I'm not sure exactly what it is about fighting games that seem to inspire Hollywood studios to make movies about them time and time again. I mean, yes, people kicking each other in the face and shooting inexplicable fireballs at one-another can be fun to watch, but considering that most fighting game fans will tell you that the vast majority of fighting games have terrible, terrible stories, it just seems an odd genre to plunder for a story-focused medium.
Then again, when has Hollywood ever done anything that made sense? This is the same industry that thinks having Brendan Fraser star in a 3D movie about William Tell is a great idea, and continuing to give Kate Hudson work on a regular basis seems totally reasonable. And now they've gone and made a Tekken movie, because seriously, why not?
Though it was originally released in Japan back in 2009, it's just now coming direct-to-Blu-ray and DVD--natch--in North America this July 19th. According to the press release, Tekken seeks to take the corporately-run future dystopia of the games and shoehorn it into something with a plot about Jin Kazama hunting the evil Tekken corporation (not Mishima Zaibatsu, because that's kinda hard to say out loud a lot) who killed his mother something something revenge whatever fighting dudes.
Directed by Dwight H. Little, whose previous credits include the abominable Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers and some episodes of Bones, Tekken features a veritable who's who of "Oh, that guy!" cast members, including that one guy from The Event, the girl from The Ring Two, the bad guy from Blade II and Hellboy II, MMA fighter Cung Le, and Cary-Hiroyuki Togawa, who apparently didn't learn his lesson the first time around when he played Shang Tsung in Mortal Kombat. Jin, by the way, will be played by Jon Foo, who previously played Ryu in the Street Fighter: Legacy short film, and also has had a storied career getting beat up by the likes of both Tony Jaa and Batman in likely better movies.
The trailer for the movie can be seen below. Admittedly, its production values do look at least a cut above the glorious train wreck that was King of Fighters, though it seems lacking in the copious amounts of both boobs and Kevin Nash that so heavily factored into Dead or Alive. At the very least, it seems you'll have one more entry for your "Ironic appreciation of terrible fighting game movies" marathon night at next year's EVO tournament, Ryan has a new candidate for the next season of TANG, and I'm one step closer to that Time Killers movie I've dreamed about since the days of my misspent youth. I think Ryan Gosling would make a great Rancid.
== TEASER ==