Theme: Computer Game Adaptations

There are many great action movies adapted from popular computer games including Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Tekken, Sonic, etc.

Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever (2002) – Antonio Banderas, Talisa Soto and Lucy Liu

Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever (2002)

Upon seeing the stars, and seeing genre, and seeing how this movie won awards for being so bad, I couldn’t help but think critics must have been over-reacting. Maybe they’re not real action fans, I thought. Then I saw it for myself, or at least as much as I could tolerate. Not that I didn’t like the actors, or the genre, but it’s like one big acid trip. It’s like nobody’s doing thir job. It’s like everyone’s on something, and not really trying to make a good movie. I feel like I’m wasting my time watching this stuff. It’s so bad, I had to stop early. Very early. Like barely more than 20 minutes in. I skipped ahead to see if anything seemed to be improving, and it didn’t; so as much as I’m a huge fan of Antonio Banderas and Talisa Soto, and don’t mind a bit of Lucy Liu either, I simply couldn’t force myself to watch this tripe, it’s a waste of my life – well, most movies are, but this one particularly stands out in that regard.

Not that everything about this movie is bad, because there are some good attributes here and there. But the vast majority of the script, the acting, the sound, the integrated cinematography, the general atmospherics & momentum, the screen combat, and pretty much anything else I can think of, is like something you might expect from a college kids’ assignment. Minus a faint whiff of proper stuff here & there, particularly in how it’s packaged; it’s basically a B movie, and I don’t watch B movies. Well, it’s not a B movie per say, but it’s just as bad as one. I rate it Barely Watchable. That’s not to say you can’t watch it at all – it’s just to say I can’t watch it unless I’m utterly bored to the maximum. For once, I agree with the mainstream movie critics. It’s as if this movie was made as an April Fools prank. Roll up, roll up, there’s a respectable action movie here. Gotchya! Maybe some of the actors were pranked into being involved too. It really is that bad. Even the title is a mess – it sounds like it’s a sequel to something but it isn’t – it was just released to co-incide with the release of a computer game by the same name, which itself was a sequel to an earlier version of that game called (Ecks vs Sever). The game itself was a big hit for Game Boy Advance consoles, even if the movie itself is unanimously deemed one of the worst movies ever made in its genre at that budget level.

How on earth could it have a $70 million budget and end up like this? I guess it was generously sponsored to promote the game, then made in a hurry with cost cutting and money laundering.

Other action movies made in 2002 include Equilibrium and The Transporter – both awesome movies, on budgets of only $20 million and $21 million respectively. 2002 also saw the release of The Count of Monte Cristo which wasn’t so heavy on the action and didn’t have such big names but was a seiously captivating movie nevertheless, on a budget of $35 million. When you up the budget further, you get movies like The Scorpion King on $60 million starring The Rock, and The Bourne Identity on $60 million starring Matt Damon which spawned a massive 5-movie franchise.

There were also some super massive action movies in 2002, including Spider-Man and Star Wars: Episide II both boasting budgets in excess of $100 million. But $70 million is still a very serious budget so it’s quite shocking just how badly this movie turned out to be in practically every department.

Honestly, before looking it up, I was thinking maybe some spoilt rich kid was treated to the opportunity to direct a movie with such stars as Banderas, Liu and Soto involved. After looking it up, it turns out the reality isn’t terribly far from this theory. It was produced & directed by Wych Kaosayananda (under the alias Kaos) – he’s the son of a politican, who hadn’t directed any English movies before (only one Thai movie called Fah, 1998), and after this he took a 10 year break from the movie business altogether (to learn his craft perhaps?) but to his credit, he came back with some moderately respectable movies such as Tekken 2 (another computer game adaptation) which was a slight flop but was still more than watchable – I quite enjoyed it, as a former Tekken game enthusiast, even though it veered massively off-genre compared to the original Tekken movie and what would be expected of any film adaptation.

Battleship (2012) – Taylor Kitsch, Liam Neeson and Rihanna

Battleship (2012)

This movie is allegedly based on the Hasbro game called Battleship although it doesn’t seem overly affected by this.

The first half an hour is dedicated to building the backstory, although it doesn’t go far into the past – it’s all fairly recent history. This part of the movie has a bit of mild action and a bit of lighthearted drama – nothing too serious, and mildly entertaining. It’s pushing the miliary angle quite hard, but aside from that, it’s not a bad start to the movie – decent actors, decent cinematography, decent props, decent budget, etc.

Liam Neeson plays a US Navy admiral, and Rihanna plays a petty officer – they’re both strong supporting cast members but neither of them are the main character in this movie. The true star of this movie is Taylor Kitsch (with vibes like a cross between Chris Pine, Tom Cruise and Charlie Sheen) who plays Lieutenant Alex Hopper – a troublesome young Navy officer whose higher ranking brother, Commander Stone Hopper, convinced him to join the Navy for discipline purposes, but it didn’t quite work out. He’s about to be kicked out of the Navy pretty soon, but then something happens which changes everything.

On the first half an hour mark, things really kick in, and this movie becomes quite exciting, as alien ships find their way to Earth, and the whole thing is depicted with a good level of realism – well grounded yet with good cinematics, without skimping on budget. It’s actually quite creative and smart in its depictions of alien technology, and the visual special effects are pretty strong. The music and sound effects are strong too. Hollywood went all out with this one, in a conservative way. They seem to have been playing with a non extravagant budget and succeeding in being emotive without being soppy or projecting beta-male vibes, thus appealling very well to kind of people they’re probably trying to win over – to recruit into the military or at least think positively of it.

There’s also a good level of mystery sustained for some time from this moment on. 20 minutes later, Alex Hopper becomes the highest ranking officer in charge of the last remaining destroyer in a weird twist of fate since he was on the verge of being kicked out of the Navy – now all eyes and pressure are on him.

On the 1 hour mark, we meet these alien creatures up close & personal for the first time – not just their spaceships or communications or weapons technology, but we see the face of one of them. Hopper gets touched on the forehead by one, and their minds exchange thoughts for a few seconds. Then their friends come and extract the captured injured alien, but Hopper already knows their intention to take over the world, which gives him a new lease of life to prevent it.

Some of the best moments include when they take out an alien ship by shining sunlight in their eyes; when the last destroyer sinks and they man an old battleship with the help of some old veterans; when they sail that battleship with fancy manoeuvres to trick the aliens before taking out their mothership; and when the friendly jets appear at the end to save them from dying, since they’ve already managed to take out the mothership controlling the forcefield. Although it’s an incredibly one dimensional concept – very minimal in terms of plot – this movie still succeeds in entertaining very well, pretty much from start to finish, at least for those who haven’t seen it before recently enough to remember roughly how it goes. It does of course offer very little for rewatchers who can’t wait long enough to forget the key features of the simple storyline.

With all this in mind, I’m going to rate this a Decent movie – just one level down from the likes of Thor which has a more elaborate plot. This puts it on a par with the best James Bond movie ever made – The Living Daylights – from an action hero movie junkie’s perspective. Because I can’t think of a more powerful Navy oriented action hero movie in modern times. But I caution against rewatching it too soon because the appeal will be massively reduced that way, due to the extremely one-dimensional plot.

Tekken II: Kazuya’s Revenge (2014) – Kane Kosugi and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa

This is a strange movie – 20 mins in and we’re still following around the life of a guy who doesn’t remember anything about his past. He’s played by Kane Kosugi, who wasn’t in the previous Tekken movie (he’s most recognisable as Scott Adkins’ adversary from Ninja II) but based on the name of this movie one might guess he’s the replacement actor for Kazuya Mishima – Heihachi Mishima’s son and Jin Kazama’s father. Not only has he completely forgotten where he is and who he is etc, but he seems to have a bomb implanted inside his chest and if he wants to live he needs to follow the orders of a strange man who calls himself The Minister (played by Rade Šerbedžija) who runs a cult of assassins all bound by the same threat.

It’s not until 25 minutes in that we see the familiar face of Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa who played Heihachi Mishima in the last movie, that the plot appears to be beginning to very slowly unravel. And when I say very slowly, I’m not exaggerating, since another 25 mins later we’re still none-the-wiser as to who this guy is and how he came to be in his current situation.

It’s not until near the end of the first hour that we finally learn, beyond doubt, that the lead character who we’ve been following around for nearly an hour, who’s lost his memory, is indeed Kazuya Mishima, when he remembers the location of his old apartment suite – he asks the receptionist what name he checked in under, and heard he used the initials K M. That still leaves a lot of unanswered questions, but at least we’re making progress since it’s already two thirds of the way through the movie. The big reveal doesn’t actually happen until 10 minutes before the end of the movie, and even then it’s not a big reveal – it’s bare minimum to keep the air of mystery going even beyond the end of the movie.

One thing’s clear though – this movie has a very different genre to the original Tekken movie, which had a much faster tempo and practically none of this slowly unravelling mystery vibe. It works quite well here though – it stays quite intriguing from start to finish, if you’ve not seen it before or at least can’t remember how it goes. The general standard of production, the quality of the action scenes, and the power of the mystery factor are all quite effective here. The acting isn’t terrible either.

It’s quite good from an educational standpoint too, for those who can read the subtle undertones and can already see the synergy with the kinds of methods used by shady agencies to control people in the real world. When I say quite good, I mean it offers a basic level of something to think about, minus the usual warp factors, which is refreshing.

Having said that, there’s still such little going on here, that I can’t fairly rate it on a par with the original. Especially when it comes to rewatching this movie – if you have any memory of what’s going on, that already leaves practically no substance left to enjoy upon rewatching it. For this reason I have to rate it Below Average but only just. There are a lot of respectable movies in & around this kind of rating, so I wouldn’t call it a failure per se – it’s just not something to be recommending too much.

The lead female in this movie – a fellow assassin called Rhona Anders played by Kelly Wenham – has the constant facial expression of a tantrum-throwing teenager, and the voice of a middle to upper class Brit trying to talk like a commoner, so typical of domestic British TV dramas. She’s also built with a stronger frame than the lead male – very butch, no finesse, just like her voice – as if she comes from WWE, and the other females in this movie are no different – this theme hasn’t changed since the first movie. The other main woman in this movie is the landlord of a cheap hotel, called Laura, played by Paige Lindquist, who has a quiet and alluring demeanour but is still physically butch enough to overpower the lead male.

Tekken (2010) – Jon Foo, Ian Anthony Dale and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa

This movie begins looking like a poor level of production, as it starts to build the backstory of the dystopian world where the lead character, Jin Kazama – played adequately by Jon Foo (with vibes of Justin Chatwin from Dragonball Evolution the year before, or Michael J Fox from Back To The Future) – is constantly evading law enforcement just to put good food on the table.

When Jin’s mother dies, about 20 minutes in, and he enters the Iron Fist tournament in the Tekken estate that rules America in this dystopian world, the movie starts to come alive. In his trial to become the people’s champ, he fights Marshall Law (played by MMA champion turned moviestar Cung Le). In this bout we see many classic movies from the Tekken video game series, both on Jin Kazama’s side and on Martial Law’s side.

Naturally, people who used to play the Tekken game are going to be more into this movie than those who didn’t, and I used to be pretty good at Tekken 3 back in the day, but I quit playing PlayStation games when I became an adult! As a teenager and a master of fighting in Tekken I used to think how my life would be so much better if all the time spent mastering Tekken were spent mastering martial arts moves in real life instead. I did eventually get very good at martial arts in real life and I don’t have any regrets about quitting the PlayStation in my late teens – if anything, I should have quit computer games altogether including PC games which I wasted a lot of time on in my 20s & 30s. These days, in an effort to make better use of my time, I limit my gaming to a little bit of simple, timeless, non-addictive games like Chess (especially the Crazyhouse variant), and even Chess can be a waste of time according to arguably the most talented player of all time, Paul Morphy, who quit the game at an early age after famously saying something like “the ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman; the ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life”.

Anyway, back to the Tekken movie. The fight scene energy is generally pretty good on top of being quite true to the characters’ signature moves in the game.

I haven’t generally been a fan of Luke Goss in the lead role of action movies – he just don’t seem convincing enough – but his role here as Jin’s old-school street-smart manager suits him very well.

If not for its extremely simplistic plot, and its generally mediocre level of actors, this movie could have easily been several levels better, but as it stands, it rate it Bang Average, and that’s even a bit generous considering its poor rewatchability until you’ve almost completely forgotten how it goes.

Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa does a decent job as Heihachi Mishima, leader of the Tekken empire until his son steals the throne, and his son Kazuya Mishima is played quite well by Ian Anthony Dale.

The lead female, Christie Monteiro, with whom Jin gets quite close, is played by the pretty but butch Kelly Overton who based on her physique, appearance, dress style and demeanor, I’d have guessed had a background in pro (pretend) wrestling. She’s not a bad actress and in terms of star power she’s probably a good match for Jon Foo, if not a little overpowering.

Sequel

If you enjoyed this movie, don’t miss its only sequel, Tekken II: Kazuya’s Revenge (2014) which is a different kind of action movie altogether, but still quite enjoyable if you’ve not seen it before or don’t remember how it goes.

Mortal Kombat (2021) – Lewis Tan

Mortal Kombat (2021)

This movie gets off to a dark, gritty start that’s quite hard to watch; but this may be a necessary evil to build up towards what happens later in the movie. It’s definitely focused more on the gritty side, than the coolness, compared to the original, but it makes use of modern sound and visual effects for a deeper impact than the original movie from 1995 which was very cool but lacked seriousness, depth & grounding. This movie has a generally higher quality of production than the original, even if a less cool plot, and it has a higher quality of acting generally, even if the characters are less funky. Overall there’s a much more serious tone this time round, but that doesn’t mean it lacks cool effects, it’s just very careful and conservative with their use, and makes a real statement any time the special effects come out.

Throughout the first half hour this movie’s plot develops nicely – it gets increasingly intriguing and you end up kind of hooked. By 25 minutes in, things have become quite clear – we can see who the star of the show is, and some of the other main characters, and what general direction the movie is taking.

45 mins in, things get a bit dark & depressing again. The dark patches continue to be mixed in with uplifting elements for a good half an hour until everyone fights and the lead character’s powers come out for the first time, which is closely followed by the same thing happening to his comrade Jax, then things start to get quite exciting again. The lead character in this movie is not Liu kang this time, although he is a major supporting character here. The lead character this time round is Cole Young (played quite well by Lewis Tan) – a descendant of Scorpion whose entire bloodline was thought to be killed by Sub-Zero but one baby remained, looked after by Raiden, then Scorpion came back from the dead to help his descendant defeat Sub-Zero in the 90th minute, helping to create an epic final battle.

The cast is comprised of a mix between strong, weak and mediocre actors. Strong actors here, aside from Lewis Tan in the lead role, include Joe Taslim playing Sub-Zero very well, and Hiroyuki Sanada playing Scorpion quite well too. Josh Lawson also does a decent job as Kano, and Mehcad Brooks is not bad in the role of Jax.

Raiden (leader of the good guys), Shang Tsung (leader of the bad guys), Liu Kang (good guy) and Sonya Blade (good girl) are all key characters here too, but their respective actors didn’t impress me. Random stuntmen could have probably done their jobs just as good if not better.

Considering its strengths and highs, I’m going to rate this movie generously, scoring it Pretty Good, which puts it a couple of levels above the original – a serious accomplishment. Now imagine if the four key characters listed above had much stronger actors playing those roles – I’d have to rate it even better, and it would be pretty close to the level of the best action movies ever made.

Mortal Kombat (1995) – Christopher Lambert and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa

Mortal Kombat (1995)

Based on the very popular video game called Mortal Kombat, which at the time was in hot competition with Street Fighter, this incredibly cheesy movie is a classic combination of slightly cheap and very catchy. It’s no blockbuster and has no A-lister stars in lead roles (although the beautiful Talisa Soto (from Licence To Kill) plays a minor role here, as Princess Kitana) but it does have some very suitable cult icons in major roles such as Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa who plays the main antagonist (a sorcerer called Shang Tsung), and Christopher Lambert as Lord Raiden who is a mostly back-seat leader of the protagonists with outstanding magical powers but limited scope for using them (also spelt Rayden to avoid copyright issues with a 1990 arcade game called Raiden by Tecmo).

This movie is slightly one dimensional, as any movie would be on a less than blockbuster budget, and since it’s made in the 90s its CGI effects look cheap by today’s standards (don’t miss the remake from 2021); but this movie still does a pretty good job at sustaining attention by following a fantastical storyline, being consistently action packed, and having frequent bits of good humour in the intermittent quieter moments.

If you’re old enough to be a fan of the old Mortal Kombat video games, you’ll be extra fond of this movie series in a way that more recent generations just won’t understand.

Considering its unique balance of strengths and weaknesses I could make a case for rating this movie anywhere between Bang Average and Pretty Good, but we’ll go for Above Average in this instance, where it sits right at home with a lot of similarly super cool and very busy but somewhat shallow movies.

Everything lacking in this movie, such as modern effects and a bit more grounding, is kind of present in the 2021 remake, however, that movie lacks much of the cheesy iconography and coolness of this one. If we could somehow combine the best of both of them, we could easily end up with one of the best action movies ever made.

Bear in mind also, the role of Johnny Cage in the video game was originally intended for Jean-Claude Van Damme, but he ended up going elsewhere and eventually did a deal with the main rival video game Street Fighter and appeared in the film adaptation of that game alongside Kylie Minogue (who many years later he admitted to having an affair with during the making of that movie). Their chemistry was great and the movie was fun and the Street Fighter video game was kind of the more dominant one, but when it came to the movies, the Mortal Kombat movies were by far the best, so maybe Van Damme picked the wrong side! Anyway, Johnny Cage in this movie was played by someone seemingly random (Linden Ashby) with a bit of kickboxing type experience but nowhere near Van Damme’s physical talent or charismatic star power. He’s still good fun, but he’s no Van Damme.

Talisa Soto kind of stole the show here with her beauty even from her minor role and without a strong dance partner, while aside from that, Lambert & Tagawa stole the show with their incredibly cheesy charisma. Lambert especially is probably what’s most memorable about this movie. The special effects behind the likes of Raiden, Scorpion, Sub-Zero, Reptile & Goro are pretty good too, for a mid 90s movie. Their outfits are pretty good too. And the theme tune music is outstanding, when it appears, but it doesn’t appear often enough or varied enough for my liking – it’s an outstanding concept that deserves to be expanded on and utilised more in this movie, but this is only something proven by its long-running cult following over spanning many decades – it was probably not something so easily provable and commercially justifiable at the time of making this movie.

Other cast members include Robin Shou who played Liu Kang – probably the main protagonist here; Trevor Goddard who plays Kano, one of the antagonists, responsible for luring Sonya onto the boat and into the tournament; and then there’s Bridgette Wilson who plays Sonya Blade, a special forces operator who unwittingly ends up on the team of protagonists defending the realm of Earth.

Sequel

While Mortal Kombat (1995) was a generally respectable movie with a touch of B-movie cheese; its immediate sequel Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997) looks more like a straight B-movie. Continuing from the story at the end of the original, at first it’s nice to see the beautiful Talisa Soto returning in a more significant role here, but she’s kind of landed in the sh*t with this one. It’s a shame to see her lower herself to being present in this level of production – the cinematography is thoroughly unclassy and the script leaves much to be desired this time round. Literally none of the other actors returned except Robin Shou as a mediocre Liu Kang. I guess Lambert and Tagawa were either not interested or couldn’t be afforded, and that should tell us all we need to know about the quality of Annihilation. Considering how Lambert kept making the Highlander movies until they became unwatchably bad, it should come as no surprise that this movie is really quite unbearable at times since he’s been replaced by James Remar, who is not really a bad actor per se, but doesn’t have Lambert’s funky touch. I couldn’t help but fast forward through the very monotonous parts of this movie, of which there were many, thus I have to rate this one Barely Watchable, which is a massive step down from the original which I rated Above Average due to its impressive coolness on top of its respectable production level.

If you really want to enjoy another good Mortal Kombat movie, don’t miss the modern remake from 2021 which is no worse than the 1995 original. Don’t even bother with Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997) if you ask me, just give it a miss.

Street Fighter (1994) – Jean-Claude Van Damme and Kylie Minogue

Street Fighter (1994) is more of a light-hearted fun movie than what we normally get from Jean-Claude Van Damme. It’s not strictly a comedy, but it has some great moments of humour. The violence is also toned down, making it more suitable for children. It’s like a cross between a classic Van Damme movie, and something from Marvel or DC universe.

Raul Julia (who played Gomez Addams in the Addams Family movies of the 90s) does a good job as General M Bison, the larger-than-life cape-wearing comicbook-style supervillain with tech-based superpowers (fighting ability, tesla beams from hands, automatic self revival kit, flying boots, etc). Apparently, he wasn’t sure about the role until he mentioned it to his kids and saw the look on their faces – they were very excited because they were keen players of the Street Fighter video game. Raul Julia even had stomach cancer while filming this movie, and died within 6 months of the movie’s release date. He turned up to filming while very underweight, which he pretended was due to getting sick while filming in Brazil recently. The writer & director Steven E De Souza (who wrote many massive action movies of the 80s and 90s including Die Hard, Judge Dredd, Commando, The Running Man, etc) moved all but one scene of Raul Julia’s forward to give him time to gain weight.

Ming-Na Wen does a good job as Chun-Li, the reporter with secret ninja skills, on a vendetta to take out the supervillain.

Many other cast members also give decent performances here.

Van Damme and Kylie

The main hero of this movie, Colonel William F Guile, is played quite well by Jean-Claude Van Damme. His sidekick, Military intel officer and aide-de-camp, Lieutenant Cammy White, is played quite jovially by the beautiful Kylie Minogue (in her mid 20s) who Van Damme had an affair with while making this movie – something rumoured for a long time, which he eventually admitted to publicly in 2012.

Van Damme and Kylie made a lovely couple, so it’s sad that they never stayed together, although it wasn’t practical since he was married to the model & stripper Darcy LaPier (in her late 20s) who was pregnant with his son Nicholas at the time. Darcy was also credited with a minor role in this movie, allegedly playing “Guile’s date”, although I didn’t spot where this was in the movie – maybe it didn’t make the edit I saw. Van Damme’s relationship with Darcy also began as an affair while she was married to Ron Rice (founder of Tropic Thunder sun cream) and Van Damme was married to bodybuilder Gladys Portugues with whom he had two children and later remarried and is still officially with today (although simultaneously having long-term relationships with other women, most notably Alena Kaverina). So I guess, for Darcy, what goes around comes around. She cheated with a cheater, then got cheated on by him. Live by the sword, die by the sword! Anyway, back to the movie…

Street Fighter vs Mortal Kombat

It’s ironic that Van Damme took the lead role in the Street Fighter (1994) movie, which is based on a classic video game that began in 1987, when two years prior to this movie being released, an equally classic rival video game series called Mortal Kombat was created (in 1992) by a rival studio, based mainly on the idea of Van Damme being a key character in that game (called Johnny Cage). Van Damme turned down the role of Johnny Cage in the Mortal Kombat video games (which also went on to make some great movies), however the game still featured Johnny Cage who continued to be based on Van Damme (with a few small changes for legal purposes), then Van Damme agreed to take the lead role in Street Fighter! Maybe he regretted turning down the role in Mortal Kombat after seeing how popular it became, although he was stuck in a non-compete contract with a different video game, so I guess when he was free 2 years later he jumped at the chance to take on a similar role to what he missed out on. Unfortunately for him, while Street Fighter was a massive hit in the arcades, it was never based on Van Damme the way Mortal Kombat intended to be, and it was also never so serious about movies even though it made plenty of them. I may be biased as someone who played a lot of Mortal Kombat, and never Street Fighter, but as far as I see it, Mortal Kombat has much cooler and more memorable characters, making it far more crossover-friendly for the big screen.

In summary

All in all, due to it’s consistent albeit shallow level of entertainment value, I rate Street Fighter (1994) an OK movie, alongside most of Van Damme’s other movies, which generally all offer a respectable level of entertainment for fans of his work. It’s not quite pushing into the upper-average level of his filmography, where stronger movies like Inferno and Assassination Games exist, and it’s far from the higher levels of screenplay where rock solid films like Bloodsport, The Quest, Kickboxer and Hard Target are ranked. But it’s a mildly entertaining fun movie nevertheless.

Street Fighter (1994) cast including Jean-Claude Van Damme and Kylie Minogue