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I watched a few movies over the previous weeks, but only two directly stick in my mind.

The first is Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li.

Holy crap.

Of all the movies I've watched in my life I don't think I have ever seen one butcher a beloved franchise of mine more than this one. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING about this movie is pure crap, the story, the dialogue, the casting (except maybe Balrog, BUT), the acting, the special effects, the characturisation....I can't begin to understand how they took something as simple a premise as Chun Li's revenge story and screw it up so with so much vigour.

Lets start with casting and characters.

Kristen Kruek looks nothing like Chun Li in anyway, and I know that'd be difficult considering the over exagerated proportions Chun Li has had, but Christ, she resembled Gullom from the Lord of the Rings more than Chun Li, she never wwore the costumes she's had either, the closest being some lose of blue bed sheet she wears at a nightclub, it looks crap even if they weren't nodding to the original design. What's more her story has been altered significantly. Instead of joining Interpol to track down her missing father, being a fantastic marksman and a devout cop as she's been portrayed in the games, comics, and anime movies, here she's tought by Gen and becomes a member of the Order of the Web, which I don't remember in the games, but considering Gen's an assassin it seems like quite a different path. Her fight scenes aren't very memorable, the only thing I do remember was her Spinning Bird Kick, mainly because I was laughing so hard at it.

Charlie Nash is played by Chris Klein. Now, in the games Nash is a martial arts master, creating the Sonic Boom and overall fighting style that he taught to Guile, is a pilot in the US Airforce, has blond hair, wears glasses, and is able to fight off Bison despite the Psycho Powers, even though he ends up supposedly dead. Guess how much of this is apparent in the movie.

Go on, guess!

If you said none then congratulations!

In this movie he's an interpol agent, a pretty lame detective at that, trying to track down Bison, and has no fighting ability displayed. Oh, and as for the acting...well...there was a review that said he couldn't even make walking out of a car look natural...quite frankly, he didn't make being human look natural. Every line was so horribly over acted...you really have to see it for yourself. I'd advise finding clips on YouTube though.

Balrog is well cast visually, Michael Clark Duncon does look the part and was a boxer, but the character mainly laughs and shoots stuff.

Vega, played by Tabu of the Black Eyed Pees for some reason, has a malformed mask, wears a black ninja suit, and gets beaten in three minutes (considering this was highlighted as a great fight the rival the old Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie battle between Chun Li and Vega...well...I think the guy being interviewed must have been on morphine at the time.)

Gen is played by none other than Liu Kang of the Mortal Kombat movies, Robin Shou, he doesn't look like him, not fight like him....nor displays any real connection to the in game version...but hey, it's Liu Kang! I think that's what the director was going for.

Rose is in it too...but if she wasn't named you wouldn't know...also she's Bison's daughter...yeah, I don't remember that in the games.

There's also Maya, who I think is supposed to be a nod to Crimson Viper. She's really only in it for sex appeal, she doesn't actually do anything else despite being in plenty of scenes.

And then....sigh...we have Bison....played by Neal McDonough...

Right, now, and I mean this, that piece of casting could have been awesome. He has the right build, he can look really menacing anc calculating, and had they even tried to make him an iota similar to the actual character then they could have really won me over. But no...no...they tried, I can give them that, but they tried to make him as different from the iconic fighting game boss as much as possible, and I can only really use pictures to show this.

VS

Yeah.

Also, there's his voice. In every previous role he has either had a well spoken American accent, except for Roul Julia's British accented Bison, or he's had a Japanese voice which was deep, gravely, and menacing. What's more he's almost always associated with Thailand, giving the impression that he might actually be from Thailand. And considering his fighting style was originally sited as the Thai military style Lerdrit, it simply added to this. In this movie he is still associated with Thailand, but for some reason they decided the accent best suited for this character was an Irish accent. That's right, he's Irish. Even in his backstory this doesn't make sense, he's the child of Irish parents, fair enough, but they abandoned him as a baby and he grew up on the streets of THAILAND!

Sorry if I'm focussing too much on character representation, but the titular character and the villain happen to be two of my favourite characters of one of my favourite games of one of my favourite genres in my favourite creative medium. So yeah, emotional investment.

Even going into this movie knowing it was gonna be bad, preparing for it, it took me by surprise....if you have the chance to watch it, don't.

The other movie I watched was the Live Action adaption of Blood: The Last Vampire, I may go into detail later but I'll say this for now. Find it. Pay for it. Watch it.