Street Fighter: The Legend of the Disappointment

Countless people will tell you stories of hurrying to the movie theater in their adolescence, eager to see the movie adaptation of their favorite video game series: Street Fighter. Almost unanimously (myself excluded), the feeling of joy and excitement turned to bitterness and disappointment. It’s no surprise that despite the pretty decent marketing campaign, the new movie that came out in 2009 didn’t surprise anyone when it didn’t do so well. Little hint to Capcom: Usually when you refuse to do a critics screener, everyone knows it’s because the movie is bad and you don’t want bad reviews before the movie comes out. Now I watched this originally in the plane on my way to Evo last year. I had the choice between Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li and Watchmen and to put myself in the mood for a Street Fighter tournament I chose the former. Big mistake. Not because Street Fighter is all that terrible, mostly because Watchmen is THAT AWESOME. I watched it and found it bad but recently I’ve bought it again in the recent light of KoF, I figured I’d give it another go (hint: In comparison, it really ain’t that bad!). Here we go once more!

Click the break for the Scene by scene crap crackdown of Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun li

This has to be the best part of the movie. It’s the capcom logo, plain and simple. The eye of the storm. You know shit is coming up. The movie starts off with a voice over of her past. My problem with the voice over narration throughout the movie is that it just sounds so cliché and a generic template for “mysterious sounding bullshit”. It’s trite and you can tell Kreuk is reading it off a piece of paper. What happened to you Kreuk? You were fine in Smallville! This is just more filler as the family sets up in Taiwan or something (I suck at geometry). I’m only including this picture to show Chun’s white mom which could MAYBE explain why adult Chun Li looks white and not chinese. It doesn’t explain why young Chun looks like a stereotype and suddenly, just like Kyo Kusanagi in KoF, Caucasionized herself at will. Her father realizes she has great ninja magic in her when she “walks quietly” and decides to say fuck the Piano, his daughter was going to become a Wu shu expert. He trains her as her mother, in such a terribly cliché moment, looks over them from the balcony. The only one it could be worse is if she said something like “This is such a perfect life” right before she dies. Now I’m convinced she said it off screen because in the next scene, shit goes down. I’m not surprising anyone when I inform you that the big threatening black man is Balrog. What’s he doing there? Well shit ain’t hard to figure out. If you come home and that dude crashes through your house laughing, you know you’re in trouble. And if you’re terribly daft: he’s here to beat the living baJeeebus out of Chun’s dad (do they ever say his name in the movie?). So Mr Li tries to fight him off and then suddenly! Ninjas appear! Ok they’re more like thugs but they’re wannabe ninjas. Now I was probably looking away from the screen, possibly at a large bottle of Pine Sol I was considering chugging, but when I looked back I saw him with the Vampire Killer whip from Castlevania or something but turns out he just used alcohol and a candle to create what might have been a yoga flame. Like in every movie, for a reason I have yet to understand, when the big boss bad guy comes into the room, people stop fighting. Really? If I was one of those thugs I’d be the one thinking “Oh shit! he’s distracted AND the boss is here? Quick! I don’t want to look like I’m slacking” and take the target off with a whack behind the head “Oh look boss I got him! Was that so hard mr I-don’t-ever-take-my-gloves-off?” Anyway, yeah, that’s M. Bison … Yeah, the most badass dictator in gaming history looks more like he couldn’t even land a job in the Office. Like any terrible villain, he leaves one person behind to avenge. Haven’t action montages taught him anything? I guess he had a good reason though. He wanted to use her as leverage to blackmail the Li man into working for me. I still would’ve killed her (without the father knowing) and just kept telling him “I’ll kill her if you don’t listen to me”. And when he asks “I want to know she’s safe!” I’d just smack him in the face with my Psycho pimp slap (Close standing Fierce). Hey! We’re now a bunch of years later and the plastic surgery went great. Mr and Ms Li, your daughter is now white. Congratulations! I guess she didn’t drop the piano for Wu Shu after all since she’s now playing at the conservatory. It’s a little stereotypical for an asian family no? Oh wait….this is based on the game with the indian chief, the black boxer, the indian yoga/fakir?, the japanese martial artist, the american tub-o-lard, and Bruce motherfucking Lee. I think we’ve gone beyond stereotypes a long time ago. But who cares, the game is too damn good. Funny tidbit: Did you know Rufus’ original design had him black and holding a tub of chicken instead of Popcorn? True story. That was scraped very early on and they made sure no evidence of it was still available (my source for this is 1up, please don’t sue me if it’s wrong). She finishes her recital and goes back to her dressing room where he jealous friend is all “Dayum girl, they be lovin you out der” and hands her a gift from “an admirer”. Is it just me or the line when her friends leans over and says “Wow it’s beautiful” just sounds like the fakest thing since Paris Hilton’s new tits? Anyway the gift is an old scroll which she can’t read; great job mom and pop, she can’t fucking read chinese despite her origin and living in China. Your only comfort is she ain’t on the pole. Looking at some of her moves, she’s close to it though. She takes the subway home and comes to the help of an old man getting bumrushed by some gangsters and a midget. As she helps him up, the camera subtly zooms in to the man’s hand where there’s a tattoo of a spider web (and when I say subtly I meant there’s a 300 pound nerd next to you in a Dare Devil tshirt winking and nudging you in the rib with his elbow). Geez, really? They zoomed into the the bizarre tattoo, I wonder if that will be significant at all in the rest of the movie!? Her mom’s dying. Word. Cut to Bison having dinner with the crime lords of Shadaloo (They say it differently in the movie but I refuse to perpetuate it) and nicely tells them to bend over and take it up the ass. Of course the crime lords, offended that he didn’t even offer lube, decline his proposition and bail. Pop Quiz! Q: In movies, when a whole bunch of criminals refuse the main bad guy’s offer, what happens to them? a) They all go out for ice cream and a round of putt putt golf. b) Orgy in the dining room and sweet sweet love is made in the mashed potatoes c) they all die horribly. Let’s see what the answer is! Hey you got it right! It was C! Granted B would’ve been for a much better movie but now we got Vega going after them and killing them off screen. I feel we got jipped on Vega. Even the Van Damne movie had a better Vega. You remember Jay Tavarre? Much better than Taboo from the domestically abused legumes. Here’s the thing though, how many of them were there? 8? Really? 8 guys couldn’t take one guy on? They are crime lords for fuck’s sake. Yeah he’s got a metal claw but while he’s slashing away at mr. Yakuza over there, you take your russian fist and and pound it into his spanish nuts. There’s 8 of you! He’s got one claw! And no good reversals! Vega is useless when cornered.

This is the introduction shot for one of the female leads and serves no other purpose than to let the very dumb audience know she’s a bad/kick ass chick. Because square broads don’t ride motorcycles. Oh if you haven’t figured it out by now, she’s supposed to be the eye candy of the movie.

Cue in the worst part of this movie (yes, what you saw before was nothing). This is the Shatner of this movie…Shatner without anything anything cool about Shatner. Basically just shat. Which is the past tense of shit. Again, that was for the daft readers. I’ve never seen someone overact like that. Hell, someone made a compilation of it! Check it out. Or don’t. You know, if you value your sanity.

Turns out in some shipping containers are the pussies crime lords who got taken out by Vega.

Oh hey! The Li man is still alive! Yeah turns out Bison was just using him to haxor the internets or something to take control of Gotha-…Bangkok. He trades him pix of his daughters for his work. Oh how he misses her.

She’s dead.

So Chun sets out to find the meaning of the scrolls and because an old dude won’t get out of the way, once again through a very subtle zoom (though this time, 300lbs man choked up some nacho cheese as he budged you).Some old chinese lady tries to act all mysterious but in reality looks about as mysterious as Frank, the guy who runs the comic book shop down the street who happens to sell Tarot cards right next to his pokemon cards and his gaming dies. Chun li (You forgot this movie was about her didn’t you?) must set out to find Gen from the order of the web. You mean that web tattoo had significance!? Bullshit! You clever devils!

Damn that’s a lot of cleavage for a cop. Other shit happens but it ain’t important. Something about Bison taking over the slums and expanding his evil empire but damn, those titties aren’t bad!

Oooh yeah. Look at dem titties.

So Chun decides to set out on her great adventure and for some reason, gets rid of her earthly posessions to become a bum. Funny, I don’t remember the old lady telling her she had to be poor. The order of the web won’t find her if she’s tanning at the Ritz?

Bison is admiring his lego blocks when Balrog tells him about his “White Rose”…could it be? Urgh…

Chun runs into some street thugs and decides to take justice into his own hands, so he dresses up as a giant Bat and…oh wait. Wrong movie. She tries to kick their asses. She succeeds but it ends more like a Double KO than anything else.

So Gen finds her. Oh wow, turns out it was the old guy with the web tat. Color me surprised. So what do they do? They fight! And yes. That’s Liu Kang playing Gen.

What the fuck? What the fucking fuck? Since when does Gen have fireballs? Did I miss something? Street fighter 1? Nope. Street Fighter Alpha(s)? Nope. Street Fighter 4? Nope! Why does he have fireballs now? I guess SOMEONE needed to show Chun how to throw Kikoukens…I guess you won’t see Gen with his ass up though.

Chun instantly gets wet in the trousers when seeing the size of his fireball and must learn how mash that shit! Of course her kung fu is weak! So she’s basically shooting Ryu’s QCB+P. It cuts to her in an internet cafe with nobody playing WoW or Starcraft and uses once again this thing I hate in movies; a computer with no OS. It’s like computers in movies only exist with a generic search engine and that’s it.

Anyway, it cuts  Bison’s henchbroad telling important business people that their families will be spared since they signed over a bunch of land. I’ll be honest, I’m only posting this screen grab because of the cleavage.

Then it cuts to Bison’s armored cars ejecting people out of their homes in the slums and taking over. Nash and Maya are trying to tail Balrog and to avoid being seen, he makes out with her. Goddamnit, when are people going to realize that people at the corner of the street in a parked car doing an express make out is fucking suspicious!? Of course Balrog is used to being chased so he loses them and goes to threaten some other guy to ensure Bison’s White rose arrives safely.

Now every great martial artist must practice blind right? While being assaulted by iron marbles? While your master attacks you with a sword? While you fall onto a rotary saw? Totally normal training.

So if it wasn’t obvious that she was supposed to be the eye candy of the movie, it is now. She walks around in a bra while talking about how she likes to live dangerously. Danger is her middle name I’m sure.

Annnd another shot of her just for the sake of having something decent to look at in this movie.

It cuts to Bison’s henchbroad in a bar telling her bodygards to go take a hike. Now somehow Chun li was about to figure out she was more of the Roller Derby type than the cheerleader type and seduces her. Oh please fuck in the bathroom. Give me this one Capcom. I’ve watched your movie this far! You owe me!

Damnit. They started fighting. And not the good kind of fighting with clothes ripping off, titties popping out, tubs of chocolate pudding appearing as they wrestle in it…Anyway, she divulges all the info and Chun runs off into…

The stripper room! Or the slutty dancer room at least. Here she is surrounded by dudes with guns and urgh…Maybe I should stop writing here. We would be better off wouldn’t we? I don’t have much of a choice…

Yes. That’s indeed a Spinning Bird kick. There is nothing more to say on this. Really. Even if there was I wouldn’t want to go into it.

This is what that bitch deserved for thinking with her …clit? instead of her head.

More of Maya’s cleavage as she and Nash search for Chun.

Gen tells Chun of the story of the young Matt Damon. Fuck you that ain’t Bison, look at him, that’s Matt Damon. Anyway, turns out he was abandonned, became a thief and then killed his girlfriend to put his conscience into his child…Is this the equivalent of the psycho power?

Balrog seemed to have magically found where Gen lived and sent not only ninjas but also a missile at it. You can never be too sure you know? I’ve always wondered what occasion would bring an evil crime syndicate to think

“hmm you know, ninjas might not cut it. Let’s stay safe and bring a rocket launcher with you. Just in case.”

I’m only putting this here because it’s by far the ugliest expression I’ve ever seen on film. Kreuk went straight from “I’d definately tap that” to “There aren’t enough brown paper bags on earth” in less than 2 seconds. That’s Bugatti fast!

Bison contacts Vega and asks him to take out Chun. So he creepily stalks her and after a very short fight Chun takes it and strings him up. No surprise there, it’s a 6-4 matchup in favor of chun, some would say 7-3.

Chun finds out where the White Rose is coming but Oh Fuck! It’s a trap! Man is that suit pimpin’ though. Bison is baaaallin’ in this movie.

Bison being the baller we just established, kills Chun’s father right in front of her. She manages to escape through some ridiculous fashion and Gen finds her in an alley passed out with a bullet wound. But fear not…

Gen now has healing powers! Those didn’t help you get nerfed to fuck in SSFIV you old leukemia son of a bitch. Fuck your ex waterfall kick.

Now they find out the real arrival time and location of the white rose and set up a small army to go get it.

…That’s Rose? The Gypsy-with-the-titties? That’s her?Moving on!

Gen and Balrog finally get their fight. Balrog is pretty much dominating him until he gets stabbed by a freezy-tube…thingie…Yeah, kind of cheap. Also slightly reminiscent of how Bennett dies in Commando.

I didn’t make up those subtitles. That right there is all genuine. Way to make the Lord of Evil sound like a little bitch. What happened to having no conscience!?

Bison st.RH’s Gen throughout both rounds. Seriously, no knee presses, no psycho crushers, no use of meters. Just out pokes him I guess.

So Chun’s turn to fight eventually rolls around and after some rooftop squabbling, bamboo stick hitting and other shit, she decides a very slow kikouken (possibly kikoushou) is her best shot. Bitch charges up slower than Goky does a spirit bomb.

Now this shit here looks mad painful. Seriously. She wraps her feet around his neck and lets herself fall, her weight and the force of gravity snapping his neck into an Exorcist-like 180. Fuckin’ ouch dude. Right in front of her daughter! Nash lets her run off without legal trouble as he takes care of the girl WHO JUST WITNESSED THESE PEOPLE MURDER HER FATHER!? WHY IS SHE GOING WITH THEM WILLINGLY!?

Blah blah blah, Maya has a slutty top and makes a slutty face at Nash. Urgh, how can any female with half a brain be attracted to him I don’t know.

Chun is reunited with Gen in her old family home and every lived happily ever after…until Super Street Fighter Turbo of course.