revive the franchise and leave it rest in peace.
On the other hand, more and more games have been getting worthy adaptations in recent years, and maybe a new director will find the right approach to the game and the audience will get a decent action movie.