1994’s Street Fighter: The Movie is a glorious disaster. Other than character names, it retains almost none of the source material: no hurricane kicks, hadoukens, and, perhaps most damningly, none of Guile’s theme. The film is just straight-up bad, and now, thanks to Chris Plante over at Polygon, you can get an idea why.
Plante’s piece details the trials of first-time (and only-time) feature-film director Stephen de Souza as he tried and ultimately failed to make a decent Street Fighter movie. To his credit, de Souza made a valiant attempt, but it’s hard to see anyone coming out on top in his situation. The director had to deal not only with interference from Street Fighter’s development studio, Capcom (which had never produced a movie before), but he also contended with rushed stunt schedules, a cancer-stricken Raul Julia, cast members who became addicted to Bangkok massage parlors, and a Jean-Claude Van Damme who was hooked on cocaine and having sex with Kylie Minogue.
Even though Street Fighter stands among the worst video game adaptations of all time (and that’s saying something), it’s hard not to have sympathy for the cast and crew who had to endure this Heart Of Darkness-esque production. Who knows what happened with that second one.