How to crappify a francise: A tour with Tekken

The Tekken movie. Yes, the movie came out two years ago, and it's been a while since I decided to write about it. But somehow I couldn't quite do it. You know, because sometimes you really really want to like something. "Maybe it'll get better the second time you watch it", you think. Yeah, I'm an idiot sometimes.

It is a known fact that video game movies are doomed to be awful. A curse that can't be lifted. To be fair I think there are entertaining ones, like Mortal Kombat, DOA, the first Resident Evil (which however has not aged well), and yes I kinda liked Prince of Persia despite of...things. Still, most of the stuff we get is crap. And the gaming crowd must be the most optimistic people there is, since every time a new one is in town they're all excited to see how it turned out (unless it's a Boll production). The Tekken movie was something I waited, anxiously, as a fan of the games, and also because I honestly thought it would be done well. It was such an epic setting, such a simple concept. How could it fail? 

Well, quite easily actually. Just do all the wrong things.

Step 1. Add unnecessarily complicated plot elements

What is this I don't even

As you may know Tekken is a game about fighting. And an incredibly inbred community on the side. I believe most of us fans wanted to see some over the top ridiculous interpretations of the given backstories, total tongue on cheek experience with some impressive ass kicking as the meat in that awesomesauce. Something fun. You know, like the games. Pretty low on our wishlist were shady as hell technology-corporation-bullcrap and post-apocalyptic symbolism. Which we got anyway.

So, yeah. That's this movie. Our main character is, to no one's surprise, Jin Kazuma, who lives in a slum in some weird dystopian world, with his mom Jun. (Who is surpisingly well casted with Tamlyn Tomita, mind you.) During the first 15 minutes we lose Jun, who though later appears in the form of flashbacks to Jin. For a reason unknown Jin now wants to avenge her death to the Iron Fist tournament by... entering it. All right. And so he does that. And he fights, wins, gets his revenge, meets a girl, unites the opressed people, you know the drill. Jin is the man.

It's not a bad plot itself, that heroic rags to riches one, although definitely soooo overused. I just can't wrap my head around why the futuristic fallen society and the Umbrella crap had to tag along. Is there actually someone keen on such clichés? It’s not very interesting, and it brings nothing at all to the plot. It's simply a cheap motivation to achieve the equally unoriginal revenge part without much effort. It's such an attention hog too, as it takes all the room and glory from the fighting. Even in the middle of the fights we just have to zoom in to some evil scheme being planned in the back or some shit. So what we get is the fighting forcibly connected to Jin's plot, as he is the Bambi, Jesus and Rocky in all this, while Huge Heihachi heads cover the earth, there's underground movements running around pressing money and listening to Beatles, et cetera. It’s all very weird in a bad way.

And guess what, Tekken didn't need any of that nonsense. There's enough plot lines already. You could have made five movies with the existing content itself. The content that's been build up for almost 20 years. Look no further than Jin's own family. You remember what a magnificent bastard Heihachi, Jin's grandfather was? If you don't, a brief case note straight from Wikipedia:

"In an attempt to eliminate his son's "weakness", Heihachi tossed Kazuya, his then 5-year old son, down a deep ravine, claiming that if he were truly his son, he would be able to survive the fall and climb back up. To further motivate Kazuya, Heihachi adopted Chinese orphan Lee and raised him as a rival to his true son. After Kazuya had traveled abroad and became an undefeated champion, the 52-year-old Heihachi announced the King of Iron Fist Tournament in order to test him. Kazuya won the tournament, tossed Heihachi off the same cliff and assumed control of the Zaibatsu.”

Who's the homicidal madman? You are!

Not enough drama for you there movie? Nope, since none of that or other Teken lore is present here. In fact, Heihachi’s a good guy. Not even kidding. This Satan's hairstyle adapted grandad is actually cuddly now. And like many others, we don’t see him fight. He's just…there. Standing. Not killing anyone. Like any regular 76-year-old man who isn't Heihachi.

Step 2. Fuck up all the characters

She WAS a world-class assassin. In the games.

Now, people who made this movie, think about something for a moment. Why do you think people would want to go see a _Tekken_ movie? Why do you think there has been ten games with mostly the same characters? From the very first reveal of the movie Youtube was instantly filled with predictions about the characters and the cast. Fans seemed to have a pretty solid idea about the movie that way, and it was easy to see who the popular ones were. Thus, the whole meaning of the movie was to fans to see those characters brought to life. It's really quite that simple. Instead the movie producers once again decided not to find out who the fans wanted and made some very interesting choices.

To me the picks are random to put nicely. I mean who cares about Miguel? And why such new characters like Christie, but no old and loved like Xiaoyu, King or Paul Phoenix? Sure they're plenty fan favorites still, but that's not, still, necessarily better. See, gamers are sometimes quite conservative, they don't like changes with no explanation. So if you're a film maker and want to experiment with the original material, don't do it with a game adaptation! 

One of the predictions I'd loved to see: Chiaki Kuriyama as Ling Xiaoyu.

For first, there are whole lot of people (in addition to Heihachi) that don't do anything. Steve Fox looks good and is present, but uh-oh, he’s not into fighting anymore! He’s a life coach now. Yes, he’s Jin's pal, but not actually teaching any moves to him (how could he, as a boxer). No, he’s more of a “you can do it” sorta fellow. Nina and Anna Williams appear with very little motif or screen time, except to show their "other talents". Nina is also completely butched. I'm sorry, but she is. One of the most memorable characters of Tekken now looks like a porn star in a bad rubber suit, and is played by Maxim girl Candice Hillebrand. And the totally not funny part is, Maxim already did Tekken before, and it's about the same level of quality than this. And Anna. Poor Anna doesn’t even get to fight, so she just cheers for her sister from outside the ring. A proud day for strong female characters indeed.

Speaking of which, Christie Monteiro is our female lead. Wow, a skilled capoeira fighter, I can't wait what she brings to the mov... 

Asscrack pants. Powered by Female Armor Industries.

Oh. Umm. Yeah, so there's Christie. She was a capoeira fighter in the game like Eddie, but I have hard time seeing any of that in this movie. I'm sure it's there. Somewhere. And she's white. Not as white as Kristin Kreuk as Chun-Li, but whiter than the Christie in the games. I'm pointing this out because it actually was a huge big deal to the fans that Christie wasn't potrayed by someone a bit more exotic, since she's supposed to be Brazilian. Comments like "Hollywood is racist" spawned immediately. Same comes with her romantic relationship with Jin, since they couldn't stand each other in the games. Again something they just decided to do because they needed a romantic interest. Roger that.

What comes to Jin's father, Kazuya, that's were they really messed up. Nothing wrong with the actor, but oh boy oh boy, that character. Like this wasn't a cliché after a cliché anyway they had to make him PURE EVIL. No explanation. And he couldn't even have been with Jun like a normal person, he had to rape her. Of course. 

Why do I wanna say... "Kali Ma"?

Step 3. Make sure the main focus sucks

Didn't he have a sword?

And now to the good part: fighting! Which, I'm sorry to tell you, isn't much. Instead of fight scenes we get to experience a lot of talking, some fucking, and that goddamn corporation shit. Exciting! Seriously, let me count the fight scenes for reals.

1. Jin versus Marshall Law. Jin wins.

2. Raven versus Eddy Gordo. Raven wins.

3. Jin versus Miguel. Jin wins.

4. Christie versus Nina. Christie wins.

5. Jin versus Yoshimitsu. Jin wins.

6. Bryan Fury versus Sergei Dragonov. Bryan wins.

7. Jin versus Bryan. Jin wins.

8. Kazuya versus Jin. Jin wins.

That’s eight fights (of 16 fighters) of which 5 consist Jin, 2 Bryan and massively 9 other characters including Kazuya as the big old baddy. To consider Jin’s fight moves are pretty similar, so it’s not very eventful nor interesting to watch him most of the movie. Also, I’d really like to understand how this works. The fighters are selected randomly, yet the winner continues on (mostly because the loser DIES). Jin gets to fight 5 times, once with Bryan who defeated Sergei. Well Christie won Nina, where’s the rest of her opponents? As usual women fight women only, unlike in the game, but isn’t it slightly pathetic that if they’re no more than two women in the tournament, you only get to fight once? No chance of winning there either I suppose, since both Bryan and Kazuya are off the charts finalists. Logic remains absent in Tekken the movie in so many ways.

Even Anna is confused.

In addition to styles, were signature moves really too much to ask for? I mean why the hell not? Too much trouble to find out what the characters actually do? You casted a guy for Yoshimitsu, and there's none of his cool stuff on screen. What, too unrealistic for your fancy schmancy corporation setting? Of course, you are only making a movie of a fighting game where Pandas are accepted to tournaments... Still the worst of all sins is that the fight scenes don't even last that long. Jin's match with Miguel? 30 seconds. Nina vs. Christie? Approximately 50 seconds, of which half is shots of people's faces watching the fight. So yeah, if you think eight matches is enough, think again. That barely counts as a warm up.

The fight scenes suck partly because of the characters suck too. For some reason they chose such fighters and styles that I personally can’t tell any apart. The original games had loads to choose from, such as sumo (Ganryu), Taek Won Doo (Hwoarang), and several different boxing, kung fu, aikido, kempo and judo variants, all really imaginative stuff. What we see now is the Kazuya's karate, Yoshimitsu’s ninjutsu and sword fight, and Fury’s rage attacks. And for some reason still, there’s BOTH of the capoeira fighters in this movie. That is totally unbalanced. What's the point? If you wanted Christie to be in the center role she is, why not cut Eddie and make Christie do all the impressive stuff she's supposed to do. I'm sure you could've found someone who knows their shit. They don't even interact in the whole movie, so make your goddamn pick. Unless it's the pants you wanted to cast.

I'd rather a little Hwoarang anyway.

Step 4. Profit!

Or no. It bombed, of course, barely beating Postal with $967,000. The cost of the movie however was astonishing $30,000,000. I'm not quite sure if they accidentally ate the money or if it was thrown off the cliff by Heihachi. Maybe the ten thousand times of Jin's mom appearing Mufasa style was especially costly. However I do know this movie went straight to DVD and that's where it's been for the last two years. As much as I'm hoping someone to reboot this properly, I'm not going to hold my breath. The games rule, I'm sticking with the games. This movie blows and deserves to exist only as another warning to others who will try to film a video game movie, again. So back the fuck off, film makers, you're trying something that can't be done. Leave the games be.

Although there are worse things... Dear god are they worse.