The Street Fighter franchise has a rough history with movies. The 1994 film captured elements of high camp excellence through performers like Raul Julia, but it struggles on most levels. Animated entries are sometimes excellent, but there’s only one other live-action attempt. Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li is one of the worst video game movies ever made. It reached the second-place slot on the semi-popular Paramount+ streaming service, but its ideal use today is as a pile of lessons.
This Awful Street Fighter Movie Won Round Two on Paramount+
Video game movies are good now. Every video game adaptation faced an impossible uphill climb for the first couple of decades. The term “video game movie curse” has always been nonsense, but most entries are unmistakably garbage. When Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li dropped, the Resident Evil franchise was the genre’s most impactful outing. Capcom took a big swing by ditching most of Street Fighter to focus on a single character, but Chun-Li was arguably a great choice. Her story is simple, straightforward, and familiar. She’s a gifted martial artist and Interpol agent who works tirelessly to bring down M. Bison and avenge her father. Anyone could make a John Wick out of that. Unless, of course, they turn Chun-Li into a pianist, mix magic elements at random, and turn in the worst script outside of a Transformers movie.
The Legend of Chun-Li is a nightmarish mess. Its editing, direction, acting, ADR, action scenes, and writing feel intentionally designed to confuse and annoy. Fans will hate its endless deviations from the source material and broad character assassination of Chun-Li. Newcomers will hate it because every scene is either ripped off from another project or completely unintelligible. Its current place on Paramount+’s top ten raises several questions. Latin America pushed it into its position, possibly out of love for the games. Paramount+ is seemingly leaning hard on video game adaptations to dig out a unique identity among streaming services. Halo, Ark, and the Sonic franchise are big draws for Paramount. The Sonic movies stand out as one of the arguments for improving video game adaptations. It’s fascinating to see one of the worst takes on the genre explode on a service working to end the mythical curse.
Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li deserves to rot in the wastebin of history. It’s a snapshot of a worse time for blockbuster cinema. Documentarian and video essayist Dan Olson drew several accurate comparisons to the Transformers franchise. Modern blockbusters may follow the leader with Marvel movies, but at least they’re copying something that frequently produces decent films. The Legend of Chun-Li may have a new spotlight, but it lost its first fight for a good reason. It’s terrible, but it may make you happier about the films we enjoy today.
