Video game movies didn’t have a great track record in the ’90s, as exemplified by 1993’s live-action Super Mario Bros. movie and the ill-fated Double Dragon film. Those two projects were followed in December 1994 by Street Fighter, an adaptation of Capcom’s hit fighting game franchise. The Street Fighter 2 game had revitalized arcades three years earlier, which made this film the second-most prominent video game adaptation to that point. It was also far more successful at the box office than either Double Dragon or Super Mario Bros., with $35 million domestically and $99.4 million worldwide.
Although Street Fighter did well compared to its predecessors, it’s also a terrible film that was savaged by critics upon its release. But unlike some other awful movies, Street Fighter is still oddly enjoyable to watch despite its shortcomings… and also because of them. For Street Fighter‘s 30th anniversary, I’m going to explain why I’ve come to love this hilariously bad movie before touching upon the future of the franchise.
A real American hero
Writer and director Steven E. de Souza was the screenwriter for Die Hard, Die Hard 2, 48 Hrs., Commando, and The Running Man, all of which were seminal action films in the ’80s. De Souza was also a self-professed fan of Street Fighter 2, which is why it’s so mystifying that his idea to bring it to the big screen was to transform it into a G.I. Joe movie. Instead of featuring fighters in an underground martial arts tournament, the story became something unrecognizable about international peacekeepers attempting to overthrow a would-be dictator in a made-up country called Shadaloo.
Almost every character in the game was re-imagined through the lens of this premise, and it’s the biggest reason why some Street Fighter fans hate the movie. This isn’t a real Street Fighter film, it just has characters that share names and superficial traits with their video game counterparts. There’s only one actual street fight in the movie — between Ryu and Vega — and it’s interrupted before it even gets started. De Souza may have had the best of intentions, but his instincts about how to adapt this property were way off.
Van Dammed if you do…
Jean-Claude Van Damme was still near the peak of his stardom when he was cast in the lead as Colonel William F. Guile. In fact, the majority of the movie revolves around Guile in some way, as he was refocused from a supporting character into a leading man. Guile has a personal grudge against General M. Bison (Raul Julia), and he’s so careless about it that he outs one of his closest friends — and Bison’s hostage — Carlos “Charlie” Blanka (Robert Mammone)… which only leads to a lot of pain and suffering for his pal.
Van Damme did lend the film some star power and credibility as an action hero, but he actually makes the movie a lot funnier because of his inept delivery. Guile gets a lot of lines that were meant as cheesy one-liners, including “I’m the repo man” and “Luckily, Bison has driven me crazy.” The jokes don’t land as intended, but it’s almost impossible not to laugh at how the actor says them. Van Damme made the entire film even more campy that way, and it’s one of Street Fighter‘s saving graces.
For Raul Julia, “It was Tuesday”
This movie was Raul Julia’s final role before his death in 1994. He was battling stomach cancer and other health problems during filming, but you can’t tell how much pain Julia was in from anything he does on-screen. Instead, Julia’s M. Bison lights up the entire movie every time he appears, and the actor looked like he was having the time of his life.
Bison is gloriously out of his mind throughout the story as he explains his plans to create Bisonopolis, establish a Pax Bisonica, and casually kidnap the queen of England to establish good exchange rate for his Bison bucks. As written, none of that material should have worked as well as it did in Julia’s hands.
Take, for example, Bison’s most famous line in the film — “For you, the day Bison graced your village was the most important day of your life. But for me… it was Tuesday.” Somehow, Julia turned that into cinema gold, and it’s been a popular meme for a long time.
Select your fighter
Among the supporting cast, The Mandalorian‘s Ming-Na Wen comes off well as Chun-Li, even though the film nonsensically turns her into a news anchor instead of an Interpol officer. Edmond Honda (Peter Tuiasosopo) and Gerard Balrog (Grand L. Bush), were inserted as her camera and support crew. Balrog was never a hero in the games, which is why he seems so out of place as a co-conspirator with Chun-Li and Honda in their plot to take down Bison.
However, the film’s biggest mistake is that it takes the games’ two leading men — Ken Masters (Damian Chapa) and Ryu (Byron Mann) — and shifts them into supporting roles at best. Instead of martial arts warriors on the Street Fighter circuit, Ryu and Ken were con-men who pretended to be gunrunners. It’s ludicrous that de Souza saw their prominence in the games and still decided that they’d be better used as comedic foils. Ken and Ryu can still fight in the movie, it’s just not their story, and they don’t have a personal stake in the battle against Bison.
The script is unintentionally funny
As noted above, a lot of Van Damme’s lines are only humorous because he didn’t say them the right way. There’s a lot of that in this movie, which somehow manages to combine unintended humor with some jokes that are actually funny. Andrew Bryniarski gets a lot of the movie’s best laughs as Zangief, Bison’s dim-witted henchman. His fight with Honda is also a really amusing callback to Japanese monster flicks.
Miguel A. Núñez Jr. provided some good moments when portraying Dee Jay’s reactions to Zangief’s lines. They were a good comic duo that way. Some of the other gags were also effective, including the visual of Bison’s majestic painting of himself and the previously mentioned Bison bucks that had his face all over them. But when it came time for the rousing speech near the end, Van Damme couldn’t have been this funny if he tried.
Assuming the following speech by Bison was meant to be funny, it’s once again reliant on Julia’s immense talent.
There’s too much humor in this movie to ever take it seriously as an action flick. But for anyone who’s willing to go along with its unique blend of humor and some stupidly funny jokes, it’s actually a blast to revisit.
The other Street Fighter 2 movie
A few months prior to Street Fighter‘s theatrical premiere, fans in Japan were treated to Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie, an anime film that did almost everything this movie didn’t. The animated flick put Ken and Ryu at the forefront, with Chun-Li and Guile in supporting roles. It also outshined the live-action film with incredible action and fight scenes, as well as a legitimately intimidating take on Bison himself.
Unlike the American live-action film, Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie, is still readily available to stream in this country. It’s also the movie that was more commonly embraced by Street Fighter fans. There have been a handful of anime follow-up projects, but none have managed to recapture what this one pulled off.
Street Fighter: The Movie — The Video Game
Just to bring things full circle, Capcom released an arcade game called Street Fighter: The Movie that used most of the performers from the film to re-create their characters. Because of his health issues, Julia’s role was filled by Darko Tuscan, while stuntman Mark Stefanich did most of the heavy lifting for Van Damme’s Guile.
Even Kylie Minogue tagged out for Emma Kearney to play Cammy White in this game, while Ming-Na Wen and others reprised their roles. Visually, Street Fighter: The Movie looked a lot like the original Mortal Kombat, which had become the franchise’s chief arcade rival by 1994. However, fan response to this title was unenthusiastic, and it’s been largely unavailable to legally play for nearly three decades.
The Legend of Chun Li
In 2009, Hollywood tried again with Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li. This time, Smallville‘s Kristin Kreuk stepped into the title role as Chun-Li attempted to avenge her father’s death at the hands of M. Bison (Neal McDonough). There were some other standouts in the cast as well, including Michael Clarke Duncan as Balrog, Chris Klein as Charlie Nash, and Mortal Kombat‘s Robin Shou as Gen. Regardless, this movie bombed with only $12.8 million worldwide.
Because Hollywood never learns its lesson for long, there’s another reboot on the horizon. Legendary Entertainment is developing a Street Fighter film, which already has a March 20, 2026, release date. There are plenty of takeaways from the previous Street Fighter movies, but we’d be surprised if the third film will finally get it right.
Rent or buy Street Fighter on Prime Video.
