As fans have seen multiple times, adapting a video game into a movie is difficult and often ill-advised. Most of the famous bad examples are live-action films. Animated adaptations have broadly fared better in the eyes of fans and newcomers.Street Fighteris one of the best examples. Every live-action adaptation has been a mess, butStreet Fighter II: The Animated Moviemay be the first great video game film.
Fighting games are famously uniquein their approach to storytelling. To the uninitiated, they look as if they feature no notable plot. Hardcore fans know that most examples have multiple novels worth of lore buried in their cutscenes and character descriptions.Street Fighteris no exception, so a good adaptation of the franchise has to pack in a lot of details.
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What Happens inStreet Fighter II: The Animated Movie?
This film is a fairly straightforward adaptation ofStreet Fighter II: The World Warrior.M. Bison, the leaderof the worldwide criminal conspiracy group Shadowlaw, builds an army of robots to locate and recruit the most powerful warriors in the world. His biggest target is a mysterious wandering Japanese martial artist named Ryu. Years earlier, Ryu bested Muay Thai champion Sagat in a fight with two unstoppable techniques. Bison devotes endless resources to locating Ryu, but his mystical abilities and nomadic nature make him impossible to find. Luckily, Bison locatesRyu’s lifelong rival, Ken. Bison’s scheme demands a warrior with endless potential, but he’s up against more than his matching pair of potential recruits.
Interpol agent Chun-Li and US Air Force Major Guile have banded together and pooled their resources to track down Bison and bring him to justice. Bison murdered Guile’s best friend and Chun-Li’s father, earning him the ire of the two most skilled hand-to-hand combatants in the armed forces. WhenMI6 agent Cammy Whitegoes rogue and executes a politician, the governments of the world discover Bison’s power. As Ryu travels the world to find new foes, and Ken builds a life with his girlfriend Eliza, Chun-Li and Guile attempt to stop Shadowlaw. Bison’s evil schemes gradually bring the heroes together, but the path allows for several excellent fight scenes along the way. It’s a straightforward story with a lot of small threads and fun cameos, but the real draw is the magnificent set pieces buried throughout.
How DoesStreet Fighter II: The Animated MovieHold Up?
Street Fighter II: The Animated Movieis unquestionably thebestStreet Fightermovie, but it’s one of the best video game movies ever made. There are some weak points, especially in the occasionally lackluster writing, but the film is packed with so many jaw-dropping action scenes that it’s hard to care. The opening scene depicting Ryu’s fight against Sagat is still the best version of that crucial moment in the franchise almost 30 years later. Ryu’s relationship with Ken doesn’t get enough time to shine, but it’s perfectly established. Minor characters like Fei Long, E. Honda, Blanka, Zangief, and Dhalsim get their moment to shine, even if a few of them feel out of place. It’s hard to find a bad fight scene in the film. Chun-Li’s extended bout with Vega is a standout. Even outside the fight scenes, moments like Ken proposing to Eliza or Cammy assassinating a target are immediately memorable. The soundtrack is excellent, the fight scenes are spectacular, and it’s a perfect distillation of thisera of the franchise. This is the baseline by which the upcomingStreet Fighterfilm must be judged, and the bar is high.
What Other AnimatedStreet FighterMovies Are There?
Street Fighter II: The Animated Moviewas the first cinematic adaptation of the franchise, but it was not the last. TheStreet Fighter: Alphafilms came to home video in 2001 and 2005, adapting new elements of the franchise, like Ryu’sbattle with the Satsui no Hado. Certain copies ofStreet Fighter IVcame withStreet Fighter IV: The Ties That Bind, an anime film that dives deeper into that game’s plot. Finally,Street Fighter - Round One: Fight!andStreet Fighter - The New Challengerwere motion-comic adaptations of UDON’s graphic novel series. The franchise also enjoyed a very silly Saturday morning cartoon series and a more serious anime series in 1995.
Street Fighter II: The Animated Moviemay be thefirst great video game movie. Everything about it that has aged poorly only serves to make it more enjoyable. It’s a time capsule of a better age, a classic example of the simple virtue of adaption. The film uses its new medium to do things it couldn’t do on an arcade machine while carefully capturing the game’s most enjoyable elements. Fans owe it to themselves to check outStreet Fighter II: The Animated Movie. Hopefully, the upcoming film’s cast and crew are taking its lessons to heart.
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