r/capcom • u/Ajer2895 • 3h ago
Street Fighter How the Street Fighter movie could have been better (from a casual fan's perspective) Spoiler
I want to preface by saying that I am only a CASUAL FAN of Street Fighter...the only game of Street Fighter I've actually played is Street Fighter 6, and even then that was most recently (barely a month ago). Majority of my knowledge on Street Fighter came primarily from nerd culture osmosis and a few choice google searches based on things I was curious about.
Having recently saw the Street Fighter movie, I felt that weird conflicting thought of where I WANT to love this movie and it's unabashed Street Fighter aesthetics, but felt that the movie just didn't deliver a fun cinematic experience. No, I wasn't expecting a grand masterpiece...but I do think the movie could have been way better. The biggest problem the movie had was that its effort to try and include everything Street Fighter resulted in an over-bloated and disjointed mess of a storyline, one that was difficult to stay invested in and could not even be resolved...leaving behind a frustrating cliffhanger ending. It's even more frustrating when as a symptom of the bloatedness, certain elements I personally wanted to see (like certain match ups, iconic moves, or cool stages) couldn't fit into this narrative. And frankly...from what I could gather...it really didn't need to be this way.
Street Fighter, particularly Street Fighter 2, has arguably one of the simplest plots you could adapt and expand in a movie, with a very recognizable structure...the tournament-arc sports film. You could very easily make a compelling Street Fighter movie if you kept things simple, focusing on the essential stuff that are recognizably Street Fighter, instead of feeling the need to add in a bunch of random stuff altogether or even new plotlines.
I imagine that the ideal Street Fighter movie would act very much like this...focusing primarily on Ken and Ryu's relationship as old friends seperated by circumstance and brought back together...the plot is that M. Bison creates the World Tournament, a global international martial arts competition dedicated to finding the best of the best in fighting, but he secretly plans to use the tournament to find the biggest and best fighter to extract Psycho energy from him. Years prior, when training under their master, Ken and Ryu experience the tragedy of their master's demise under Akuma, with Ryu nearly tapping into his dark side but hesitation just enough to be defeated by Akuma (who swears that he will return to face him when he's strong enough). Ryu abandons Ken in self-imposed exile, afraid of his own powers, only volunteering to join the tournament to stop Ken from winning and becoming a victim of Akuma. Ken meanwhile is a celebrated martial artist in America, married, and living the good life. But some notable losses and controversy surrounding bad sportmanship due to his hotheaded nature have put his career into question. He joins the tournament for a chance at redemption at proving himself to the world.
The movie should keep a balanced roster of characters from across the many games of Street Fighter, a balance of fan-favorites as well as those with legit connections to Bison and Shadaloo. While Ken and Ryu have their main arc on forgiveness and understanding the true meaning of strength, the second major arc that happens simultaneously is the investigation into Bison by both Chun-Li and Guile, as they try to figure out Bison's true purpose.
We would travel around the globe, with recreations of some of Street Fighter's iconic stages, and in each stage we get a select match up featuring iconic fighters and how our characters adopt to each fighting style. We would make sure each fighter truly gets an opportunity to shine and showcase their most iconic moves...this includes characters like Cammy, Blanka, E. Honda, and Guile's Sonic Boom ability.
Ultimately it culminates in a big climactic showdown, when Bison manages to extract the Psycho power from the winner (I'm debating if it should be Ryu or Ken) and suddenly our hero characters have to face off against Bison. He gets a few moments to shine in terms of his abilities...but then he's interrupted by Akuma who promptly beats him and proceeds to fight the heroes, resulting in Ryu having to unleash his dark side to beat him and then Ken to calm him down.
If you're read this far, you might have noticed my proposed plot is similar to what we actually got in the movie recently...but it's more streamlined, focused, and in my opinion better highlights the appeal of Street Fighter. I don't know how you guys would feel...maybe you completeley ignored all of this when I started by saying I was only a casual fan.
