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| Dr Baghead 3816th Post
  
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
    
    
     
     
     
|  "Live action The King of Fighters movie" , posted Mon 5 Sep 22:56  
So I know the movie is a year or so old, but it just went up on Netflix Instant View so I just watched it... if there was already a thread about it or some post in one of the random news threads feel free to post a link to it with a snark or emoticon to let me know it’s old news, but I’m talking about it anyway...
What the Hell was that?!?!
Okay, so I get no videogame movie is ever going to be 100% like the game. Van Damme’s Street Fighter couldn’t be farther from the games but I’ve grown to love it because it’s so insane and hilarious, even Mortal Kombat which is widely regarded as ‘the best’ game-to-film adaptation is off (at least at the time, a lot of what worked got folded into MK9 retroactively making it closer to cannon)... but the choices it made, seriously WTF...
It sort of follows the Orochi storyline, or at least the main plot points.... okay, it just knows Iori, Kyo, and Chizaru’s families each have a mcguffin related to something called “orochi”
The characters fight in “the tournament dimension” which they are summoned into using blu-tooth headsets and I think on paper was supposed to be a Freddy Krugger like dream world where nothing is as it seems, but in practice is the characters in dumb outfits wondering around whatever set the porn crew next door wasn’t using (a heavily used feature of the ‘tournament dimension’ is the ol’ Scooby Doo walk through a door and come out on the door right on the other side of the hallway... how does this work in real life?! We the viewers can’t see the other side of the hall, but shouldn’t the character be able to see ‘oh this door leads two feet down the hall’ or if they can’t tell it’s not the same hall when looking through the door, how do they know they’ve walked into the original hall when after stepping out of the door and getting confused?! How do they know it’s an identical hallway NEXT to the original?!?! ARRRRGGGH!!!!)
Mai Shiranui is the main character, so I assume it was written to cash in on “Legend of Chun-Li” (which having seen both I’ll still call “the shitty Street Fighter” even though looking over other’s reviews they’re both shitty, but LoCL is the less offensive turd to accidentally step in) but live action Mai Shiranui isn’t particularly hot and is dating Iori, and given Mai’s whole personality is “Loves Andy” (it’s her f**king death scream for god’s sake!) and “Boobies” they could have made this character ANYONE and it would have been just as accurate.
Terry Bogard is a CIA agent, which much like Mai could have been ANY other character with no changes made. However despite being nothing like the Legendary Wolf we all know and love, Movie Terry is still the best character because he’s SUCH AN ASSHOLE. Basically he’s MK9 Stryker playing the “I’m a cop! Magic is bullshit” and saying dickish shit to other characters, openly mocking what they believe or just insulting them to their face. He’s not Terry Bogard, but goddamned if he’s not the best part of this movie!
What I don’t get is... why not make them the Ikari team!? Mai could be Leona or Whip, Terry could be Clark or Ralph... why make them Mai and Terry when they’re not even gonna try to make them anything like Mai and Terry?!
casting oddities: let’s get this out of the way: Kyo is the whitest motherfucker I’ve ever seen. Now I’m mixed race, I look sort of asian, I have a brother just as white as movie Kyo... but WHY MAKE KYO THE WHITE GUY?!?! Iori, Mai, and Chizaru are all asian and Kyo doesn’t have nearly as much screen time as them, the movie has Rugal and Terry so there’s already white guys in the movie, why decide Kyo must be a white dude?
Ray Parks is in the movie, Ray Parks is British and an expert bo staff fighter, so it should come as no surprise he’s... Rugal! To steal from the Onion AV Club refer to Emma Stone as blonde Gwen Stacy instead of red haired Mary Jane “this is like making a movie about a tough Mexican Biker gang and casting Danny Treijo as their lawyer”, the fact Ray Parks is not Billy Kane is just mind boggling... also Rugal is basically Freddy Krugger in this movie, it’s just odd.
So here’s the greatest crime of the movie in my opinion: No nods to the fans!
Weird casting and character shoe horning aside, it does as good a job as you’d expect a SUPER low budget movie to do at telling a story similar to the Orochi arc of KoF... so it’s obvious someone tried a little to understand what they were writting, much like how the JCVD SF was at its heart about a group of World Warriors fighting Shadowloo and M.Bison even if it took an insane road to get there.
But JCVDSF had stuff like Barrels labeled “Capcom”, Bison’s control deck was an SF arcade panel, although there’s no real fireballs Ryu and Ken pantomime a hadoken and shoryuken respectively... I’ll even count making Blanka “Charlie” since at the time Charlie was just a name on paper, working him in was a nice touch.
KoF has NONE of this. Vice calls “Ramon”,”Shermie”, and oddly “Duo Long” (her phone shows other names too but I didn’t not give enough of a shit remember them) to trick them into fighting in Rugal’s rigged matches (they do not appear in the film though) the names are SO random this seems less like a ’nod’ and more like scrolling through a cast FAQ. Terry text Mai “Are you okay?!” but as the film goes on I don’t think it’s a nod so much as him actually asking if she’s okay which happens to look like a MotW reference.
They don’t walk past a NeoGeoLand or arcade cabinet, they don’t make any off hand nods to cannon (ie-Terry mentioning he has a brother or that he’s following in his father’s footsteps), characters don’t use any of their trademark moves (Mai does a flash kick and Iori does a BLUE air hadoken, but no moves they actually have) there’s NOTHING for fans to pick up on and be like “ohohoh, movie you’re awful but I like that you included a nod to xyz”... infact I think the movie is made with the idea fans of KoF would NOT watch it, since it does seem like if you want to watch a shitty martial arts movie it would work since without context the weirdness probably isn’t so off putting.
Blanka and Dan make for a most excellent tag image (yeah still not funny)
my silly little drawin's
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| Baines 294th Post
Copper Customer
|  "Re(1):Live action The King of Fighters movie" , posted Tue 6 Sep 12:53
quote:
So I know the movie is a year or so old, but it just went up on Netflix Instant View so I just watched it... if there was already a thread about it or some post in one of the random news threads feel free to post a link to it with a snark or emoticon to let me know it’s old news, but I’m talking about it anyway...
What the Hell was that?!?!
I tried to make a LiveJournal post about it last year, and just gave up only a few minutes into the film.
It is just terrible on every level. The casting is horrible. The characters appear to have been written from a list of names with at most a one-sentence, or maybe even a one-word description. The story itself is idiotic.
The story? Knowing about Orochi, knowing that he could possess someone and cause all sorts of badness, knowing that they didn't have the items needed to stop him, people *still* set up a tournament in his realm?
The characters? Mr. Big is white. Kyo is white, but Asian in a childhood flashback. Mai fights like Nina Williams and has blue electricity. Rugal uses guns and sports equipment (hockey gear as well as magic baseballs), and gets destroyed in seconds in a straight martial arts fight. Mature uses tonfas.
Iori is dating Mai. Mature and Vice have no connection to Orochi, and have to be beaten by Rugal before joining his side. Terry is comedy relief. Rugal, the big bad villain of the movie, is comedy relief. The "Three Sacred Treasures" team ends up being Mai, Kyo, and Iori. There is so much more that I've simply forgotten.
They kind of reference Riot of Blood Iori, but give him blue flames instead of purple. (I remember something being wrong even with his anger issues scene, but I'm not rewatching the film to find out.)
Maggie Q was a terrible casting for Mai. Mind, all the casting ranges from bad to terrible, but Maggie Q's Mai is right at the bottom alongside Ray Parks as Rugal.
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| Just a Person 1502th Post
Red Carpet V.I.P- Platinum Member
| "Re(1):Live action The King of Fighters movie" , posted Wed 7 Sep 02:10
quote:
Okay, so I get no videogame movie is ever going to be 100% like the game. Van Damme’s Street Fighter couldn’t be farther from the games but I’ve grown to love it because it’s so insane and hilarious, even Mortal Kombat which is widely regarded as ‘the best’ game-to-film adaptation is off (at least at the time, a lot of what worked got folded into MK9 retroactively making it closer to cannon)... but the choices it made, seriously WTF...
Really? I thought the best game-to-film adaptation was Silent Hill (I mean, even though it had changes in characters' identities and/or fates, it had a very close feeling to the one the games bring).
And wow, the KOF movie was actually released?? I thought it would be cancelled mid-filming (I mean, the Chun-Li movie had a bad fate, and the KOF one was looking even worse than that)...
I can be any person in the world... maybe I'm this person right in front of you... maybe I'm not.
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| sibarraz 272th Post
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Copper Customer
| "Re(2):Live action The King of Fighters movie" , posted Wed 7 Sep 05:26
quote:
Okay, so I get no videogame movie is ever going to be 100% like the game. Van Damme’s Street Fighter couldn’t be farther from the games but I’ve grown to love it because it’s so insane and hilarious, even Mortal Kombat which is widely regarded as ‘the best’ game-to-film adaptation is off (at least at the time, a lot of what worked got folded into MK9 retroactively making it closer to cannon)... but the choices it made, seriously WTF...
Really? I thought the best game-to-film adaptation was Silent Hill (I mean, even though it had changes in characters' identities and/or fates, it had a very close feeling to the one the games bring).
And wow, the KOF movie was actually released?? I thought it would be cancelled mid-filming (I mean, the Chun-Li movie had a bad fate, and the KOF one was looking even worse than that)...
The movie was cancelled and only had a theatrical release on singapore.
Then went direct to DVD
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| dr baghead 3817th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(3):Live action The King of Fighters movie" , posted Wed 7 Sep 21:29
quote:
Really? I thought the best game-to-film adaptation was Silent Hill (I mean, even though it had changes in characters' identities and/or fates, it had a very close feeling to the one the games bring).
How about MK is the highest regarded “Direct Adaptation” since it’s always noted on-line as being “the best” since it has characters from the game, in the same context they appear in the game, going through a story arc like in the game.
Silent Hill does capture the mood, Resident Evil does make a shit ton of money, and I would personally rather watch JCVD SF then MK any day of the week since it’s more entertaining... but MK mets the “game plopped directly onto screen” requirements most GameFaq viewers demand in their game-to-film conversions it seems.
quote:
As a big fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000, I love watching shitty movies and making fun of them, usually along with a few drinks. But this... wow, everything I've seen about it doesn't go down the 'funny' path of bad movies, just the 'irritating' one, since most of the problems I have with it stem from the fact that's it's branded with KOF. Yeah, it seems like there's not enough alcohol in the world to make this funny.
...
Typically I'm also fairly critical of 'never good enough' fan responses to movies made for games and books (having rolled my eyes constantly at the stupid nit-picking criticisms of the Lord of the Rings movies, for example) but in this case it sounds completely justified.
If you can stream this movie from Netflix or some other service (have no idea who else would have it) it’s worth MST’ing.
I hate the term “so bad it’s good” since it gets thrown about for anything these days. “So bad it’s good” movies take real skill to make and most movies people say are “so bad it’s good” are just bad movies they’re watching as some guilty pleasure (Showgirls for example is not some intentional campy masterpiece with tits for the straight man and over the top glam for the gay man like it’s being sold as now days, it’s a piece of shit people watch for the novelty of the girl from Save by the Bell taking being a stripper deadly seriously).
KoF is a BAD movie, but a bad movie worth watching just to see the trainwrecking with your own eyes, it’s not “So Bad It’s Good” since it’s not intentionally funny (at least not intentionally funny enough... Terry and Rugal do chew the scenery and try to have some fun, but Mai, Iori, and Kyo take everything so seriously it kills that fun. If it had a few more nods to the game or some more actual jokes it might be ’so bad it’s almost good’ but at it stands it’s just not very funny.) but it’s not bad enough you’ll feel you wasted 90 minutes you’ll NEVER get back watching it like Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes or something.
If you can avoid getting SUPER pissed over the changes from KoF (here’s a test: Iori does not have red hair and is actually a pretty mellow guy.... okay, if your reaction is not “ARRRGGHH!!! But he’s a red head and psychopath!!!” you’ll be fine), the movie’s standard SyFy fair (actually better then standard SyFy fair since there’s no point when 30 minutes in they spend 45 minutes talking in one room) so if you like making fun of those you’ll ‘like' this and might even enjoy mocking the choices it makes with the KoF characters in what they kept and what they changed from the games.
So in closing:
If you can stream it, watch it.
It’s bad, but not ZOMG! AWFUL!, it’s worth forming an opinion on by seeing it with your own eyes rather reading reviews.
Blanka and Dan make for a most excellent tag image (yeah still not funny)
my silly little drawin's
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