Five Awful Films Based on Great Games

It is fair to say that Hollywood and video games is not a marriage made in heaven. For every Pokemon; The Movie there is a Prince of Persia. Cartoon based fodder will always fair better, even Sonics hoggy hubris appealing to those still kicking it 2D style, but real action releases still fall way short of anything less than disappointing. So to that end we have five of titles that are majestic in their moribund of mistakes and manhandled mirth…

5  – Street Fighter

Capcom

Released: Dec 23 1994

Cost To Make: $35,000,000

Box Office: $99,423, 521

The daddy, the boss, and the big bad wolf himself, Street Fighter has to be the first entry in the list, coming in at number five.

Van Damme’s Street Fighter may rank high in the minds of those who care as the standard bearer, the de facto fall guy called upon when required to give evidence against the film industry in its handling of games and their licence. An unanimous travesty, it speaks much of how highly the film is thought by being both loved and hated for the same things and in equal measure.

Having Kylie jump about a bit helped and Gomez gurning his best M. Bison every time the camera even threatened to look at him never loses its appeal through repeated viewings; his delivery one of an actor who took one look at the hand-delivered turd wrapped in one hundred dollar bills held in the hands, shrugged, and snorted his way to the final boss fight.

From a Balrog more ball-sack than boxer and a Blanka straight out of a PDSA appeal video for Aids-riddled Pugs, the studio behind the script seemingly had ‘bad guy does bad stuff…’ as an outline before knocking off for the rest of day.

Setting such high water marks in the pantheon of cinematic tie-ins, it opened the floodgates for any director with enough clout to buy a license and enough sense to employ only those actors who clearly have no idea what the hell is going on. An entire sub-genre was created of rubbish films that were inspired by the cult following Street Fighter garnered. Hadoken!