Retrospective on Street Fighter: The Movie (the movie. lol)
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genjiglove
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For Games.
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How weird, MK: Annihilation is on FX right now. Apparently its getting a bluray release the same day the new game comes out.
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All legitimate complaints, but ironically all examples of them sticking to the source material (except Raiden's hair).
The game the movie is based on, MK3, has the same plot as the movie, adding a shit ton of new characters with little to no relevance to the overarching plot, with crazy cheeseball costumes totally at odds with the vibe of the first two games. Instead of ninjas, MK3 had... ROBOT ninjas, who looked like a weird cross between the Predator and motocross riders. Jax had robot arms out of nowhere. And you also had Elvira, Mistress of the Dark wearing a bathing suit. Oh yeah, and the worst of all, a tubby Paul Blart Mall Cop-type character named 'Stryker', which is the one instance the Annihilation filmmakers showed audiences mercy by not including. And yeah, all the characters had 'Animalities' for no sensible reason whatsoever.
Annihilation is TOO true to the source material. It's like the opposite extreme from the JCVD Street Fighter movie. It's the kind of movie fans always say they want, with everything and everyone from the game included, with the game's actual dorky plot points retained, except the movie makers had to jettison all semblance of coherent storytelling to get there.
Exactly. He has little to no character arc, and has zero relation to the "villain" of the game. They can't even convincingly manufacture tension between Ryu and M.Bison because of how inner-directed Ryu is. That's fine in a game, but it makes for shitty drama. The JCVD movie may be bad, but the anime movies are outright unwatchable, imo. They are fucking horrible.
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Mortal Kombat:
They should have just made a Sub Zero vs Scorpion "origins" movie.
They should have just made a Sub Zero vs Scorpion "origins" movie.
BigFred
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This was discussed years ago. Ryu was never meant to be the protagonist, Guile was. People fell in love with the shoto's and the rest was history, one poorly written anime after another. In defence of the movie they at least got this part right.
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So Guile is kinda like Jenny Garth in 90210?
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Where do you get that from? Ryu not the star of the series? I guess I forgot all about Guile's appearance in Street Fighter 1.
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Where do you get that from? Ryu not the star of the series? I guess I forgot all about Guile's appearance in Street Fighter 1.
Must be Ken then.... Since he appears in both SF and SF 2010.
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Little known fact: Rush was originally meant to be the star of Mega Man 3, but people fell in love with the stupid little boy robot and the rest is history, one terrible Mega Man game after another.
FrankZappa
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Who is in the first slot on the SF2 character select screen? Where the p1 cursor automatically begins every time you put in a quarter?
What single character was the first to be featured on the SF2 cabinet side art?
(Hint: not Guile)
What single character was the first to be featured on the SF2 cabinet side art?
(Hint: not Guile)
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It's Ryu and it was always Ryu.
I've always felt Street Fighter had enough storylines that there didn't need to be 'one' main guy. Given all the rivalries and mortal enemies that exist in that series, there are plenty of different arcs that the characters need not step on each other's arcs. They can cross over and know one another, but I saw no reasy why Ryu had to be the one to beat M. Bison when it clearly makes more sense for Guile and Chun Li to be the ones to take him down.
To me, it was always Ryu and Sagat or Ryu and Ken. Then when Akuma came into it, it was Ryu and him.
But this is what happens when you try to make sense of these things. You end up putting more effort into making sense of the storyline than the IP's owners do, and you make yourself crazy trying to fix the continuity. When I finally decided not to give a fuck about fighting game storylines, I realized none of it mattered.
I've always felt Street Fighter had enough storylines that there didn't need to be 'one' main guy. Given all the rivalries and mortal enemies that exist in that series, there are plenty of different arcs that the characters need not step on each other's arcs. They can cross over and know one another, but I saw no reasy why Ryu had to be the one to beat M. Bison when it clearly makes more sense for Guile and Chun Li to be the ones to take him down.
To me, it was always Ryu and Sagat or Ryu and Ken. Then when Akuma came into it, it was Ryu and him.
But this is what happens when you try to make sense of these things. You end up putting more effort into making sense of the storyline than the IP's owners do, and you make yourself crazy trying to fix the continuity. When I finally decided not to give a fuck about fighting game storylines, I realized none of it mattered.
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True, but that doesn't mean you can't get enjoyment out of them anyway.
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They jumped the shark when they came out with Akuma.
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Oh, I *enjoy* them. But I used to actually sweat them and figure them out and read way too much into them. A holdover from my superhero comic continuity preservation, no doubt. A fixation that didn't necessarily apply to a genre of storytelling where 'reimaginings' and liberal alterations are fairly commonplace.
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Yeah, but I think it's more than the genre -- it's their whole mindset. Long-running manga and anime characters get their histories casually but drastically revised with zero explanation and zero expectation on the part of the fans of receiving any. It's fucking fascinating to watch American anime fans compulsively try to impose continuity rules onto something like Space Cruiser Yamato or Captain Harlock. Never mind any ancillary tv series, OVAs or movies, Matsumoto himself has depicted about three completely different "first" meetings between Harlock/Tochiro/Emeraldas. That would give an American comics fan fits. But that's just how they roll over there.
You're right that it's totally different to the anal super-hero continuity tradition, but maybe that casual approach is part of their success in attracting wider casual audiences rather than limiting themselves to the obsessive nerd fringe that American comics are stuck with.
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I think so. I remember when people tried to sort out the contunity to Zelda, and I forget who it was but that one crazy super Zelda fan came up with this elaborate, and admittedly pretty cool, singular timeline for the entire series and made a youtube video of it.
Then when Nintendo was asked to respond to it, they basically said 'Well, after the first three games, there really is no storyline. They're basically the same story over and over.' Although there have been several starting points for various branching versions of Zelda continuity.
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Are you fucking HIGH? Mortal Kombat was worlds better than the SF movie!
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It is and it isn't. As a kid wanting to watch an accurate depiction of your favorite video game, yeah, the first MK movie is the clear winner. But I don't think it necessarily holds up as a good movie if you try to re-watch it now as an adult.
Meanwhile, the JCVD movie improves with age. It only gets funnier as the obsessive fan learns to unclench and take it for what it is.
And in a way, Capcom released that and tried (note I said, tried) to amend it, or should I say Manga artist Nakahira did first with his SF Alpha mangas, were the whole satsui no hadou thing surfaced and then Capcom made it canon.
So they went the "star wars" route to give the hero some inner strugle (a dark side) that is always tempting him instead of being all goodie goodie all of the time, but he is still no more than a device for the story as many have said instead of threading with the antagonists like a full fledged and fleshed out protagonist, I mean M. Bison wants to posses him but Ryu has pretty much no direct link to Bison.
And lol at people implying that Guile was always the intended protagonist, In a coherent world Guile fits more the bill, storywise, it was just Capcom and their shity story telling at having a main character (Ryu) and not properly fleshing out the story with his involvment. So in the end Ryu is much more of a reactive character rather than one that initiates movement.
BigFred
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Where do you get that from? Ryu not the star of the series? I guess I forgot all about Guile's appearance in Street Fighter 1.
I meant for SF2. The arcade cabs we had back here actually had Guile on the side art. Then there were these flyers -
That side art you posted was also very common among home-brew cabinets. Probably ordered and stuck on alongside some simple marquees. It doesn't compare to this.
My main point - When SF2 came out, the story kind of pointed Guile as the star. After all Guile and maybe Chun-Li where the only 2 characters linked to Bison. Ryu was the character everyone recognised and had a much easier learning curve and rose to fame accordingly. This was brought up for discussion many times in the past, in conclusion Ryu blows and Guile doesn't.
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I'm a much bigger fan of the comic featuring both franchises:
It's been years since I've seen that!
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I meant for SF2. The arcade cabs we had back here actually had Guile on the side art. Then there were these flyers -
That side art you posted was also very common among home-brew cabinets. Probably ordered and stuck on alongside some simple marquees. It doesn't compare to this.
My main point - When SF2 came out, the story kind of pointed Guile as the star. After all Guile and maybe Chun-Li where the only 2 characters linked to Bison. Ryu was the character everyone recognised and had a much easier learning curve and rose to fame accordingly. This was brought up for discussion many times in the past, in conclusion Ryu blows and Guile doesn't.
What you're looking at is US and EU marketing. They replaced Ryu with Guile in order to appeal to Americans.
Ryu was always the main character in the SF2 story.