Street Fighter, commonly known as SF, is a series of fighting games developed in Japan by Capcom and released on August 30, 1987. The players pit the video games’ competitive fighters from around the world, each with his or her own special moves, against one another. Street Fighter was ported to many popular home computer systems of the time including PC.
Re-watching van Damme‘s Street Fighter movie martial arts movie I back in 90s again, when everything was so simple, when the Matrix movie was in project only (not so sure) and Jet Li was only Asian local star.
Raul Julia as General Bison is awesome and with his big bulging eyes he looks really ominous and comic at the same time. But I more kind to such a tought one-eyed villain played by Cherokee actor Wes Studi, I remember him since times of release of the The Last of the Mohicans movie. He is definitely was born to play villain bad guys, his last work was Eytukan in Avatar movie. But let’s get back to the Streetfighter film where Jean-Claude van Damme as always shows his Brussell muscles, jumping, cocking and walking like hulky lady-killer. Want to pay your attention in this movie van Damme debuted his new trick – back somerset with kick, you can see it during his fight with Bison.
When Jean’s character is telling to Bison “You love to see yourself on tv”, you want to scream “Hey van Damme and what about you? You addicted to this too” LOL. What is interesting, Van Damme turned down the role of Johnny Cage in martial arts movie Mortal Kombat to do this film. Thank you very much Jean for this present to us because Mortal Kombat with Cary Hirouyki Tagawa became classic martial arts movie with such a good martial artists on board, like The Tekken movie.
Talking about other crew members want to say about Ming-Na who played Chun-Li, Damian Chapa as Ken Masters – very good mexican actor who built a career tackling tough-guy roles, and Byron Mann as Ryu Hoshi – he was trained in wushu by Bruce Fontaine. Producers didn’t give Byron a chance to show his skills but did it for Indian handsome Jay Tavare as Vega, absurdly.
Director Steven E. de Souza (Die Hard, Commando, Judge Dredd, Knock Off) and producer Edward R. Pressman (Conan, The Crow) done not a bad job with Street Fighter movie but this project looks really cheap in production, Thailand, Australia, Canada locations are not bad, but could be much better, and of cause fans of all-time game wanted much more, but film makers decided to give it to us like comedy in typical Hollywood bublegum style. For Steven E. de Souza it was only one full-lenght movie, he known more as TV producer and writer behind blockbusters. By the way Pressman is working on pre-production of The Crow movie with Stephen Norrington (Blade) as director, please guys do not reboot perfect original flick with Brandon Lee! Edward, you are already made second movie with Eric Mabius and TV series with Mark Dacascos and what happened? Nothing!
Got a lot of negative reviews the movie grossed $99,400,000 worldwide with a budget of $35,000,000.
I noticed 2 cool movie tributes. One is the signature sign-on phrase: “Good morning, Shadoloo!” like in the Good Morning, Vietnam movie, and second one is big hi to Bruce Lee with bloody body scratches from Enter The Dragon martial arts movie.
There were rumours that in 2003 Jean-Claude Van Damme trying to get the sequel off the ground during two years, several cast members had been hired to join him, including his Universal Soldier co-star Dolph Lundgren and Australian actress Holly Valance (oh, yeah). Thanks god, the project never materialized and any plans for a sequel were scrapped.
Moving to 2009 I want to tell you that van Damme was offered the role of Guile in Fox’s martial arts movie Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, but he turned down this offer. After the theatrical release of “The Legend of Chun-Li”, which was intended to be better and more successful, film actually made only $8,700,000 at the box office with budget of $50,000,000, and was considered by many fans and critics as a worse film than the original 1994. What?! Are you serious?!
OK, lets look at the cast members.
Ming-Na was replaced by one of the hottest young actresses (#10 in FHM’s 100 Sexiest Girls) Kristin Kreuk as Chun-Li, she has a purple belt in karate plus background in gymnastics.
Jay Tavare replaced by Taboo as Vega, known as a singer/dancer in Black Eyed Peas music band.
Moreover they have got very hot Moon Bloodgood (One of People Magazine’s 100 Most Beautiful People in the world). Big guy Michael Clarke Duncan, blue belt in Brazilian JuJutsu, he worked as a bodyguard in Hollywood (he let a friend take over for him the night Notorious B.I.G. got shot, which prompted him to quit that line of work) and now known by Armageddon, The Green Mile, The Scorpion King and Daredevil films.
Raul Julia replaced by Neal McDonough as Bison, he is very charismatical actor known by Minority Report, Timeline and Walking Tall movies.
Robin Shou as Gen, who took away Liu Kang role in Mortal Kombat from contenders like Jason Scott Lee, Russell Wong and Dustin Nguyen. In his 19 he took Kenpo Karate classes, but year and a half later he left for Nanjing to study Wushu. Some of his martial arts stats: 1982-83 International Forms Champion, Member of the National WuShu Team, Gold and Silver Medal at Competitions in China, Gold Medal in Weapons, 4 -Time Traditional Forms Grand Champion in California. Rick Yune was originally cast as Gen but he was replaced by Robin Shou.
Moreover this movie directed by one of my favourites directors Andrzej Bartkowiak, the man behind cool actions like Doom, Cradle 2 the Grave, Exit Wounds and Romeo Must Die and became much in demand after his taut camera work in Speed movie.
Amazing locations of Bangkok, Hong Kong, California, Canada, beautiful hot actresses, actors with martial arts background, cool music by Stephen Endelman, Dion Lam (Romeo Must Die, Matrix, The Last Legion) as fight choreographer with Jonathan Eusebio (The Expendables, Ninja Assassin, The Bourne Ultimatum) on his side. What else do you need, guys?
On my opinion I better watch The Legend of Chun-Li once again that van Damme Street Fighter movie fake, sorry The Muscles from Brussels fans.