Street Fighter (1994)

Video game aficionados need no introduction to the “Street Fighter” name. It’s one of the most popular game franchises of all time primarily due to the release of “Street Fighter II” into arcades in the early 1990s, and shortly afterward on the Super NES and Sega Genesis.  The game proved popular because even the most casual gamer could button-mash their way to victory against an equally skilled opponent or CPU.

Sensing a merchandising sensation, the game’s manufacturer, Capcom, then the third-largest videogame company in the world behind Nintendo and Sega, hired a licensing director to market the game and its character likenesses worldwide: comics, trading cards, bedding, towels – even Fruit of the Loom “Street Fighter” underwear. In 1993, Capcom signed a deal with Hasbro to supplement their flagging “G.I. Joe” toy line with “Street Fighter” characters. The next logical step to expand their fan base was to make a movie. Working through its American subsidiary, Silicon Valley’s Capcom USA, they lobbied Hollywood studios to fund half of an estimated $15 million to produce a live-action adaptation. Most studios were uninterested due to the failure of Super Mario Bros.

Capcom president Kenzo Tsujimoto was visiting Los Angeles with other executives from Japan meeting with all interested parties to back their movie. Film producer Edward R. Pressman, whose family fortune came from the toy industry, was skeptical. However, after his attempt at a big-screen “Barbie” musical collapsed, he entertained “Street Fighter” because video games comprised 60% of the toy market. Pressman immediately called to find an action movie screenwriter familiar with video games, Producer friend Sasha Harari recommended asking screenwriter Steven E. de Souza, known for blockbusters like Die Hard and 48 Hrs. De Souza was already working with Capcom on an arcade game version of “Cadillacs and Dinosaurs,” an animated TV show he’d been writing and directing for CBS adapting Mark Schultz’s comic book, “Xenozoic Tales.”

De Souza was very familiar with “Street Fighter”. He paid $20 every Saturday at the arcade to have his son whoop his ass at it. He knew David would be blown away if his dad made the movie, so he agreed to script if he could also direct. De Souza already had experience directing and producing TV shows. He knew how to handle budgeting, staffing, casting, and production problems. Pressman agreed, but they’d need to get the job first, and he’d need to pitch to Capcom’s brass within the next day or two.

Capcom overnighted reading material to De Souza containing background information on the game and its characters. A preliminary film concept manual was included, written in Japanese with illustrations. One concept drawing depicted General Bison as a third-world dictator with an arsenal of nuclear missiles. There was a fold-out blueprint of Bison’s underground lair on his fortified island nation, reminiscent of Dr. No. This gave De Souza his blueprint: rather than rehash the game’s martial arts tournament that everyone would find trite and predictable, the movie should be an action-adventure capturing the tongue-in-cheek flair of the early Bond films, with Guile as the leader of the ragtag band of international fighters. He connected the dots among the game’s characters with a two-page plot synopsis for Pressman, Upon Pressman’s approval, he drafted a 15-page outline to pitch to Japanese executives. 

These execs felt he’d read their minds. Capcom heavily promoted their “Street Fighter” GI Joes, so the military emphasis and action-hero vibe made financial sense. One thing Capcom wasn’t as keen on, however, was that De Souza only planned parts for nine of the game’s characters. De Souza argued that anything more than seven heroes and two villains (Bison and Sagat) would bog the narrative and confuse audiences. He challenged them to name seven Star Wars heroes or all seven dwarves from Snow White. They couldn’t and conceded. Within a week, Capcom made an offer to Pressman and De Souza. Pressman accepted but encouraged Capcom to provide 100% funding, ensuring Christmas release to maximize merchandising opportunities. Tsujimoto, who dreamt of getting into the movie business, agreed, becoming co-producer.

De Souza’s finished script is set in the fictional Southeast Asian country of Shadaloo (whose official language, Shadoti, is actually Esperanto). Dictator General M. Bison wages a war with a U.N.-like military force called the Allied Nations (United Nations lawyers forbade the use of their name) after holding several dozen of them as hostages for a ransom of $20 billion.  Leading the A.N. special forces counterattack is United States Colonel William F. Guile, a headstrong fighter that Bison can’t wait to test his mettle against in hand-to-hand combat.  Others converge at Bison’s stronghold, including television reporter Chun-Li Zang, underground crime syndicate leader Victor Sagat, and a couple of roguish soldiers of fortune named Ken and Ryu. The original title for this tongue-in-cheek adventure: Street Fighter: The Battle for Shadaloo. 

Capcom conducted market research on actors the games’ fans wanted for the film. Top choices were Stallone and Schwarzenegger, but De Souza said they couldn’t afford them. The best affordable option was Jean Claude Van Damme, who scored highest among teenage fans and was their top choice to play Guile. De Souza was skeptical. Van Damme fans likely wouldn’t come out for a PG-13 flick. Also, his Belgian-French accent was too thick for Guile, the all-American hero. The execs, who’d only heard Van Damme’s voice dubbed in Japanese, didn’t understand why it was an impediment. Besides, their research showed the game’s fans obviously didn’t mind.

Van Damme was interested. He’d grown tired of being seen as the “karate guy” and wanted to do serious film work. A high-profile PG-13 film could break him into the mainstream. He thought Street Fighter would be so huge that his name and face would be everywhere, even on toilet paper. He signed for a salary of $8 million, plus red-carpet accommodations, like a presidential suite in Bangkok’s Shangri-La hotel containing his own private gym. 

For the supporting cast, De Souza preferred acting ability over martial arts experience because the game’s fighting styles weren’t real martial arts anyway. Raul Julia was cast as Bison as a formidable counterbalance to Van Damme. Unfortunately, this left little money for other name actors and scuttled plans to flying the cast to Australia in advance for fight training. De Souza front-loaded dialogue scenes with Julia first in the schedule so the actors could train for fight scenes later.

However, when Julia arrived at the shoot, he was half of what they expected. He looked emaciated and gaunt. Julia had gotten food poisoning after eating sushi in Mexico while shooting the HBO movie, The Burning Season. The severity was likely made worse by surgery he’d had in January 1994 for the stomach cancer he’d kept private for three years. He’d lost 45 lbs. but claimed a clean bill of health. Unfortunately, the Bison costume he’d been measured for three months prior hung too loose and padding didn’t help. De Souza had to reverse his plans by Julia time to recover with a steady diet of bodybuilding shakes and donuts, while he did his best to shoot fight sequences with actors who’d received little training.

De Souza discovered Capcom very provincial in the casting of the game’s Asian characters. They felt only Japanese actors would do. After De Souza’s top choices were repeatedly shot down for not being Japanese, he ordered the casting directors to remove the surnames from all the Asian-Americans auditioning.  De Souza wanted Hong Kong-born American actor Byron Mann for Ryu but Tsujimoto groveled after finding out Mann was Hong Kong-born, pressing for Japanese actor Kenya Sawada instead. De Souza said Sawada’s English and acting skills were too poor to handle comedic dialogue. Tsujimoto backed off, rationalizing that Mann was “handsome enough to pass as Japanese.”  He still wanted Sawada in the film, suggesting Fei-Long, but De Souza couldn’t work a Bruce Lee clone into the film so he created a new character, Captain Sawada.

Damian Chapa had the prior action-movie experience and comic rapport with Mann to play Ken. Joan Chen was cast very early as Chun Li but was later replaced by Ming-Na Wen. Ming, a former trained gymnast, convinced De Souza that she could play a tough, aggressive fighter by performing impressive martial arts kicks in his office. Ming became the on-set champ at the arcade game; of course, her preferred character was Chun Li. She was also the actor who did most stunt work; she thought the men were wussies, especially the ones posturing as the most macho.

Universal handled US distribution and Columbia for international because Van Damme had commitments to both. The production was limited to six months, roughly half the time of a typical big-budget release. The budget wasn’t enough, but each time De Souza asked for more money, Capcom requested he add more game characters. The financiers also pressured De Souza to cast more Australian actors to qualify as an Aussie production for their tax shelter.  Two weeks prior to the shoot, De Souza needed a suitable actress for British intelligence officer, Lt. Cammy. Fortuitously, he saw Kylie Minogue on the cover of “Who” magazine’s “30 Most Beautiful People” issue while flying to Australia to scout locations. De Souza screened samples of her prior acting work and offered Minogue the role without any auditions or screen tests. Minogue was hesitant about doing an action flick but accepted once she discovered the game’s popularity among teenagers, especially in America, where she’d only had minor success. She rearranged her recording schedule and promotional tour for her upcoming album, “Kylie Minogue”, to appear in her first American film.

The shooting schedule was set for six weeks in Thailand, where everything was inexpensive, followed by four weeks in Australia. During pre-production in Australia, members of their stunt performers’ union stopped working over a pay dispute.  In the Australian film industry of the time, actors and stunt people received higher rates for projects done outside of the country. This was a Japanese/American production with several weeks of filming in Thailand, but the producers claimed Street Fighter an Australian production. The dispute was messy but eventually settled.

Ming-Na, Grand L. Bush, and Jay Tavare trained with karate champ Benny “The Jet” Urquidez at his gym in Van Nuys, incorporating a high-fiber diet and weight training. Once in Thailand, Urquidez trained others, two at a time, except for Van Damme, who had his own trainer. Julia required individually paced training due to his condition.  Julia persevered the hardship out of love for his sons, who were huge fans of the game and were beyond ecstatic their dad was M. Bison. They came with his wife to the location. In addition to modeling his performance on Benito Mussolini and Shakespeare’s “Richard III”, Julia consulted with his kids daily on how to portray Bison, but would never know if they liked his performance. On the evening of October 16, 1994, Julia experienced severe stomach pain, was rushed to the hospital. He soon suffered a stroke causing a brain hemorrhage. He fell into a coma on October 20, then died on October 24 at the age of 54.

Thailand’s facilities proved insufficiently shoddy. They quickly fell severely behind schedule. Between the heat, humidity, and dysentery, the actors lost weight rather than bulking up. With recent student protests and tensions with Burma, Thailand’s government was hesitant to allow costumed soldiers on public streets. They also didn’t want military vehicles on public roads or helicopters flying overhead that might be confused as a military coup, forcing personnel to move around using high-speed boats in the middle of the night that left cast and crew drenched. Thailand helped out by supplying military equipment and vehicles at specified locations for their use.

The extras playing soldiers consisted of Thai students and tourists from other countries. The language barrier incurred prolonged delays as the translators instructed the various nationalities on what was required. They resorted to numbered cue cards to save time: a card reading the numeral ‘1’ meant to act happy, ‘2’ for sad, and ‘3’ for scared, “4” to cheer, and “5” to get in your boat. De Souza sometimes found it challenging to direct Australian actors. De Souza accused former heavyweight boxer Joe Bugner, who plays a Bison henchman, of having taken too many blows to the head after slurring his words and stumbling around. The actor retorted De Souza told him to act pissed during the scene. In America,’ pissed meant angry, but in Australia, drunk. De Souza erupted in laughter at this miscommunication.

While Van Damme brought publicity, his drug binges and hedonistic pursuits became a major headache for De Souza. Sometimes he’d travel to Hong Kong to party and not return in time or had overindulged and wouldn’t feel well enough to perform in the morning. The insurance company insisted on hiring someone to wrangle Van Damme away from trouble, but that person did more enabling than enforcing. Van Damme’s frequent unavailability meant inventing new scenes on the spot for other actors to do. Without rehearsals, these couldn’t be fight scenes, taxing De Souza’s time writing dialogue for scenes that often weren’t good enough to use. Van Damme’s distractions continued beyond drugs. Despite being just a few months into his fourth marriage and a child on the way, he had an affair with Minogue after showing her around Bangkok. Minogue has remarked that ‘affair’ is an overstatement and while Street Fighter seemed a good career move at the time, it now makes her cringe.

De Souza chose to move production to Australia sooner, hoping to catch up by dividing filming into two units. Meanwhile, Urquidez left the production, leaving the rest to fight choreographer Charlie Picerni. Picerni was incensed that they were so unprepared. Urquidez, who had no familiarity with the game, trained the actors with identical fighting styles, leaving Picerni scrambling to train actors on distinct moves right before shooting each scene. Convinced that De Souza was in over his head, Picerni took over directing the fight sequences completely, especially the climactic battle between Guile and Bison. Picerni threatened to walk if De Souza tried to intervene. He earned a second unit director credit for his effort to salvage the picture.

Despite their best effort to catch up in Australia, they ran out of time with twenty pages of script left unshot. Back in the United States, De Souza realized during editing that the fight sequences felt lifeless; they lacked the trademark moves of the game’s characters. They opted for reshoots to fill narrative gaps and to redo the climactic showdown between Ryu and Ken vs. Sagat and Vega. Sets were recreated in Vancouver for a one-week pickup shoot a month later.

Unfortunately, this additional fighting proved too intense for the MPAA rating board, who bestowed it an R rating. De Souza had no choice but to gut the best action moments, especially the expensive reshoot that ends Vega dying after landing on his own claw weapon. De Souza claims he cut so much that the MPAA gave it a G rating (though he may be misremembering, as PG was more likely.) He added a line of salty dialogue from Van Damme (“Four years of ROTC for this shit”) to ensure the desired PG-13.

Priority Records’ soundtrack includes original rap music from major acts like Ice Cube, LL Cool J, Nas, The Pharcyde, and Public Enemy. The main single featured a duet between MC Hammer (then just called Hammer) and sports star Deion Sanders called, “Straight to My Feet.” JCVD appears in the music video.

Sensing it would be ill-received, Universal didn’t make Street Fighter available to critics for early screenings. It landed a disappointing third place for the long Christmas weekend of 1994 (behind Dumb and Dumber‘s second week of release and The Santa Clause in its seventh), plummeting out of the top 15 by week four, earning a disappointing $33 million in the US. Luckily, it succeeded internationally, pushing its worldwide gross to $100 million.

Despite De Souza’s screenwriting prowess, he was too overwhelmed as the director, forcing too many on-the-spot revisions and sacrifices to make a worthwhile story with sever time restraints. This results in a shoddy plot and terrible characterizations, earning a very poor reputation among movie and game-lovers alike. Fans of video games resoundingly rejected this, as it changes many aspects of the characters from the game.  Inexplicably, nearly all of them speak English, some of their backgrounds have changed (Chun Li as a flashy news reporter?? With the boxer Balrog as a cameraman?), and several popular characters cede time to ones few like.  While the characters seemed fierce and imposing in the game, their big-screen counterparts are silly and comical.

Street Fighter isn’t worth watching except for nostalgists and lovers of campy adventure.  It doesn’t even live up to its title by giving us proper street fights.  If you love the game or trashy action flicks, it might entertain as long as you aren’t expecting a good movie.  For most others, playing the video game for 90 minutes is a much better use of your time and money, even in Bison dollars.

• A post-credits scene featuring Bison’s arm bursting through the rubble of his destroyed headquarters was deemed in poor taste after Julia’s death. It has been reinstated on newer home video releases.
• “Street Fighter: The Movie” arcade game features digitized likenesses of the actors. The actors and their stunt doubles collaborated during the shoot to perform moves and face scans. An unrelated home console game was also released.
• No theatrical sequel resulted but a TV cartoon appeared in 1995 called “Street Fighter: The Animated Series,” which lasted two seasons (26 episodes).
• Unrelated “Street Fighter” reboot attempts include 2009’s Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li and 2014’s web and TV series “Street Fighter: Assassin’s Fist”

Qwipster’s rating: D

MPAA Rated: PG-13 for violence and some language
Running Time: 101 min.

Cast: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Raul Julia, Ming-Na Wen, Wes Studi, Damian Chapa, Byron Mann, Kylie Minogue, Simon Callow, Roshan Seth, Grand L. Bush, Peter Tuiasosopo, Jay Tavare, Miguel A. Nunez Jr., Andrew Bryniarski, Robert Mammone
Director: Steven E. de Souza
Screenplay: Steven E. de Souza