When Rifftrax had its annual Kickstarter campaign, it offered an mp3 riff for the 1994 video game movie Street Fighter. This was remembered as a really bad action movie. People would have preferred the original Street Fighter 2 game footage.
The riff is now available to everyone, and it's a worthy successor to the other lousy video game movie, "Super" Mario Brothers.
Jean Claude Van Damme is the star as Colonel Guile, who battles your basic video game madman named M. Bison, played by Raul Julia. He wants 20 billion in three days or he'll destroy the world and rebuild it as Bisonopolis (which sounds like a ballpark Buffalo wisely never made). He even has a new currency system which will go into effect if the Queen gets kidnapped.
The characters in the game have new roles to fit the movie. Chun-Li is a news reporter and part-time ninja (really), Honda and Balrog work with her. Ken and Ryu are con artists who have some fighting skills (Ryu mostly) and Dhalsim is a scientist instead of a yoga master.
As for Blanka, the big green mutant who's supposed to be Guile's adversary, the movie makes him more like "Carrot Top as Bruce Banner".
It was Julia's last movie before he died of a stroke, but it was also an attempt to make Kylie Minogue a movie star. Also, fans of Agents of SHIELD should look closely at Chun-Li, and realize they're looking at a mission Melinda May would rather not talk about (I was really surprised Ming-Na Wen was in this movie).
The Rifftrax crew spent a lot of the movie not being pleased about it, as usual. While they did talk about how this was Julia's last movie, and how all-American Van Damme was not (but not talking about how his drug habit affected production), they just wondered how over-blown and confusing the whole thing was. The movie still made a good chunk of cash, and it'll be interesting if anyone will suggest a 25th anniversary release later this year.
One thing, though: as Guile was battling Bison, how come the guys never said, "You may be a good fighter, Guile, but you still lost to a nerd from Seattle." Gee, that was a fat pitch they never got.
So, time for riffs:
M. Bison is walking around, threatening everyone
My father was M. Bison. Please call me Murray
Guile "interrupts" a fight by driving his Super Jeep into the ring
The Kool-Aid man got his driver's license
Guile tells Ryu and Ken to work for him. "The only way you two are leaving is over my dead body"
Good thing that wasn't Raul's line
Guile is "shot"
He died as he lived, unconvincingly.
Of course, he's OK, and has his big speech:
"Now who wants to go home, and who wants to go with me?"
Some fine war-mongering, self. now let's get some men killed.
Bison tries to get sexy with Chun-Li, gets almost clobbered by her
This is that Antarctic kung fu that she studied.
Bison floats around in a round desk
This is totally how Elon Musk sees himself, by the way
There's also riffs on Shane (which may divide movie fans), Kiss of the Spider Woman, Ed Sheeran, Virtual Boy games, Woodstock 99, Cynthia Rothrock and QBert.
Street Fighter is available at all the video streaming sites, while the riff is now at the Rifftrax site.
No comments:
Post a Comment