Video game adaptations have a long and terrible history that has only recently started to turn the corner. After all, for the longest time, video games were seen as a “kids thing,” and thus, the adaptations about them didn’t need to be “that accurate” or have “that much effort put into it.” Instead, it just had to loosely be based on the property, and then the person behind it could do whatever they wanted. As you can look back and see, that backfired many times over. Yet, the Street Fighter Movie from 1994 made some noise when Capcom revealed they’re still making money off it.
If you don’t know, this film was one that starred Jean-Claude Van Damme, Ming-Na Wen, and others in a…well…not-so-good imitation of what the beloved fighting game franchise was. In fact, if you look at certain elements of the film nowadays, not only does it not hold up, it’s become meme material. The legendary line from M. Bison about “Tuesday” is the greatest meme among them.
Anyway, Capcom held a shareholder meeting recently, and as Automation reported, the company stated that the original Street Fighter Movie was making them millions of yen every year.
So, how is that possible when the movie came out three decades ago and wasn’t a quality production? The easiest thing to point to is that despite its terrible quality, people are still interested in seeing it for one reason or another. As such, certain streaming services are undoubtedly asking Capcom for the rights to it, which costs them money to buy.
If it bounces around multiple services throughout the year, it can rake in millions of yen for Capcom. After all, some people like to watch a train derail for one reason or another. Perhaps they all heard how bad the movie was and wanted to see it for themselves. As platforms like Netflix prove, you don’t have to have a quality movie come out for it to have a surge on a streaming service.
The irony is that there’s another attempt going on to make a film about Ryu, Chun-Li, M. Bison and the rest of the fighting crew. Sadly, the new movie hit a setback recently when the directors they had attached to the film bailed out. No replacements have been named as of yet.
That’s sad because it shouldn’t be hard to make a good move based around these characters; it just requires the right touch and a Hadouken or ten.
