The SNK franchise finds itself with a tomato can entry rather than a championship contender.
What They Say:
Tournament of legends.
From the acclaimed action director of The Medallion and nonstop fight sequences from the team behind Ninja Assassin and X-Men: Origins, The King Of Fighters is a stylish, hi-octane live action film based on the highly successful video game franchise. The surviving descendants of three legendary clans are transported to other dimensions to test their martial arts skills against an evil force that seeks to invade and overrun the world as we know it.
The Review:
Audio:
The feature carries with it two audio track options-5.1 and 2.0- for its original English dialogue. The 5.1 track was used for the viewing and it is fairly standard and goes through all the motions required and while it never quite reaches exceptional levels in quality it doesn’t fail to convey sounds either. Dialogue is clear and there were no distortions or dropouts noted during viewing.
Video:
Originally produced in 2010 the feature is presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic display. The encode is one that by in large helps carry the video as shot and it contains grain, noise, some blur, dot crawl, and a really odd distortion band/line at one point. None of these elements is a major determent and the colors and blacks are presented fairly well, though the movie really doesn’t require a really spectacular level in its presentation.
Packaging:
The DVD cover features an image that shows off three of the main characters of the feature. Front and center is Mai Shiranui as she wears a short black dress with Kyo Kusanagi to the left of her and the villainous Rugal Bernstein to the right. The back cover features images from the feature along with the copy and technical specs. The feature also comes with a slipcover that uses the DVD cover for its back image while the front uses a steel looking background with the movie title prominently displayed and the names of three of the lead stars at the top. The case itself is a standard DVD one and the DVD itself uses the steel look from the slipcover and a stylized King of Fighters logo.
Menu:
The menu keeps with the video game feel by splitting the four options up as a pair on each side that replicates the look of a video game fighting screen that has a character profile in the corner and a pair of double meters (stamina and spirit) above. I’m a sucker for this type of menu and while it isn’t a perfect replication its presence against a steel looking background that has an oval in the center which shows some images from the feature is absolutely brilliant and in keeping with the spirit of this feature.
Extras:
This feature contains no extras.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The roots of the King of Fighter (KoF) series date back to two previous games from production company SNK, and the titles themselves are almost as old as the modern fighting game genera which was born from the stunning success of Capcom’s Street Fighter II in 1991. Despite a long pedigree and characters that have become iconic among game enthusiasts the SNK titles have never really had a lot of luck catching on with mainstream gamers as some other titles have, which is a bit of an odd thing given they have had a few pairings with the much better known Street Fighter series a couple of times.
Given this less than red hot following it shouldn’t be surprising that the King of Fighter movie wasn’t given a big budget studio push like Mortal Kombat or (the regrettable) Street Fighter Hollywood films but that alone doesn’t spell success as Street Fighter showed. Over the years the KoF franchise has built a storyline for its titles that could prove fertile ground for the title in the right hands, but unfortunately for KoF the franchise seems to be incapable of catching such a break.
One of the hardest things for a movie based off a fighting game to do is come up with a way to have the characters face off that comes across as natural for the movie but doesn’t break the game format either. King of Fighters does this by introducing the viewer to a world accessible through special Bluetooth headsets that allow combatants to pair up and fight in environments of various types and temperatures. The audience is introduced to this from the start as Mai Shiranui exits her shower to find a challenge waiting for her. Upon accepting she finds herself fighting in a frozen locker against a familiar opponent looking for revenge and dressed far more for the occasion than Mai, though his luck isn’t any better this time around.
Mai exits the fight victorious and gets dressed to find her date, Iori Yagami waiting for her. The two are headed for an event that is to show off a rare collection of items from three ancient clans that are rumored to contain great power, though most people don’t believe this. One of the few who does though is Rugal Bernstein who crashes the party and tries to make off with the artifacts. It turns out that the tournament has a long history most won’t believe but one which Iori and Rugal know all too well is real.
In truth while many of the participants believe that the KoF tournament is made possible by technology its roots are in the mystical powers that three mystic treasures posses and the dark power they keep sealed. Thanks to a stroke of luck it turns out that one of the artifacts is a fake and so Rugal doesn’t have all the tools he needs to take control of the dark power, but he does have enough to hijack the tournament and ambush unsuspecting fighters who now find themselves either being turned to his side or finding that their life is on the line.
Mai is sent off on a quest with Iori to try to obtain the last treasure but the road won’t be easy. The final treasure is held by a man who is a blood enemy of Iori-and things only go downhill from there as secrets of tournaments past become peeled away and even long term allies may become threats to the whole world. Along the way a group will be formed that tries to stop Rugal’s plan- a group whose names will be familiar to KoF fans even if their movie motivations aren’t- as Mai and Iori find themselves allying with CIA agent Terry Bogard and Kyo Kusanagi, the last surviving member of one of the ancient clans who established the tournament who doesn’t know what fate has in store for him based on his bloodline.
Adaptations generally draw a groan from their fanbase certain that the product will be horrible and in some cases, like video games, the groan tends to go beyond just the series fans. It doesn’t have to as in most cases as many games have stories and action but when it comes time to adapt it takes a real skillful touch to change a narrative and help a franchise appeal to a large audience. King of Fighters doesn’t really manage to pull this off, though it certainly looks like it tried at parts.
The basic problem with the feature is the script- part of it feels like an attempt to use an existing franchise and insert it into a new idea, which can work if an audience has an open mind but may have the hardcore fans screaming bloody murder. And that isn’t the only issue as KoF’s script seems disjointed, as if it wanted to be a film that the franchise fans could embrace minus some major changes (like Mai’s wardrobe) but also wanted to present itself as more than “just” a fighting game adaption film. This result leads to some much more convoluted attempts at deep writing than the feature was able to pull off and it also leads to long scenes where one just wants the story to move along. That Kyo is so poorly developed as a character sure doesn’t help either given the role his character is expected to play later in events (and also not helped by him being played by an actor who doesn’t look anything like the man who is supposed to be his father either).
Then there is the action. Some of it is really, really well done but a few pieces are so poorly choreographed that it loses all semblance of suspension of disbelief. This may be a result of some of the actors not being quite as skilled as others as well as some rather poor choices of camera position that help undercut the illusion that the format can give when it comes to spatial distances and proximity that many, many films rely on to sell certain moments.
This is all a bit of a shame as with another go through story editing it could have been better than the final result. Perhaps with someone who had a clear vision of what they needed as opposed to someone who it seemed was trying to pull off a balancing act between what fans might want and what either the non fan might want or the producer suddenly desired the product would have been much improved. There are plenty of pieces here that might have made for a decent- though not necessarily large mainstream audience attracting- feature but it often feels like a village stew where so many different elements are dumped in that it is hard to make a cohesive product. That the budget was gone by the time they reached post production and all they could come up with for the “terrifying evil” was a graphic that is more likely to inspire laughter than fear or awe certainly doesn’t help.
There are also some good (and some average) performances put in by the cast but no one came across like they were either spending the movie paycheck in their head or counting the days till the feature wrapped. In a few cases it probably wasn’t entirely the actors fault as the script didn’t give all of them a lot to work with in terms of developing their character. Also on the annoying note was making Terry a CIA agent- fine, you can do that but then having him operating in the States. While the CIA makes for a good bogeyman or hole card its power-and those of its operatives in the US- is seriously limited and it kind of adds another layer of things the audience must accept to suspend disbelief on an already impressive-and growing- pile.
In Summary:
King of Fighters is a feature that was probably destined to be either a lower budget film that had a small theatrical run or went straight to video but its execution made it a fait accompli as to the route it would take. It has a better production value then one might expect from a direct-to-video release but some unfortunate effects and a script that can’t decide if it wants to be really deep and faithful to the source material or spend time as a popcorn flick and so it trips over itself often. It likely won’t appeal to existing fans of the franchise due to changes and martial art film fans will discover that while it has some decent action they may wish they had obtained one of the films shown on the trailers available on the disc instead. It isn’t exactly bad (and certainly it doesn’t come out the other side in the “so bad it is good” category), but the time spent muddled looking to try to lend credibility to the plot instead of solidifying things works to trip up the momentum of the feature when it should be building to the payoff.
Features:
English 2.0 Language, English 5.1 Language
Content Grade: C-
Audio Grade: B
Video Grade: B-
Packaging Grade: B
Menu Grade: A-
Extras Grade: N/A
Readers Rating: [ratings]
Released By: Well Go USA
Release Date: July 26th, 2011
MSRP: $24.98
Running Time: 93 Minutes
Video Encoding: 480i/p MPEG-2
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 Anamorphic Widescreen
Review Equipment:
Samsung 50″ Plasma HDTV, Denon AVR-790 Receiver with 5.1 Sony Surround Sound Speakers, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080.
