The Day This Video Graced Your Playlist Was The Greatest Day of Your Life, For Us, It Was Tuesday

Welcome to the Y? Us Channel gamers. Today we will be covering another terrible video game movie adaptation. 1994’s Street Fighter was another round of video game adaptations from the 1990’s that either were flops or were commercially successful to a degree but miss the point. Street Fighter was a perfect combination of what could go wrong but also could also work at the same time. Filmed in Thailand during an actual military uprising, the movie was fueled by cocaine and the things people go to Thailand for that we can't openly speak of on this channel. Added to the bonfire of sin and desire was the ego of Jean Claude Van Dammne and a dying Raul Julia who delivered a memorable performance.

What makes Street Fighter memorable was that while getting many things wrong or to pander to toy companies, they succeeded what Hollywood rarely did at that time and cast most of the characters according to their ethnic background. A glaring miscast was that of Van Damme as Guile. In the Capcom video games, he is American and as a Belgian, Van Damme couldn't properly pull off a proper American accent. While Raul Julia delivered the best performance of the film, he was dying of stomach cancer. Had he not been afflicted, he could have given M. Bison more physicality like in the games. Pop star Kylie Minogue plays British character Cammy and Ming Na Wen was cast as Chun-Li. A major problem in the movie is that its Guile who leads the main characters is not the main leader in the video games. That would be Ryu and Ken and Chun Li but to give Van Damme more screen time, they are stuck in supporting roles.

The movie is notorious for being cheesy and terrible but it could have been better. The casting of Jean Claude Van Damme was a major misfire. He was known for his diva behavior on prior film sets but on this movie he was taking it to the next level. He would routinely go into his trailer to snort cocaine and work out his muscles whenever he wanted during filming, helping to cause delays. Many of cast and crew indulged themselves in Bangkok’s nightlife and what actually goes on in that scene which helped to demotivate the production. Things were getting so bad that director Steven Souza would rip out pages in the script to keep things on schedule which resulted in the creation of disjointed scenes. Capcom which was making most of the decisions on the film were actively sabotaging their own movie if they knew it or not. Many scenes or props in the movie had to be pre-approved so they could be included in a upcoming toy line including a scene involving a tank and stealth boat. The movie was also filmed during a military situation in Thailand which prevented planned use of fighter jets.

Street Fighter was both a commercial success but a critical failure. Grossing near $100 million.
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