As fans have seen multiple times, adapting a video game into a movie is difficult and often ill-advised. Most of the famous bad examples are live-action films. Animated adaptations have broadly fared better in the eyes of fans and newcomers. Street Fighter is one of the best examples. Every live-action adaptation has been a mess, but Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie may be the first great video game film.
Fighting games are famously unique in their approach to storytelling. To the uninitiated, they look as if they feature no notable plot. Hardcore fans know that most examples have multiple novels worth of lore buried in their cutscenes and character descriptions. Street Fighter is no exception, so a good adaptation of the franchise has to pack in a lot of details.
What Happens in Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie?
This film is a fairly straightforward adaptation of Street Fighter II: The World Warrior. M. Bison, the leader of the worldwide criminal conspiracy group Shadowlaw, builds an army of robots to locate and recruit the most powerful warriors in the world. His biggest target is a mysterious wandering Japanese martial artist named Ryu. Years earlier, Ryu bested Muay Thai champion Sagat in a fight with two unstoppable techniques. Bison devotes endless resources to locating Ryu, but his mystical abilities and nomadic nature make him impossible to find. Luckily, Bison locates Ryu's lifelong rival, Ken. Bison's scheme demands a warrior with endless potential, but he's up against more than his matching pair of potential recruits.
Interpol agent Chun-Li and US Air Force Major Guile have banded together and pooled their resources to track down Bison and bring him to justice. Bison murdered Guile's best friend and Chun-Li's father, earning him the ire of the two most skilled hand-to-hand combatants in the armed forces. When MI6 agent Cammy White goes rogue and executes a politician, the governments of the world discover Bison's power. As Ryu travels the world to find new foes, and Ken builds a life with his girlfriend Eliza, Chun-Li and Guile attempt to stop Shadowlaw. Bison's evil schemes gradually bring the heroes together, but the path allows for several excellent fight scenes along the way. It's a straightforward story with a lot of small threads and fun cameos, but the real draw is the magnificent set pieces buried throughout.
How Does Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie Hold Up?
Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie is unquestionably the best Street Fighter movie, but it's one of the best video game movies ever made. There are some weak points, especially in the occasionally lackluster writing, but the film is packed with so many jaw-dropping action scenes that it's hard to care. The opening scene depicting Ryu's fight against Sagat is still the best version of that crucial moment in the franchise almost 30 years later. Ryu's relationship with Ken doesn't get enough time to shine, but it's perfectly established. Minor characters like Fei Long, E. Honda, Blanka, Zangief, and Dhalsim get their moment to shine, even if a few of them feel out of place. It's hard to find a bad fight scene in the film. Chun-Li's extended bout with Vega is a standout. Even outside the fight scenes, moments like Ken proposing to Eliza or Cammy assassinating a target are immediately memorable. The soundtrack is excellent, the fight scenes are spectacular, and it's a perfect distillation of this era of the franchise. This is the baseline by which the upcoming Street Fighter film must be judged, and the bar is high.
What Other Animated Street Fighter Movies Are There?
Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie was the first cinematic adaptation of the franchise, but it was not the last. The Street Fighter: Alpha films came to home video in 2001 and 2005, adapting new elements of the franchise, like Ryu's battle with the Satsui no Hado. Certain copies of Street Fighter IV came with Street Fighter IV: The Ties That Bind, an anime film that dives deeper into that game's plot. Finally, Street Fighter - Round One: Fight! and Street Fighter - The New Challenger were motion-comic adaptations of UDON's graphic novel series. The franchise also enjoyed a very silly Saturday morning cartoon series and a more serious anime series in 1995.
Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie may be the first great video game movie. Everything about it that has aged poorly only serves to make it more enjoyable. It's a time capsule of a better age, a classic example of the simple virtue of adaption. The film uses its new medium to do things it couldn't do on an arcade machine while carefully capturing the game's most enjoyable elements. Fans owe it to themselves to check out Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie. Hopefully, the upcoming film's cast and crew are taking its lessons to heart.