When we talk about Street Fighter live adaptations it's almost impossible not cringe. The opinions unanimously travel from laughable to awful.
The reasons for that are obvious. The game is a fantasy driven fighting genre. Stereotyped characters, over the top vilains, lack of story and characters development. All elements that together may not be important for a fighting game, but doesn't make a live adaptation consistent enough.
Some fans dare to say that Street Fighter games has a story, and the same about each character. Well, in fact the game never had a story, neither its characters. What the game had was a brief information about each one, the necessary to give them reasons to be in the tournment and to give players reasons to have a personal interest for a specific character. And that's all.
Of course that, as the game series evolved, the same happened to its story and characters. Either way, all the fantasy surrounding its universe can make live adaptations dread easily.
But Street Fighter: Assassin's Fist is a special case among live adaptations of the game. Curiously the cheap production is never a reason to call it a bad adaptation. The poor costume design and make up incredibly never overshadows other qualities too.
When I pressed the play button on Amazon Prime, I did it because I was sure that I would fall asleep easily. I had in my head that no way that production would caught my attention. And I was wrong about it.
Yeah, at the very begging, when sansei screams the attack movement, I laughed out loud and I though: the horror show begins.
At first I couldn't stop looking at that awful wig on Christian Howard's head, or some bad acting between them, no matter how much they wanted to make it right. The colors of Ken and Ryu's gloves were so cartoon-ished that looked like being made of paper.
But then the story was revealing itself, developing each character as it should. Filling gaps and showing some consistency. The relationship between Ken and Ryu was exactly how fans created during the decades, and the same about their personality.
I don't know if Christian Howard is a fan of the games, because he knew exactly what he was doing on screenplay. The self centered and well educated Ryu; the impatient and arrogant Ken; the friendship filled with pinches of an unharmy rivalry. Both characters building the same path but by different means, giving reasons to understand why their fighting styles are the same and their strength are equivalent, more than believe that game producers did that only to reuse game's special effects sprites. Something that no adaptation have done properly until then.
The great surprise about it all was the fighting scenes. No stunt actors, no editing tricks abuse. Most of the fighting scenes were real movements from different martial arts, even the classic air kick given by Christian in the 1st fighting scene was real and felt incredible on the camera. It was just about muscles and techniques exposed, well crafted choreographed fights, some of them with real body impacts.
Really, the internet mini-series turned into a 2 hours movie is the best live adaptation of the game that no big studio dared to make. Don't pay attention to its cheap look or lack of art design, what you need to be entertained on a way that few fighting movies do are there.
Impressive, and congratulations to Christian Howard for the incredible consistence he gave to the story and characters with so few on his hand.
The reasons for that are obvious. The game is a fantasy driven fighting genre. Stereotyped characters, over the top vilains, lack of story and characters development. All elements that together may not be important for a fighting game, but doesn't make a live adaptation consistent enough.
Some fans dare to say that Street Fighter games has a story, and the same about each character. Well, in fact the game never had a story, neither its characters. What the game had was a brief information about each one, the necessary to give them reasons to be in the tournment and to give players reasons to have a personal interest for a specific character. And that's all.
Of course that, as the game series evolved, the same happened to its story and characters. Either way, all the fantasy surrounding its universe can make live adaptations dread easily.
But Street Fighter: Assassin's Fist is a special case among live adaptations of the game. Curiously the cheap production is never a reason to call it a bad adaptation. The poor costume design and make up incredibly never overshadows other qualities too.
When I pressed the play button on Amazon Prime, I did it because I was sure that I would fall asleep easily. I had in my head that no way that production would caught my attention. And I was wrong about it.
Yeah, at the very begging, when sansei screams the attack movement, I laughed out loud and I though: the horror show begins.
At first I couldn't stop looking at that awful wig on Christian Howard's head, or some bad acting between them, no matter how much they wanted to make it right. The colors of Ken and Ryu's gloves were so cartoon-ished that looked like being made of paper.
But then the story was revealing itself, developing each character as it should. Filling gaps and showing some consistency. The relationship between Ken and Ryu was exactly how fans created during the decades, and the same about their personality.
I don't know if Christian Howard is a fan of the games, because he knew exactly what he was doing on screenplay. The self centered and well educated Ryu; the impatient and arrogant Ken; the friendship filled with pinches of an unharmy rivalry. Both characters building the same path but by different means, giving reasons to understand why their fighting styles are the same and their strength are equivalent, more than believe that game producers did that only to reuse game's special effects sprites. Something that no adaptation have done properly until then.
The great surprise about it all was the fighting scenes. No stunt actors, no editing tricks abuse. Most of the fighting scenes were real movements from different martial arts, even the classic air kick given by Christian in the 1st fighting scene was real and felt incredible on the camera. It was just about muscles and techniques exposed, well crafted choreographed fights, some of them with real body impacts.
Really, the internet mini-series turned into a 2 hours movie is the best live adaptation of the game that no big studio dared to make. Don't pay attention to its cheap look or lack of art design, what you need to be entertained on a way that few fighting movies do are there.
Impressive, and congratulations to Christian Howard for the incredible consistence he gave to the story and characters with so few on his hand.