Speaker #0Hello everyone and welcome to Movie Goodness where we examine life through cinema here on the KB Radio Network. I am your host Kevin Reed and it is upon us at the time of the release of this particular episode we would just be days away from a video game adaptation hitting your local movie theaters that one of the greatest video game adaptations of all time at least that's that's the way it appears i'm not i'm not making a bold prediction here and letting myself get crumbled as i sit there and watch it but it looks like this is the most accurate adaptation of a video game that we're gonna see And that is none other than Street Fighter, which is scheduled for release on October the 16th. And I am super excited for that. I know that I'm probably setting myself up for failure here. And look, I'm not going into this expecting substance. I'm not going into this expecting a thought-provoking story to be told. I'm not going into this seeking a... an academy award worthy performance by anybody in this film i'm not looking for all that all i want to do is sit down for an hour and a half two hours however long it's going to be and turn my brain off and just enjoy that's all that's all i want to see i'm not looking for anything other than pure entertainment and it looks like it's going to be entertaining as all get out and so in anticipation to that i wanted to kind of go back in time go back where it all started go back to when the video game first popped up in your local arcade yes arcade when you had to go and put in a quarter and play these games that that was oh my god i miss those days but go all the way back then and go over all the adaptations video game wise of Street Fighter and how it came to be and once we go through all of that we're going to dive in to the first attempt to bring this IP to the big screen the first attempt of a video game adaptation that I can remember I'm pretty sure there was something before before that i think the super mario brother was before this with uh bob hopkins and uh john leguizamo that which was jesus the worst thing i ever saw and i if i'm not mistaken this this was in a fight no pun intended to get to the theaters before mortal combat the very first adaptation of that came out in the 90s and i'm i want to say they're a few months apart i don't know which was which it really doesn't matter but the point i'm trying to make is uh we're gonna go over that film we're gonna go over that classic that was so bad that was so i mean bad now as i said before as we go into the 2026 street fighter film i'm turning my brain off not looking for anything I wasn't looking for anything in 1994 either but my god man I felt like I lost brain cells watching that movie it didn't have anything well we'll go over we'll go over it we're going to review the 1994 Street Fighter film which starred Jean-Claude Van Damme, Roy Old Julia and a cast of others that I don't know what they were doing with that film. but let's go over street fighter but well first let me give you my experience with street fighter real quick it like y'all want to hear it but i'm gonna go over it real quick and why i love this game the game i didn't get into street fighter until street fighter 2 i didn't even know it was a one when i went to the arcade and i played street fighter 2 and that's what it was like man i gotta know i gotta find out what one is about because my arcade didn't have one it only had part two and so i started playing that everybody was playing it that's that's back when if you are of my age group or older You remember going to the arcade and having to stand in line for the most popular game with your quarters in hand, waiting who's next, because it was like a mini tournament going on. And I remember standing in line to play the game because it was just that cool of a game. And if you play it now, it still holds up to this day. It's something about that fighting game that is... mesmerizing i mean mortal combat has that too but mortal combat was just more brutal in this approach but uh street fighter street fighter just had i don't know it just had an element to it that draw people at least at least around the arcades that i was going to people were more apt to go play street fighter 2 than they were to mortal combat that's not to say nobody played mortal combat. I guess i guess you could say we played mortal combat waiting for our turn to play street fighter 2 and then when mortal combat started to get more popular it kind of shifted in that direction too we were waiting to play mortal combat and as we were waiting to play waiting our turn we will play street fighter you know it was it was back and forth back then and good times man good times i miss those times in the arcade. But what killed the arcade was Nintendo and Sega. And then later on, we got the Xbox and the PlayStation. So that killed the arcade. And so I remember getting the Nintendo. And it took a while for it to come out on Nintendo, if memory serves. It took a good minute. That and Mortal Kombat. It took a minute. And finally... it dropped on nintendo and that was like one of the first games that i bought and with my own money and that's an important fact because i didn't have much it still don't really but yeah i i remember uh buying that and just playing it all night long man didn't have to wait my turn didn't have to uh put in a quarter none of that none of that it it was it was it was glorious it really was glorious but this phenomenon started on august the 30th 1986 yes 39 years ago this first game street fighter came out and it is a part of the capcom uh publication uh it's the first game of this series and if it's followed up by six main games in the series and then you had various spin-offs and crossovers and numerous appearances in in other medias like anime and movies and uh tv shows as well but this ip really took off in 1991 when it spawned the sequel that we discussed a little while ago the best-selling release of that year, Street Fighter 2. And it established many of the conventions of the one-on-one fighting genre. Street Fighter is one of the highest grossing video game franchises of all time. And it's one of Capcom's flagship series. And it has total sales of 60 million units worldwide as of July of this year. It is also one of the highest grossing media franchises and one of the longest running fighting game franchises. Let's go through them all real quick. Street Fighter, which came out in 1987, players controlled the martial artist Ryu to compete in a worldwide martial arts tournament spanning five countries and ten opponents. a second player. can control Ryu's friendly American rival, Ken Masters. The player can perform three punch and kick attacks, each varied in speed and strength, and three special attacks, one of which being the Hayuken, which is performed by executing special joystick and button combinations. You know, you had to turn it a certain way and hit the buttons at the same time. It was... it was chaotic but it was you got it uh when you got it you got it i couldn't tell you today how to do it but if you put me in front of a arcade game i could do it it's just it's muscle memory at this point uh street fighter was converted into many home computers uh including the ms dos in 1987 it was released on the Tobograv 16 CD Add-on Council. as fighting street before uh huston soft in 2005 street fighter was included in camcon's classic collection remix uh for the playstation portable and camcon's classic collections volume two for the playstation 2 and xbox it is also available in the uh 2018 compilation street fighter 30th anniversary collection for the PlayStation 4, the Xbox One, the Nintendo Switch, and also on Windows. And so you can still play that to this day. We move on to 1991 with the release of Street Fighter 2. And it is followed by the unsuccessful attempt to brand the 1989 beat-em-up game Final Fight as the Street Fighter. sequel uh i didn't know that until i was doing research for the show i played final fight but i didn't know final fight was a part of the street fighter franchise or that was meant to be the sequel to street fighter but it didn't take off like street fighter did so they kind of brushed it off so they just went ahead and developed a proper sequel to street fighter aptly named street fighter 2 and it is one of the earliest video games for cab cons cp system hardware and was designed by akira nashiti and who also developed final fight and forgotten worlds update play forgotten worlds uh street fighter 2 the world warrior is the first one-on-one fighting game to give players a choice from a variety of player characters with different move sets allowing for more varied matches each player character has a unique fighting style uh with approximately 30 or more moves including new grappling moves and throws and two or three special attacks in the single player mode the player character is pitted against seven other main characters before confronting the final four bosses exclusively uh cpu controlled as in as in the original the second player can join anytime in competition matches now in the original japanese version of street fighter 2 introduced an african-american boxing boss character with uh that had the same attributes as the real life boxer mike tyson The character was originally named Mike Bison. And to avoid a license or likeness infringement thing, a lawsuit, Capcom rotated the names of three of the bosses' characters for international versions of the game. And so the final boss named Vega in the Japanese version was given the M. Bison name. the talent willing spanish warrior named uh bell rock in the japanese version was renamed vega and the boxer became bell rock and so in a uh i think 2019 interview mike tyson himself was asked about the the mike bison character design and revealed that he was honored to be impersonated by the game uh oddly enough but he he probably still would have would have sued but He didn't know about it back then. Street Fighter 2 eclipsed its predecessor in popularity, eventually turning Street Fighter into a multimedia franchise. It had an unexpected phenomenal impact on gaming. More than $10 billion in inflation and adjusted revenue as of 2017 was grossed from you all versions mostly from the arcades more than 14 million games were sold for the super nintendo and the sega genesis i'm proud to say that i'm one of that 14 million that bought it before the super nintendo uh the first official update of the series was street fighter 2 champion edition the second upgrade street fighter 2 hyper fighting and another upgrades uh super street fighter 2 the new challengers street fight super street fighter 2 turbo and super street fighter 2 x were all spent off from street fighter 2 you may ask yourself why didn't they just make three four five and six it it i don't know but they wanted to cap they wanted to capitalize on the success of street fighter 2 so they had to keep that street fighter 2 name attached in some shape form or fashion but in 1995 they broke away from it and we got street fighter alpha in 1996 you got street fighter x as ex and then we got crossover series in 1996 uh marvel versus capcom that's where we had the x-men fighting street fighter characters and uh up actually all marvel characters you know it was it was a free fall really enjoyed that at the arcade that was another one that took over uh some popularity you had a street fighter x tekken tekken was another popular fighting game back in the day uh they crossed over then you had tekken x street fighter which was weird but but that's what we got In 1997, we finally got Street Fighter 3, the new generation. In 2008, we got Street Fighter 4. In 2016, Street Fighter 5. And just recently, in 2023, we received Street Fighter 6, which was released on Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, the Xbox. And I didn't play that. This didn't appeal to me. I don't know why. But I didn't play that. And didn't hear of anybody who has played it. But that was the last game to be released from this franchise as of now. Street Fighter has also influenced a lot of pop culture as well. We wouldn't have UFC. We wouldn't have Mix. martial arts if it wasn't for street fighter it was heavily influential in combat sports the first ultimate fighting championship event uh it was based on the street fighter game uh during the 1993 release of ufc one while super street fighter 2 and mortal kombat 2 were best sellers both were initially pitched you by the UFC promoters as a real-life fighting game tournament. It also was very influential in hip-hop. You know, hip-hop, we love to sample in hip-hop music. We'll sample anything. And a lot of artists have sampled Street Fighter II, in particular, the Lady of Rage, Nicki Minaj, Loopy Fiasco, Megan Thee Stallion. sean price it is so many who have used street fighter uh audio in their music but in other media in particularly animation the first animated based on a street fighter franchise was the unofficial animation released in south korea in 1992 street outlaw which is Super similar, but I guess for copyright reasons, they didn't call it Street Fighter. None of the characters were named from characters in the game. You had the anime film Street Fighter 2, the animated movie, which was released in 1994. The United States took a crack at it in their animation realm with the television show Street Fighter, which... aired on the usa network in 1995 and 1997 and it wasn't all that good it it was it was it wasn't all that good it wasn't good at all i don't know why i'm sugarcoating it it wasn't good there were a couple of characters that popped up in the 2012 animated film Wreck-It Ralph from the Street Fighter game uh i remember Bison was in there uh down What was the other character I remember seeing? It was a couple of characters popped up. I mean, Wreck-It Ralph had everything in it. It was pretty cool. Also, we had some cameos from Street Fighter characters in Ready Player One, the Steven Spielberg film from... 2018 in that virtual reality environment and that was that was pretty cool as well uh moving over to live action of course we're going to go over to 1994 street fighter film with john claude van damme but that wasn't the only live action street fighter film other than the one we're about to get in a couple of days uh you got street fighter the legend of chung lee in 20 or 2009 not. I think it was. And I can't think of the actress name. She was on Smallville. She played Lana on Smallville. And she was Shang-Chi, Shang-Li. And it was one of the worst movies ever made. It was so bad. I almost reviewed it for this show. But I have nothing to talk about. I barely have anything to talk about with the 1994 film. you That movie was so bad. Let me be real with you. Let me be real with you. The reason I didn't review it is because that would have forced me to rewatch it. And I utterly refused to rewatch that movie. It was that bad. You got a live action short in 2010, Street Fighter Legacy. Never heard of it. I didn't. I didn't know what it was, but it's a short. I'm pretty sure we can find it somewhere. In 2014, we got another TV show that was on YouTube, loosely based on Street Fighter, Street Fighter, Assassin's Fist. And it ran for two seasons, believe it or not. And I never heard of it until doing research for this show. You had a web series, Street Fighter Resurrection. in 2016 you had a scene in the Goosebumps 2 movie that had Street Fighter characters in it in real life and of course we're going to get a new live action adaptation on October the 16th of Street Fighter but there were also various MAGA adaptations of Street Fighter 2 and other iterations of the game as well as comics as well well but it's just been a mainstay in pop culture for almost 40 years and it's no sign of slowing down especially if this film is is successful you know if this is a successful film and the audience gravitate to it the people who love street fighter like myself and enjoy that movie you know feel like it's a real good adaptation and demand a sequel well you you vote for that with your pockets if it's if it's a box office success they're going to make sequels so we'll see we'll see how that turns out well we knew how it turned out in 1994 they were hoping for a franchise they were praying for for multiple films in this franchise and my god i'm glad they stopped at one the 1994 martial arts action film and i say that very loosely and it is based off of the video game of course street fighter this film stars jean-claude van damme and royal julia who in his final film uh he passed away i think he passed away right before the film was released he he did the film he was sick he was dying of cancer and you could tell in the movie he just looked so weak and pale but he he championed through it but he did it for his kids his kids wanted him to do this and he wanted to leave something for them you know because he knew he knew his time was coming to an end and and unfortunately uh he passed away not too long after that uh but the only the only regret i have that this was his final film, you know? Because Roy O'Julia is, at least he was, such an amazing actor with so much range. You've seen him in crime dramas and comedies and action films and romantic films. He had unlimited range. And he really dove headfirst into this campy, silly, ridiculous movie called Street Fighter. And I'd respect him to the highest level of. respect you could give to somebody because he knew. he knew what type of movie he was getting involved with and he was the only one who knew what type of movie this was you know uh i say all this the movie was a success financially commercially it it made money it actually made three times its budget back because people were doofed me me i was you know i ran to the theater opening weekend to go see this as well So. And I was, I really sat there and this is what, 94? I was, how old I was? 15? I don't know. I forgot how old I was. But anyway, yeah, 15 and 94. And I still, I'm still scratching my head on this movie. I've only seen this movie through and through from beginning to end. One sitting. one time and that was in 1994 to do this review i had to watch it in sections because i couldn't take it it was driving me insane i just could not understand what the filmmakers were thinking in this movie full disclosure john claude van damme and this was the peak john claude van damme in the mid 90s this is when we were i mean you know the action heroes you know the the the schwarzeneggers the stallones you know they were starting to kind of fade off and we were getting this new crop of action heroes and john clark van damme was at the top of that mountain he could do no wrong at this point and so him being cast in this movie as gau nonetheless was a very interesting choice but i went on board witty. you know because it's john claude van damme and we have found out we have found out later that john claude van damme during the making of this movie and when i watched it again i'm sitting there and i can nod my head like yep he is not lying this rumor is actually true the the story is and he has come out and said that said this himself he was loaded the entire time he made this movie i mean coked out of his mind the entire time making this movie he had a he had a serious drug problem back then and uh he talks about it you know how he overcame it and so on and so forth and you know he doesn't have these problems now thank god but back then it was bad it was bad and bro you could tell in this movie he just was not dare uh now nobody mistakes john claude van damme for denzel washington as far as his acting skills are but he was not there in comparisons to a john claude van damme film because we've seen movies where he actually brings it the best that he can you know time cop he was he was phenomenal in time cop i thought he was that was one of his best films that uh uh hard target which wasn't great but i loved him in it you know uh universal soldier which is probably probably his best it's a it's a race at the top but i know universal soldier is up there and it's somewhere in the top three but outside of that you know john claude is just him doing splits and kicking people you know that's it that's all you want him for but in a movie like this you kind of need to act And the poor fella, he couldn't act. This movie, it focused on his character of Gao to bring down the General M. Dyson, played by Raul Julia, who's a military dictator and a drug kingpin. And he is trying to conquer the world with an army of these genetic super soldiers. So Gal, he enlists the aid of these street fighters, Ken and Raul. And he wants their help to infiltrate or go undercover in Bison's empire and help destroy it from the inside out. And so that's the story of this movie. Now, it's an interesting concept, but it's nothing like the game. But the game doesn't really have a story. It's a fighting game. And so you can add to it. to make a movie of course you know and this was an interesting move to make this movie was written and directed by steven e de souza and he's not known for his direction but he's known for his writing he has written some of the best action movies of the late 80s into the 90s uh his claim to fame he wrote a little known film in 1988 entitled Die Hard that was his first little uh movie and the rest as they say is history but he went on to write some really good action movies back in the day and he took on this project and it was it was hard it was a hard uh production on him uh he didn't have enough time you know to kind of flush out his original story and where he wanted the movie to be but let's go into the production of this film the The production budget was $35 million, with Capcom alone financing most of the budget. And so because Capcom was co-financer of the film, every aspect of the production required their approval. And so you couldn't go rogue. You couldn't change this or change that to kind of fit the story, which is what Stephen... Eve DeSouza was trying to do, you know, to make a watchable movie. But Capcom, who is not in the movie business, needed to give their approval first, you know. So because of that, among other points, they mandated a December 1994 release date, which required the cast and crew to maintain an aggressive film schedule. and Steven, he said he wrote the initial draft of the script overnight, one night, being made aware that Capcom executives were in Los Angeles on short notice because he himself was a fan of the game. So he hurried up and wrote a spec script to present to them because he wanted to be involved with this because he's a big fan. and so capcom unbeknownst to everybody they had a long envisioned uh casting for this movie for gal and their their vision was jean-claude van damme and they asked him to be cast so that's how jean-claude van damme was cast in the movie where our old julius said that he accepted the role like i said because his children were big fans of the video games so you he accepted that after Van Damme and Julia was cast in the movie, much of the casting budget had already been spent. And so they were, they were kind of backs against the wall. At this point, you had to kind of scrape the barrel to, no disrespect to those actors, but money wise, money wise, they couldn't go big because Jean-Claude Van Damme's. fee alone for this movie he took home nearly eight million dollars for street fighter which is a nice chunk of change in 1994 i don't know the inflation of what that would be now but that was a big chunk out of the 35 million dollar budget and so prior to van damme being cast in the role steven seagal had signed on steven seagal was cast as gaul in this film And my God, the $8 million was worth it. I had my problems with the movie, but just imagine Steven Seagal as Gal. This meant that the majority of the other parts had to go to lesser known or even unknown actors. One in particular, Kali Magal, I'm pretty sure I'm saying her name right. She's a singer and actress, but she was cast in the film as Cammy White. as a result of the Australian Actors Guild. the reason being they were shooting in australia and the uh actors guild required them to hire somebody of australian descent so that's how kylie got cast in this role so he had to hire an australian actor and that's how she got it so uh by the time he received the request cammy was the only part yet to be cast so that's how that came to be the review the review of this film uh i pretty much reviewed it already the movie the movie is so bad it's i don't know if it's trying to be campy on purpose or it just came off that way but it is super campy it is too campy for a property like street fighter you know i'll take example of uh mortal combat I know a lot of people didn't like those two movies, those two latest adaptations of Mortal Kombat. Me personally, I enjoyed them for what they were. I didn't think they were great, but I thought they were entertaining, you know? And what I enjoyed about them was the fact that they were rated R, because Mortal Kombat is a rated R style game, you know, with the blood and the gore, and they didn't cheapen on the gore. And I respected it for that. With Street Fighter, it's not as gory as Immortal Kombat, you know, ripping off the heads and pulling out hearts and stuff like that, sucking out souls. But it is a fighting game, you know? You do have to have some brutal fights, I would think. Or at least some, now I know it's 1994, but we've seen brutal fights. that can take place that's kind of uh you have to suspend disbelief and just run with it but the movie doesn't even try to do that and i know the budget was was limited and so you really couldn't do much there either because you're paying for john claude van damme's cocaine supply and that's what he said he said that that movie uh he took that movie just to supply his cocaine habit. that is crazy he had like uh i think he said a hundred thousand dollar a day habit of cocaine that is bananas to me how is he still alive i have no idea how how he has a uh uh nostrils is still amazing to me but anyways uh you can only do so much but it it was so campy it was ridiculous it was then when you went big the overblown effects and it was just ridiculous and the acting is so bad and you had some really good actors in here what one the only person who act who really acted was raul julia he's the only one and like i said to start off this review he knew what type of movie he was in and he leaned into it and he embraced it and that's what made his performance so good you know that really fit the tone but it brought it to another level in some strange way he had one of the coldest lines i would say in a movie like this i have ever seen honest to god still quote this line to this day it's that's the one takeaway i have from this movie is when uh shang li because bison had murdered her family and so on and so forth And Chung Lee finally got close to him and told him the story. You know, you killed my family and this, that, and the third. And he's so unbothered by it because, number one, he's trying to get in her pants. And he doesn't care. And he hit her with the coldest line you ever could hit somebody with in this particular situation. He told her, like, you dreamt of that day your entire life. haunted you your entire life when i killed your family for you that day changed your life forever but for me it was just tuesday i will i'm like okay if the rest of the movie was like this it would have been so much better that is so cold in a way robert julia delivered the line was just like my chef's kiss man It I missed that man, bro. He was a gem. That was cold-blooded. the way he told her that but uh aside from that nothing else in this movie is good you don't see any real finishing moves you don't really they do but you don't you know it was kind of vague the way they showed the little the special attacks and stuff like that it is it's bad it did jean-claude van damme like i said this was probably the worst acting from him i've ever seen a drug induced or not my god this was a horrible performance by him and like i said before i've seen him act so i know he can act but he didn't even try and this was so bad so bad and then hiring actors like like i said wasn't their fault it wasn't uh uh steven e de souza's fault per se. wasn't working with a lot as far as financially so he really couldn't do much and so you had to hire these actors none of them knew martial arts uh uh it it was like man i'm so i feel bad for that's what that's the perfect way i can describe it i felt bad walking out of that movie not because it was bad i just felt bad for the people in fall because it looked like they were trying they just couldn't get there and i know they were rushing production because of the the mandated release date that they had to work with because filming started they wanted it out december uh which it did come out december of 1994 i don't think they started filming until summer of 1994 they only had a few months to get this movie made shot edited you put in the theater and so they didn't have no room for error and it was like one one take and go they didn't have time to do multiple takes you know to try to get it right and do rewrites you know if something wasn't working they didn't have time and so it was just a cluster of a movie and unfortunately this is what we got street fighter from 1994 for it gets a letter grade of a d yeah the only redeeming quality of the movie it does if you watch it now uh has some of some of a i don't know nostalgic charm to it you know uh some some cult classic vibes i wouldn't call it a cult classic but it maybe a few more years it might have that title but it just has a little charm to it even though you know it's bad that you can watch it I just couldn't bear it I couldn't bear it because I know it could have been better and it's really saved from being a just a flat out F by the performance of Royal Julia it is not is not a you know out of sympathy because we know this is his last performance but he really did bring a great performance to that role you know to a role he could have easily mailed in because he knew this was it for him i mean you gotta respect it you got to respect somebody like that and he really did bring a uh i would say powerful in the condition that he was in because he really honestly if you knew what condition he was in around that time because it was heavily reported on in 1994 uh how sick he was you know you know now with technology and medicine is a little bit more advanced than you can do a little bit more uh uh being stage four as he was but uh in 1994 not so much he showed a level of strength that man even m bison doesn't have so i i give i tip my hat to him but that is it for street fighter for now we'll see this upcoming friday on october the 16th how will this version of this just super popular ip turns out i'm excited you know cody rhodes roman reigns uh jason mamoa 50 cent uh noah sinestro uh andrew coy uh koji i could never pronounce his name right he was the actor from uh warrior that tv show that was on uh cinemax when they did tv shows back then uh but uh he's right uh or real uh yeah there are a lot of really good characters or good actors cast as these characters uh in this film it feels, it feels like the game. And I'm just going by the trailer now i've been fooled many times by the trailers many times you want to get fooled by trailers watch a michael bay transformers film trailer those are some of the greatest trailers you ever want to see and they will sell you easily on like my god this is going to be the greatest transformers movie ever and you get kicked in the behind every single time but then when another one comes out. fall for it again that's how good those trailers are now this trailer the initial trailer the first trailer they released blew my socks off it really blew my socks off on how accurate it looked for the game the characters looked like the characters the fighting style looked like the fighting style they even had the the little section with the beating up of the car that little bonus section you get in Street Fighter 2 when you gotta beat up the car. All that was in it. And I'm like, I'm sold. I'm sold on it. So we shall see. We'll see this Friday, October the 16th. Anyways, subscribe to the KBRadioNetwork.com website where you can be notified of new episodes dropping here as well as previous episodes. You can go back to listen to any time. Don't forget about YouTube. Subscribe to the KBRadioNetwork channel. Like. this video while you're there don't forget about the five stars the reviews and sharing this show if you're listening on apple podcast spotify our heart radio wherever you are currently listening to movie goodness here on the kb radio network everybody thank you for joining me as we went over the history of street fighter and reviewed the classic film from 1994 starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, Street Fighter. Want you all to know that I love you. Continue to love everyone. And until we speak again, you all be blessed.