This week in the Deep Hurting Project: Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li. I should point out that I have very little knowledge of the Street Fighter francihse, and all of it has come from old That Guy With The Glasses videos, what little I researched to understand "Striking Vipers," and also foot porn of Makoto, who does not appear in the movie, so don't expect a fan to be pissed off.
Thank you, Morbo. Since it's already about midnight, I think this is a good enough place to stop the movie so I can go to sleep. Maybe I'll write about the last 40 minutes of the movie tomorrow.
- The opening shot is a static shot of the Golden Gate Bridge with piano music playing over it, eventually panning over to see the young Chun-Li playing piano with her nurturing father by her side. Because I'm sure that's what the fans of fighting games want to see in a movie!
- And even when the fighting actually starts (in friendly martial arts training sessions), it's all so slow that the audience isn't invested.
- Then, we get an actual fight scene, with some random people fighting her dad, and it starts with someone throwing a staff through the fridge door, and you'd expect for a series whose entire raison d'etre is spectacular fighting, it'd actually be a bit more interesting. And add to it that so little is developed that you barely even give a shit. And it all stops because "a gentleman should never hit a schoolgirl." Seriously. And he still calls her a schoolgirl even as she's clearly in her twenties.
- Overall, this feels like Catwoman, with all the earnest, but half-assed, attempts at character development, a lot of random bullshit I'm fairly certain wasn't in the actual games, but without the random attempts at humour that at least kept it barely watchable.
- And 20 minutes in, I just realise how little anyone actually looks like their canonical characters: Charlie looks like a cross between Benedict Cumberbatch and Nicolas Cage, Maya/Crimson Viper looks like J. Lo, and M. Bison looks like Evil Irish Neil Patrick Harris. Seriously, you have a character with such an iconic costume that even I recognise it immediately, and you change it to a generic-looking mob boss (who's white despite being based out of Asia?)
- And then, when Chun-Li's father is dead, she just tries to lose herself in the nightlife of Bangkok and not seek revenge? Granted, this is generally good advice, but for a Street Fighter movie? For a character whose motivations (if the Wikipedia article is any indication) are obsessed with gaining vengeance for the death of her father?
- And does she grow from a full-blooded Asian girl to a 3/4 white Canadian? Are you really that fucking bad at casting?
- And almost 30 minutes, we have a fight scene where Chun-Li shows off how badass she was, pulling off showy moves, and she's suddenly this talented fighter even though, for all we know, she hasn't bothered fighting since she was a little girl. Sure, she collapses when it's all over and she pushes a shelf that was just randomly in an alleyway onto the muggers she's fighting, but still.
- Fucking Hell, is Robin Shou a lackluster actor.
- And do Charlie and Maya even have anything to do in this movie except investigate the action and act like the action movie equivalent to the teens necking in the car in Manos? TO be fair, I think they might be a bit more interesting if they were in another movie, and actually doing shit other than screwing, clubbing, and maybe making some pretense towards actually investigating the crimes in question. Maybe if it was a Michael Mann movie, okay, maybe just something Mann puts his name on and doesn't actually direct.
- Also, about this fight scene: Damn, those Bangkok bathrooms look so fragile. I mean, I actually have a sink like the one in this bathroom, and it's nowhere near this fragile, and that's saying nothing of those doors. I mean, I know Thailand has a bad rep, but it's like their stall doors are made of glass, and for all the crazy sex shit that goes on, I highly doubt that that shit's legal.
- M. Bison is literally using a live (or just barely so) woman as a fucking punching bag.
- And then, he's implanted his conscience into his unborn daughter, and then, judging by what I can see, I think he pushes the baby out of his pregnant wife like he's popping a zit.
Thank you, Morbo. Since it's already about midnight, I think this is a good enough place to stop the movie so I can go to sleep. Maybe I'll write about the last 40 minutes of the movie tomorrow.
Comparing the Universal Oneness of All Life to Yo Mama since 2010.
I was born with the gift of laughter and a sense the world is mad.
I was born with the gift of laughter and a sense the world is mad.