The Bottom Line: The animated movie is a fun, if flawed representation of the SF universe that fans will enjoy,even if they will also be slightly disappointed by.
flash-hammer's Full Review: Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie
Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.
Released roughly around the same time, in the UK anyway, to the video market that Jean Claude Van Damme's career-killing live action movie was released, Streetfighter 2:The Animated Movie was met with a reception far warmer than it's live action counterpart, and is regarded by many in a very positive light.
I personally first saw the movie a few times upon release, before buying it on VHS just before the big DVD boom, and about 2 years ago or so I recieved the R2 DVD of it as a Christmas present. I had only ever read good press concerning it, so always assumed that it was as good as I remembered it seeming in my youth. However, in my recent little slew of Streetfighter reviews, I decided I should look at the animated movie, and this latest viewing would be a bit of an eye opener.
The movie opens with possibly it's best scene, and introduces one of our main characters, Ryu is a Japanese fighter who uses a specialised style of karate, and he is dueling with the Muay Thai monster Sagat in a field on a stormy night. This represents a stage from the Streetfighter Alpha series of videogames, and sadly doesn't use the temple setting of where it should, given that this is supposed to show the events of the final fight in the original Streetfighter. In this fight, Ryu catches Sagat with a 'Shoryuken' or 'Dragonpunch', which scars the giant accross his chest, while some variety of Cyborg monitors the pair and asseses their strengths.
The movie then introduces us to two more of our protagonists, Captain Guile of the US Air Force and Chun Li of Interpol. The pair have a common enemy in M.Bison, the head of the corrupt Shadowlaw organisation who are involved in most illegal activities the world over. Bison killed Chun Li's father and Guile's best friend, so the two have a score to settle with him, and have caught on to his latest plan to create an army of street-fighters to join his army. He has already enlisted the aid of sadistic arcissist Spaniard Vega,shamed boxer Balrog and the aforementioned Muay Thai warrior Sagat, and his intentions are to track down Ryu, and if he is unwilling to join him, Bison has perfected a method of brainwashing fighters to do his bidding.
It becomes a race against time to track down Ryu, whose sparring partner Ken is captured by Bison and brainwashed into becoming a Shadowlaw agent. Ryu is tracked down atop the Himalayas, where the final battle will take place, will he be able to cause Ken to regain his senses and help his old friend put an end to Bison's evil schemes?
First of all, it should be stated that the story of SF2:TA is pretty poor. While it does at least capture some of the correct allegiances and rivalries of the game, unlike the live action debacle, however, it seems to attempt to cater to too many stories, but not well enough. We have the military raid on Shadowlaw HQ ala the Live Action, but it's nothing more than an afterthought to what's going on with Ryu and Ken.
The movie includes every character from Super Streetfighter 2 Turbo, no matter how tiny a role they play, and some of them have been introduced in worthless throwaway roles that make you wonder why they bothered, Dee Jay being the most criminal of them, where Guile and Chun Li go to tell him to watch out for monitor cyborgs, because Guile heard he was a good fighter. That is his entire role in the movie. Zangief, Blanka and Dhalsim are almost extras, with the makers hinting at a rivalry between 'Gief and Balrog which is never even remotely built upon, and he and Blanka don't even get to complete their fight scene, their only contribution to the picture.
Even the characters that do get decent minor roles, ala T.Hawk, do so in such a poor manner you wonder why they tried. He confronts Ken in a warehouse demanding a fight, but it is never explained in the least why Ken is wandering about warehouses at night.
Guile never gets a decent fight either, he simply takes shots at the rapid teleporting Bison.
But without a doubt the most criminal underuse of a character is Sagat, especially after the awesome opening. He begs Bison for a rematch with Ryu, and Bison tells him to go away and that is all we see of him. NO, seriously, they could have done something cool, like have him turn on Bison, but no, one of the game's,and potentially the movie's, best characters WASTED, there is no other word for it.
The last fight also leaves a lot to be desired, the fact it takes Ken and Ryu to take Bison kind of weakens their appearance, and Bison is just lame, he hardly even fights, and instead just teleports all the time.
In the format of the film, the last fight would have made more sense to be Bison,Sagat and Balrog Vs. Guile,Ryu and Ken, with Guile and Ryu taking on their rivals.
The 'shock' ending is also stupid, and at the risk of sounding repetitive, using Sagat for it would have been less cliched, and generally cooler.
But that brings me to another thing about the story,surely it was madness trying to make a movie with 16(17 if you count Akuma, who has a blink and you'll miss him cameo) fairly important characters who fans will want to see fight, especially in the format they chose to do it. Actually perhaps involving the Streetfighter tournament that the games are based on could have made a little sense, as well as allowed us to all see our favourites in a fight.
So if it's such rubbish, then why so high a score? because the action scenes are brilliant, the animation is good, and the story actually isn't that bad if you weren't aware of the characters being wasted. If you aren't familiar with the games, the only character it's clear that is wasted is Sagat. The story surrounding Ryu,Ken and so on are actually fairly entertainig, I just feel actually involving a tournament would have worked better.
But yes, the action scenes, the ones that are in it, are, for the most part, superb, with particular mention going to the intro Ryu/Sagat contest and Chun Li vs. Vega, which is pretty awesome. Most of the characters unleash at least a few of their special moves from the games, although sadly the scene of Chun Li unleashing a Kikouken is cut from all versions of the movie. But yeah, fans won't be disappointed with the fights there are, not at all.
The animation in the movie is, as I mentioned, pretty good, with the characters looking fairly accurate in comparison to their videogame counterparts.
The soundtrack for the western version is different to the Japanese release, with songs from rock bands like Alice in Chains,Korn and Silverchair, that actually fit a whole lot better than you would expect, especially during the fight scenes. The R2 DVD is automatically dubbed in English, which doesn't bother me, and for the most part, the voices seem ok, although Im sure there have been changes made from the original script.
On the whole, The Streetfighter 2 animated movie is highly overrated, especially by fans of the game, and it is flawed, maybe not to the degree of the live action movie, but it certainly isn't perfection by any stretch of the imagination. However, it does have enough going for it in terms of mindless entertainment to warrant a viewing for fans of the games, and those who like martial arts based anime, at least once. The 3 stars are gained from the cool fight sequences, and the fact that in terms of style, via the animation,soundtrack and so on, is actually really good, it's just the content that slips a little. To be honest, I don't see much appeal to anyone not into the games or anime, but it certainly isn't the worst anime movie ever, and I personally, despite acknowledging it's flaws, find it fairly entertaining, and without a doubt the best representation of Streetfighter in anime,or cinema, and in general is better than the other videogame conversions to anime I've seen(Tekken, Im glaring at you).
One thing that should be noted, is that the version Im watching is the uncut UK edition, which may differ slightly from the US versions, although the only scene I've heard is different is that the completely gratuitous scene of Chun Li in the shower is heavily cut in the US version.
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