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File:Street fighter(1).jpg
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"Something wrong, Colonel? You come here prepared to fight a madman, and instead you found A GOD?!"
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A Live Action Adaptation of the wildly popular Street Fighter series.

In the remote southeast-Asian country of Shadaloo, the power-hungry General M. Bison (Raul Julia) is trying to usurp power and take over first the country, then the world ("OF COURSE!!!"). To fund his megalomaniacal schemes, he's captured several dozen relief workers (who are totally not from the Red Cross), and is holding them hostage for the sum of twenty billion US dollars. It is up to the forces of the Allied Nations, led by Col. William F. Guile (Jean Claude Van Damme), to get in there, take out Bison, and rescue the hostages. And they have three days to do so before hostages start dying. His immediate subordinates include Lieutenant Cammy (Kylie Minogue) and Sergeant T. Hawk (Gregg Rainwater).

Ace reporter Chun-Li Xiang (Ming-Na), joined by former champion boxer Balrog (Grand L. Bush) and sumotori E. Honda (Peter Navy Tuiasosopo) are sucked into the action, while travelling con-men Ryu and Ken (played respectively by Byron Mann and Damian Chapa) conduct shady business deals with local Muay Thai legend Viktor Sagat (Wes Studi). They, along with the cage fighter Vega (Jay Tavare) are thrown in jail. Meanwhile, Guile's old buddy Carlos "Charlie" Blanka (Robert Mammone) is used in Dr. Dhalsim's (Roshan Seth) Super Soldier project, to turn him into a green-skinned, super powerful monstrosity. Eventually, all parties involved converge on Bison's base for the epic final showdown.

If you're even slightly familiar with the Street Fighter storyline (what little it has, anyway), you'll notice something seems a little... well, off.

The producers had some strange ideas about how to work the complex characters and storylines into the live-action production. They didn't get a lot of them right, to say the least.[1] The film is sometimes lucky enough to go in the So Bad It's Good category due to the late Raul Julia's portrayal of M. Bison, who took the job knowing he was dying of stomach cancer and let his children pick out which movie would be his last, and apparently wanted to go out on a loud note for his final performance. Unfortunately, there are plenty of people who don't think this was enough to save the movie and continue to insist it's so bad, it's just bad. Considering all the memes that stemmed from it, it's most likely a Cult Classic.

Aspects of the movie were expanded on in the cartoon Street Fighter, which came out shortly after the film.

It's also been shown on G4's "Movies That Don't Suck" block, while Chris Gore makes snide remarks over the end credits.

Fifteen years would pass before another live-action Street Fighter film would be made. What we got was an In-Name-Only Continuity Reboot called Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li. It was both a critical and commercial failure.


Street Fighter (film) is the Trope Namer for:
Tropes used in Street Fighter (film) include:
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M. Bison: "Ah, the road not taken..."

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Bison: "You dare to interfere?"
[beat]
Ryu: "...yeah."

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  • Bollywood Nerd: Dr. Dhalsim.
  • Brand X: The A.N., analogous to the United Nations.
    • According to the director's commentary, the U.N. threatened to sue the pants off the filmmakers if they portrayed them.
  • Calling Your Attacks:
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Cammy: "THRUST KICK!"

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M. Bison: "You still refuse to ACCEPT... my godhood? KEEP your own God! In fact, this might be a good time to PRAY to him! For I beheld Satan as he FELL FROM HEAVEN! LIKE LIIIIIIGHTNIIIIIING!!!"

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  • Colonel Badass: Guile.
  • Color Coded for Your Convenience: The A.N. Soldiers are clad in blue, while the Bison Troopers sport red.
  • Composite Character: Carlos "Charlie" Blanka.
  • Crazy Prepared: Bison has a life support system (CPR, defibrillator, adrenaline injection) built into his uniform. It comes in handy after Guile electrocutes him by kicking him into a batch of hard drives.
  • Creator Cameo: Capcom's CEO at the time (Kenzo Tsujimoto) makes a cameo appearance during Guile's speech near the end (he's the stout middle-aged Japanese guy who appears prominently in a few shots).
  • Deadpan Snarker: Dee Jay, oddly enough.
  • Death by Irony: Bison kills the captured A.N. soldiers in this manner.
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Bison: "You came from across the world to fight me, soldier. Now's your chance."

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    • Bison also attempts to kill the hostages in this manner by setting Blanka loose on them.
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Bison: "Your masters at the A.N. call me a wild beast. So be it. You do not deserve the martial dignity of a firing squad. You shall be killed by a wild beast!"

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"Pax Bisonica!"

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Bison: "Something wrong, Colonel? You come here prepared to fight a madman, and instead you found A GOD?!" [...] "You still refuse to ACCEPT... my godhood? KEEP your own God! In fact, this might be a good time to PRAY to him! For I beheld Satan as he FELL FROM HEAVEN! LIKE LIIIIIIGHTNIIIIIING!!!"

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  • Handy Cuffs: Chun-Li has her hands bound in front of her. It takes her about two seconds to snap the leather, leaving her with spiked wrist guards and Bison's ass to kick.
  • Heel Face Turn: Zangief at the end, after Dee Jay brags directly to his face about how he happily sided with M. Bison due to the latter promising him a massive fortune.
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"You got...paid?"

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Guile:: I'm gonna get on my boat, and I'm going up that river, and I'm going to kick that son of a bitch Bison's ass so hard that the next Bison wannabe is going to feel it!

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  • Hypocritical Humor: Chun-Li teases Cammy about her change in hairstyle toward the end of the movie, which Cammy responds with "Look who's talking!" Chun-Li looks up at her hairstyle and wordlessly concedes that Cammy is right.
  • Ignored Enemy: Ryu and Ken ignore their captors and have a brief fistfight in the prison camp, but it's a ruse to grab the keys to the lock.
  • I Just Shot Marvin in the Face: Notably averted in the scene when Sagat is making his weapons deal with Bison, everybody is keeping their fingers off the triggers and appears to be pointing the weapons away from each other (though of course, they are in a large room and it's unclear if they are pointing the weapons at anybody else.)
  • It Got Worse: This line is actually used by Ken when he and Ryu are lamenting their situation in Sagat's arms market, saying it can't possibly get any worse, right before realizing they're in the middle of a stand off between Bison's mooks and Sagat's mooks.
  • Kaiju: The battle between E. Honda and Zangief in the model of Bisonopolis looks like a Kaiju battle when viewed through a security camera.
  • Large Ham: Raul Julia's version of Bison is even more fondly remembered than Norio Wakamoto's portrayals.
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Cracked: "Raul Julia acted like his whole movie was a pantomime and displayed so little knowledge of the game that he probably thought a joystick was something you rented from a Thai ladyboy. But at least he was obviously enjoying himself. Raising the total number of people enjoying the movie to "one", or "One more than Legend of Chun-Li."

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"Had you worked together instead of against each other, you might have been successful."

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"FOR I BEHELD SATAN AS HE FELL FROM HEAVEN! LIKE LIIIIGHTNIIIING!!!"

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"Oh man. I should've stayed at Microsoft!"

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  • Recursive Adaptation: Had not one, but two video games based on it, both titled Street Fighter: The Movie, one for the arcades and the other for home consoles. Despite having the same title, they're not ports of each other.
  • Retired Badass: The movie's version of Sagat calls Vega "the greatest cage fighter since Iron Fist", adding, when asked, that Iron Fist "retired... and became me", where he is now the reigning kingpin of the criminal underworld of Shadaloo. The movie is true enough to his character that, in the final battle, he gets the chance to prove that he's still got it.
  • Rousing Speech: Guile's "We Can All Go Home" speech.
  • Sand in My Eyes: Or, as Cammy claims, tear gas.
  • Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right: On one hand, Guile did take out Bison in the end, but on the other, he disobeyed direct orders from his superiors and would very likely be court-martialed for military insurrection.
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"Well, I'm not going home. I'm going to get in my boat, and I'm going up that river, and I'm going to kick that son of a bitch Bison's ass so hard, that the next Bison wannabe is gonna feel it. Now who wants to go home, and who wants to go with me?!"

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  • Shock and Awe: Bison uses this against Guile in their final battle.
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  Bison: "This is merely Superconductor Electromagnetism."

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Bison: I was hoping to face Guile personally on the battlefield. One gentleman warrior to another, in respectful combat. Then I would snap his spine.

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  • Yeah! Shot: The film ends with the heroes striking poses similar to their victory poses from the game shortly after Bison's fortress blows up.
  1. Then again, this was at the time when the series was still in its infancy and hardly had any information on the characters, let alone the story.