TEKKEN(2010)
(Directed by Dwight H. Little)
"Grr......Tekken......Fan......Rage...."- Signed by MartialHorror.
Plot: A young warrior enters a martial arts tournament in order to avenge his Mother in a post-apocalyptic future where corporations run everything.
Review:
As of yet, “Tekken” hasn’t been released in the U.S because of it being a severe bomb in Japan and no one liking it. It asks the question: Why can’t video games adapt into (good) movies? In many cases, there is no business for an adaptation. Whoever thought that “Super Mario Bros”, as great as the game is, would make a good movie had to be a freaking moron....or on drugs, which would be fitting as I also suspect the makers of the game had to be on drugs as well(mushrooms make you grow!). In most cases, especially older games, there was never much story for filmmakers to work with. Most of the fighting games got it the worst. The “Street Fighter” movies sucked the most and “DOA: Dead or Alive” was pretty lame too. I actually liked “Mortal Kombat”, but my love of that movie is only rivaled by my hatred of “Mortal Kombat 2”. More recent non-fighting video games tend to do better(“Resident Evil”, “Silent Hill” and “Prince of Persia” have actual fans), but few people think any of these films are ‘great’. “Tekken” is a unique case for me. While I’ve played many of those other games, I only did so casually. I am a HUGE Tekken fan. As fun as the actual fighting is, I simply became attached the characters and their situations. Yet as lame as this movie sounded, I couldn’t deny that I felt “Tekken 5” and “Tekken 6” disappointed me. They resurrected characters that didn’t need to be resurrected, made formerly important characters into comic fodder(Kazuya and Heihachi’s endings….yuck) and it felt like the series just lost its balls. So I am fairly disillusioned with the franchise as of now, and am open to the fact that this live action movie probably will change a lot of shit.
It still pissed me off.
Instead of tallying up what this movie does differently from the games, it’s easier to list what it didn’t change. Um, there is a tournament and Jin is out to avenge his Mother…..Er, that’s it. Many characters appear, but they come from ALL the games and are all out-of-character. The film begins with exposition that society collapsed, the Tekken corporation created by Heihachi Mishima(Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) somehow takes over and he creates the Iron Fist Tournament…..which serves some purpose that I don’t understand. It's all televised though. Outside of “Tekken City”, everyone else is poor and bitchy. The story follows Jin Kazama(Jon Foo), who makes a living stealing Tekken equipment. He stupidly fails to realize that the syndicate, irritated that their shit is being stolen, bugs the equipment and tracks Jin and his allies down. Jin is one of those “It’s not my fight” protagonists, which pretty much means that it will become his fight after a loved one is killed(clichéd much?). His loved one happens to be his Mother, Jun(Tamlyn Tomita), who is killed by the Tekken syndicate under the order of Kazuya Mishima(Ian Anthony Dale), son of Heihachi. Yeah, Kazuya works under Heihachi now…..grr....Jin enters the tournament under the guidance of Steve Fox(Luke Goss) and romances Christie Monteiro(Kelly Overton) . But when Kazuya decides to usurp Heihachi and Jin learns that not only is Kazuya his father, but that he is the product of Kazuya raping Jun, he decides to get vengeance…….or more vengeance, considering he was there to get revenge in the first place...
............DOES THIS SOUND A DAMN THING LIKE THE VIDEO GAMES?!
I suspect that director Dwight H. Little and screenwriter Alan B. McElroy read Wikipedia to learn about the characters and story, watched the controversial anime movie, but then got the timelines confused and the characters confused and THEN decided: “Let’s take all of these characters and make them complete opposites of what they were in the games”. Everything about EVERYONE is wrong. Jin is shown to be a rude, arrogant, jackass who cheats on his girlfriend with Christie. Funny, as Jin barely refuses to acknowledge women in the games. Kazuya is also shown to be a ladies man, screwing both Anna and Nina at the same time. Anna and Nina are sisters who in the games are fierce rivals, constantly trying to kill each other, but THEY SHARE THE SAME GUY IN THIS MOVIE. Kazuya is also a subpar fighter who just wants his Father’s love and attention……..Even though in the games, Kazuya WON the first tournament and hates his Father because Heihachi is a psychotic asshole who threw him off a cliff……..They made him out to be like Lee from the animated movie here. In the movie, Heihachi is shown to be a noble warrior who respects strength. In the game, he is possibly the most evil character as he started everything, trying to kill his son, grandson and trying to steal their devil genes(which isn’t in this movie, but I can understand that). Steve Fox in the movie is a retired boxer who presumably fought in the events that “Tekken 2”(game) was based off of, but he isn’t introduced in the video games until “Tekken 4”, AND HE’S NOT RETIRED! Don’t even get me started on Christie being Jin’s love interest, despite the fact they’ve never met and based on the events of “Tekken 6”, she probably hates him(to be fair, I think the game came out during the production of this film). As the perfect representation of this movies failure, it’s references that Paul was defeated by Marshall Law in 28 seconds……Paul is one of the STRONGEST characters in the damn games, being Kazuya’s equal……….Even apparently defeating Heihachi, Jin and Ogre(first form) in “Tekken 3”… 28 SECONDS!? GARGH!
There is one thing I liked about this though…..I’ve always felt that in the games, it makes more sense if Kazuya raped Jun. After all, what do we know? Jun is supposed to be purity incarnate, so it seems odd that she’d sleep with someone she probably only knew for a few days(at most; it’s never said how long these tournaments last). While Kazuya still has a good side, we know that is gone by “Tekken 4”, suggesting that Devil(whom he sold his soul too) did beat Angel(his good side incarnate). Finally, Jun features in Kazuya’s ending(or was it Devil's?) in “Tekken Tag Tournament”, but not vice versa. In fact, I’ve always found the image of Devil picking up Jun and flying away to be immensely creepy(In Jun’s ending, she just appears to Jin). Some have argued that she doesn’t look like a rape victim in her “Tekken 2” ending, but she also doesn’t look like she lost someone whom she cared about either(plus, I doubt Namco considered Jin’s existence yet). Namco has skirted around the issue, probably knowing they wrote themselves in a corner(notice that while Kazuya references Jun in “Tekken 6”, he doesn’t explain anything) , but I do respect the movie for having some balls there……..Although I can imagine that many fans will be furious for it. I have a feeling that Harada(the director of the franchise) will cop-out and prove me wrong for "Tekken 7"(since Jun might return) as he's done in every game since "Tekken 4'", but that would just be poor writing.
To complete the scripts attempts to be nothing like the games, the director makes sure to create the opposite visual style that the games had. The games were epic in scope, with the fights taking place all around the world. The movie’s battles take place in a very claustrophobic arena, and whereas the games were usually bright, the movie is very darkly lit. This makes the film very hard to watch at times. The sad thing is that the fight choreography is very good. The fights are pretty intense, dynamic and fun. It’s just too bad Dwight mucks it up. When the fights happen, he seems more interested in disorienting us. When directing fight scenes, directors should just let them happen with as little interference from the camera or editing as possible. Here, he just throws every trick he can at us: Zoom out, zoom in, use a hand held camera so everything is moving around, cut to a new angle, zoom in, zoom out, shake the camera up and down, cut to a new angle, etc. One of these happens about every second, so the fights are almost impossible to focus on. Add to that the immensely murky lighting and one scene having FLASHING LIGHTS, the director completely shot himself in the foot, taking away what could’ve been the films saving grace.
Much to my surprise/horror, I’ve actually liked some of the works by the director and screenwriter. They did “Halloween 4”, which is in my opinion, the best sequel in that franchise! I guess that was a fluke………
Even on its own, this isn’t a good movie. Now don’t get me wrong, I won’t deny that my fan status is probably making the experience worse. Scratch that, it IS making the experience worse. But my fan status isn’t the only thing working against the picture. It just happens to be a very shoddy movie. The film whores flashbacks like mad crazy, with plenty of random inserts of clips that would happen before or after the current scene, suggesting they didn’t have enough material to make a full length movie so had to pad it out. It’s also funny how the script constantly contradicts itself. The opening shot begins with Jin about to fight Brian Fury(Gary Daniels; Brian is the only character who was done right), which doesn’t technically happen until late in the movie. So the whole thing appears to be Jin’s flashback(as he’s also narrating the opening scene) , but the ending has it being narrated by Christie, suggesting that she’s telling the story. Either way, there are plenty of scenes that neither could’ve been privy too. I also love how Jin open’s the film stating that “every year is a tournament. It’s no game, it’s kill or be killed”(I’m paraphrasing), but Christie says “Tekken is not about killing or being killed” and Kazuya is the one who institutes that they must fight to the death near the end of the movie, so the ‘kill or be killed’ aspect is not yearly as its new and Christie says the exact opposite anyway…It's bizarre. The film really is an exercise of incompetence.
I will say this, the actors really don’t do a bad job and it is fun to see so many people I recognized. I was like: “Hey, Brian Fury was in “The Expendables”! Jun Kazama was in one of the “Karate Kid” movies! Marshall Law was in “Pandorum”!”. It was fun to see them, not to mention fairly respectable guys like Luke Goss(he was the villain in “Blade 2” and “Hellboy 2”) and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa(he was the villain in “Mortal Kombat”). While some of the acting is amateurish, I have hope for all of them, including John Foo and his weird accent that sounded part Asian, part English, and part like he was trying to cover up his part Asian and part English accents…..I don’t blame the actors as much as I blame the writer.
If I weren’t a fan of the video games, I might be indifferent to “Tekken”. It’s a movie where the bad stuff pretty much cancels out the good, making a movie that most people will probably forget instantly. It is technically better than “Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li”(a movie that also raped its source material). However, if you’re a fan of the source material like me, you’ll probably hate it. If you want a more faithful adaptation, watch “Tekken: The Motion Picture”, an anime OVA based on the games. The sad thing is, that also took plenty of liberties with the source material and is not a very good movie. But at least it resembled what Tekken was supposed to be about….
Violence: PG-13 worthy. It can be pretty violent with its fights.
Nudity: Christie’s ass-crack is hanging out the back of her pants……Man, the costumes in this movie make no sense in the context of fighting. They all look like they're wearing Halloween costumes based off their characters.
Overall: “Tekken” isn’t worth watching because it's a subpar movie at best, meaning the only people interested will be fans of the game. Yet they will be the angriest! It's not the worst video game adaptation, but I certainly despite it the most!
1/4 Stars