A veritable hadoken of inclusiveness!

Oh don't you shake your fist at me
animatronic Goro, you know I'm right.

I don't want make broad statements like 'video games make terrible movie and TV adaptations,' but video games make terrible movie and TV adaptations. Pretty much all of them. In fact, I don't think I've seen a good one. Varying degrees of mediocracy yes, but not good. And I don't think it's so much a problem with video games necessarily, but rather with the fans. Yup, it's on us. Either the filmmaker is too faithful to the source material and you get something like Mortal Kombat which serviced the shit out of its fanbase, but was an unwatchable mess by anyone else.

Here, let this image bore its way into your
 nightmares for the rest of your life.

Or you get something like Super Mario Bros. which for some reason was about Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo running around a cheaper version of the set from Blade Runner shooting lizard people with a Super Scope 6. Also Dennis Hopper played King Koopa. You know, the fire breathing turtle dragon from the game? Yeah, except in the movie it was just Dennis Hopper in a suit. I...I mean, how did they screw this up so badly? In 1993 we would have paid to watch ninety minutes of footage from the game. I'm not proud of it, but there it is.

You can even put Michael Fassbender in an
adaptation of a poplar game with a good
story and it's still a disaster. So who knows?

Anyway, games are interactive experiences first, narratives second, if at all. And sure, sometimes games have pretty good stories. Stories that can work as movies or whatever, it's just that filmmakers usually skip those and try to adapt games that are popular rather than ones that lend themselves to a different medium. And that's what makes the upcoming live-action TV series based on Street Fight II particularly vexing. It doesn't have a story, it's twenty-five years past its peak popularity, and this is the third attempt to adapt it.

Third! And that's just counting the live-action tries. Yeah, there were two Street Fighter movies, the one with Jean-Claude van Damme, which you might remember and one called Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li which you absolutely do not remember. Here, check out the final shot from the van Damme movie:

"Yes, that's the shot we want to go out on. You know, because it leaves
the door open for a sequel. Like, is it the end? Or just the beginning?"

-Director Steve E. deSouza, shortly 

before being escorted off the lot

I mean, for real, look at this...

What's that old expression? Third time's the charm? Because I think we're going to have to retire that old expression. For those unfamiliar, the game, the movie and now the television series, tell the story of an international martial arts contest that also will somehow take down a super-powered dictator. How? Don't worry about it. The point is fighters from all over the world, ofter with ridiculous hair, compete in best two out of three brawls. For the winner? Glory. For the loser? Insert coin.

An engaging TV universe? What a novel
concept that literally everyone in the film and
television industries are imitating right now.

So you can see the game is just bursting with rich narrative possibilities. According to the producer:

"A particular strength of Street Fighter is the wide range of ethnically diverse characters and powerful women featured in the game...It will allow is to build an inclusive and engaging TV universe."

-Mark Gordon, President of Entertainment One 

on-wait, has he played the game?

I'm uh...huh...Look, I am one hundred percent behind bringing more inclusive and diverse casting to television, but we're talking about Street Fighter, right? Diverse, yes, but maybe not in the way Gordon hopes. I mean, the fighter from Brazil is a green electric monkey monster, Cammy's victory pose is her awkwardly turning to give the player a better look at her martial arts thong and Dhalsim...holy shit, Dhalsim...

India's fighter, Dhalsim, seen here wearing a necklace of human skulls,
taught a generation that yoga was the art of fire-breathing and teleportation.