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Street Fighter 2: The Animated Movie, as it was originally known, concludes with an advertisement. Following the closing credits, we're told of a forthcoming live action movie based on the same game. "JEAN CLAUDE VAN DAMME" it exclaims in monolithic all caps, before revealing, with almost childlike boastfulness: "NOW FILMING IN HOLLYWOOD". Capcom's bragging notice, usefully included in this remastered re-release of the 1994 film, provides valuable context. Here is a game-maker riding a crest of popularity, now promoter to a clutch of video game characters who have broken out of, not only their home country, but also their medium. Street Fighter's going to Hollywood. Imagine.Time - the only critic whose judgement ultimately matters - has since proven Capcom's enthusiasm to have been largely misplaced. Van Damme's Street Fighter: The Movie was a critical and commercial failure and, by the end of the 1990s, audiences had largely tired of fighting games in general and Street Fighter in particular (the series would subsequently lie dormant for almost a decade). Nevertheless, Street Fighter 2: The Movie offers a snapshot of a company enjoying the formidable self-belief of the young up-and-comer. There's a skittish energy to this anime, the first feature length movie based on Ryu, Ken and the rest of Street Fighter's world warriors. It's a film infused with the passion of a creative team that believes in its subject matter and is eager to show off its cast.
Directed by Gisaburō Sugii, one-time animation director on Osamu Tezuka's seminal Astro Boy in the 1960s, the film's light plotline barely provides a cogent link between the fight scenes that fill the bulk of its near two-hour running time. M. Bison, the crimson-suited leader of the world's largest crime syndicate Shadowlaw, is tracking martial artists to capture and brainwash before sending them out to assassinate key political figures.
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