When the original Street Fighter with Van Damme came out, I remember, I wanted to go see it. And when I finally did, I was very upset with it, as they changed a lot of things around, and it was a pretty goofy movie for the most part, didn't take itself overly seriously at any point. But it was entertaining at least, and a lot of the characters were easily recognizable because they actually looked, for the most part, like they did in the games...especially Bison, albeit with much less muscle.
When I first saw the trailer for this, I pretty much went WTF??? Not only did the trailer not come out until just over a month before the release date, something I've rarely seen and usually only with horrible movies, it showed characters that looked NOTHING like the game...at all.
So I went into this with very low expectations, and it couldn't even reach those. The plot is essentially non existent....Bison plans to kick a whole bunch of people out of their homes in order to build houses for people that can afford them....yup. Diabolical, I know. A very FAR cry from anything Shadoloo ever planned in the games. Chun Li is on a quest to find her father, and stop Bison. And then of course there's the generic cop team trying to investigate and not having one clue as to what to do until near the very end, when all they do is storm a building. Ooooo, riveting! There are also sub plots connecting the characters to one another in essentially stupid and pointless ways, just to fill in the lengthy gaps between action scenes. This movie could have just been some run of the mill, stop the bad business man movie, and aside from the names of the characters and the organization, and also TWO moves from the games...it is. There's no reason for Street Fighter to be on this movie, they could have just as easily called it some generic action movie title (Sweet Revenge for example) and taken away the names of the characters and there you go.
About the only thing they kept even remotely close to the games was Chun Li's father is taken by Bison...that's right, taken, not killed. Balrog is a big black guy....and Vega wears a mask and claws....albeit a shiny silver mask that makes him look more like Jason then anything IMO.
And that's pretty much it. Chun Li sports a dress and hair at one point in the movie that harks to her costume in the games, but doesn't pull it off too well. Bison is blonde...and wears a suit through the whole movie...even in the final fight. Vega has Black hair, and dresses entirely in...black. And then he's on screen fighting for, oh, 1 minute 20 seconds, if that, and then poof, he's gone. What you see in the trailer of that fight is pretty much the entire fight. Nash (Charlie from the games) also has black hair, works for Interpol...and that's it. His part in the movie is useless, pointless, and pretty much just there to try and revive Chris Klein's career, which it fails at, horribly. Doesn't even fight in the movie, just shoots a lot at one point and that's it.
Gen....poor Robin Shou, a great fighter, but hasn't gotten a decent role since Mortal Kombat Annihilation utterly destroyed his career. I would imagine this was to be his come back movie, much like Klein, and he does a decent job, both through acting and fighting, in the movie. It's a shame he had to be in this pile of crud though.
And that's it for characters from the games....Chun Li, Bison, Vega, Balrog, Nash, and Gen. Six whole characters, not even the entire roster from the original Street Fighter game (1, not 2) This entire movie is pointless, has no actual reason as it does not fit into the canon of the games in the least (seeing as how both Balrog and Bison die) As far as I can tell, this movie was made purely to cash in even more on Street Fighter 4's release. That's about the only intelligent part of this movie, as it will more than likely work.
DO NOT watch this movie, spare yourself the horror, no matter how much you love Street Fighter, no matter if you're a person that NEEDS to see and play everything with Street Fighter slapped on it...DO NOT SEE IT!! Not even for free!! Not even on TV!! If you see it, run....run as fast as you can....cherish your life without this movie in it!!