Transcript note: This transcript is based on the original working script. It may contain production notes, draft wording, spelling mistakes or other material that differs from the finished video - these scripts were meant to be spoken, not read.

Tekken is a long standing game franchise which burst onto the fighting game scene wit-h its fancy 3D graphics in 1994

So far there have been 8 main entries and a couple of spin offs along the way.

And - Like all good fighting game franchises that have been around for years - its story stopped making sense to all but the devoted some time ago.

The problem is, given its pedigree, it was really only a matter of time before Hollywood came knocking.

And - They tried to make it - sensible.

And the word “sensible” hasn’t been a concern in the games for a long, long time.

Let's take a look at, Tekken… The film.

[intro]

The games story is, well - ridiculous - But, deliberately so.

Corporate empires. Family betrayals. Gods. Demons. Cyborgs. Ancient Evil.

Bears for bodyguards.

It's nonsense, and - It's at peace with it - We’re just along for the ride at this point.

I could sit here and try to explain it but within a few minutes I’d be drawing diagrams and things, and - Well - Nobody wants that.

In 2009 there had been 6 main line entries into the series, but the powers that be chose not to base the game adaptation directly on any of them - It's more inspired by them as a whole.

The Tekken movie is set in 2039 - World War 3 has been and gone.

Governments have collapsed, megacorporations have taken over - They both run and rule the planet.

The balance of power is maintained through an annual tournament called the Iron Fist.

I mean - So far, so good.. Right?

Corporations, power and spectacle - Tekken - Yeah?

Well. No.

It’s not long before Tekeen is being reframed, not as mythology driven but more of a dystopian social drama.

It’s not Gods and bloodlines that we’re dealing with here - Everything supernatural or magical has been stripped out completely.

It’s slums, resistance movements, corporate policing and class divide - Average end of the world stuff.

Which - OK - It’s a bit more relatable for the average movie goer here…

But, it’s Tekken - This isn’t what it’s about - There’s enough run of the mill dystopian films to go around all ready…

Jin Kazama, a scrappy young courier living in the Anvil, a slum outside of Tekken City which is under control of the Tekkken corporation headed up by Heichachi Mishima .

Jin is making a living running contraband for resistance groups, but to the disapproval of his mother Jun.

Jun is raising her son as a single mother, she doesn’t take about Jins father and claims that he died some time ago.

She’s trying to teach him right from wrong - Warning him about the evils of the world and that kind of thing - She wants to keep her son safe, but he’s not making it easy.

Almost inevitably, It’s one on if his runs that he causes a bit of trouble - which results in a crackdown within the Anvil, corporate enforcers raid the slum and Jun is killed.

This, understandably, makes Jin - a tad angry.

He decides that he’s going to seek his revenge in the Iron Fist tournament and gains entry by entering as a wild card after beating disgraced fighter, Marshall Law.

And with that set up in place we enter into a film which bears very little resemblance to the story of the games it’s based on.

One of the main obvious problems the film has to deal with is the games roster.

In the Tekken games there are over 100 playable characters that have appeared at some time or other - Which is - a lot.

It’s pretty unrealistic to expect the film to bring in all of these characters in all honesty - And I don’t blame it for not doing - That’s a lot of baggage.

The film version features just 13 of these characters - Quite the drop

But again - Pretty understandable and it makes it easier than having to deal with Pet Pandas, Bear Bodyguards, boxing kangaroos and wooden training dummies that are brought to life that the game offers up…

So - Who are we left with in the film?

Covering the main players we’ve got;

Jon Foo as [Jin] - Primarily an actor, although he’s trained in Wushu and has worked as a Stuntman - He’d also go on to play Ryu in the much,much better Street Fighter Legacy.

Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa as [Heihachi Mishima] - A man who needs no introduction, and better known to fans of the genre as Shang Tsung in the far superior Mortal Kombat.

Ian Anthony Dale as [Kazuya Mishima] - Another actor you might know from his later work as Scorpion in the web show Mortal Kombat: Legacy

Kelly Oveton as [Christie Monteiro] - An actor first and foremost - which might explain why Christie feels more like a character in a dystopian drama than a capoeira specialist from a fighting game.

Luke Goss as [Steve Fox] - Former pop star turned action actor - and one of the few cast members here who had to act like a fighter rather than just be one.

Gary Daniels as [Brian Fury] - An English actor who has literally trained in Ninjitsu before trying his hand at acting

Darrin Dewitt Henson as [Raven] - An award-winning choreographer before acting - which makes sense, because Raven moves like a professional even when the script doesn’t.

Marian Zapico as [Anna Williams] - Primarily an actor - and unfortunately given very little to do beyond look the part.

Candice Hillebrand as [Nina WIlliams] - Model, Singer and actor but again, more surface than substance here.

Lateef Crowder as [Eddy Gordo] - And, if you’ve seen any film since 2005 featuring Capoeira, then Lateef was probably involved - He’s the real deal

Roger Huerta as [Miguel Rojo] - An actual MMA lightweight fighter - which explains why his fight scenes feel real… even if the character barely exists outside them.

Cung Lee as [Marshall Law] - Another MMA fighter - and probably the last person you’d want to meet in a real Iron Fist tournament.

Anton Kasabov as [Sergei Dragunov] - A US National Tae Kwon Do team member - more decorated than most fictional Tekken fighters.

Gary Stearns as [Yoshimitu] - A career stuntman with decades of martial arts experience - and the rare case where you don’t see the actor’s face, but you absolutely feel the physicality.

There’s little to no point in comparing the versions of the characters on screen - They are all technically represented correctly, but no real depth to any of them.

Nina is still an Assassin, but no mention of her relationship with Steve Fox for example, same with Christie and Eddy - Bryan Fury is more cyborg than zombie - And - Well, yeah - There’s more than a few details missed or glossed over.

What’s more surprising is the lack of some staples of the series.

Marshall Law is here, but he comes and goes quickly - Paul Phoenix isn’t in the film, just a mention that he’d already been knocked out of the competition - Various other fan favourites that I think could have been included aren’t either.

Heihachi is probably the biggest obvious change - Well - I say change, we don’t really get into the nitty gritty of it all but the film represents him as a man of honour if nothing else, mostly.

I mean - The games have him as a world class monster who throws his son off a cliff, not an old grumpy Grandpa figure.

And, sticking with that point…

The reason the games Kazuya survives being thrown off the cliff is the devil gene he’s got, and weirdly - For a film ignoring the supernatural of it all - Jin has the devil tattoo.

That tattoo is never really referenced other than an offhand comment about the curse of the Mishima bloodline from Kazuya - Other than that, it’s just - There.

And, no - Kazuya doesn’t have a scar on his chest from being thrown off the cliff either.

Few weird decisions overall methinks.

The Iron First Tournament of the film is a brutal affair, and it’s one that is gleefully broadcast into televisions around the world.

And, they are brutal.

There’s no special moves or powers, everyone is just really good at fighting.

And - I’ll give the film some credit here - The fights are worth watching.

With the actors in the film being mostly actual fighters or trained in some other way it means they all look the part when they’re flashing their moves off - BUT - Well, let’s just say that the acting part isn’t part of their natural talent.

It leaves some of the scenes rather - wooden shall we say.

Some of the sequences look physically punishing ,and where possible you can see some familiar movies from the game - which is cool

It’s particularly good to see Lateef Crowder as Eddy enter the arena and do his thing.

Some of the fighters however don’t fight in their trademark styles - Christie is more of a mixed martial artist instead of the Coperia style which she’s known for from the games - But, again - Her relationship to Eddie is never brought up and so it might have been weird if she did.

The whole set up of the Tournament is pretty well done actually - They’ve done their best to get the game's idea into film.

You see the fighters randomly selected on two big screens, reminding you of the character select screen - And even the different fighting stages are represented with props in the fighting arena.

I thought that was a neat touch to be honest.

All of this means that the film is simpler and easier to follow, but the nuance of it all is lost.

What we end up with is nothing more than a corporate coup film, Which is probably the safest - and least interesting - direction they could have taken.

Jin fighting his way to the top to take control of the corporation that killed his mother is admirable, don't get me wrong - But it's a far cry from saving the world.

It does eventually get revealed that Kazuya Mishima is in fact Jin's father after Heiachi lets the truth be known.

Jun was a competitor of the Iron Fist tournament herself once but Kazuya assaulted her and she fled to the Anvil to raise the resulting second heir to the Mishima corporation.

Kazuya, hell bent on not leaving Jin with any claim over his empire plots to have Heiachi removed from and to kill Jin.

When assasination attempts fail he then raises the stakes of the tournament to include fights to the death in the hopes that Jin is defeated.

Not that this stops Jin, he’s running on pure rage at this point and undeterred, Jin beats all obstacles in his path and wins the tournament.

And then, at the end - He just… Walks away.

Which, on some level, is a final slap in the face of fans…

… because if there is one coherent thread to the Tekken games it's that it's a cycle you can't walk away from.

Power corrupts. Violence repeats. Bloodlines matter.

Yet another core shifts the film makes from the games.

Just looking back at the basics, In the games - Heihachi is rarely the noble patriarch - he’s the architect of most of the misery.

The film flips that dynamic, simplifying a morally rotten family into a more straightforward power struggle.

Which makes the games Jin trapped inside a generational curse while the movie Jin is trapped inside a system.

It’s not technically wrong - As such - But it makes everything, well - Smaller.

The finale gives you a clean ending, and that's something the games never give you.

Well, kind of - There are hints that leave it open for the story to continue - And, there is an after credits sting which drops further hints about it all - But - It’s very unlikely we’ll see any kind of resolution to any of that now.

I think the most damning thing about the whole thing is that the creator of the games, Katsuhiro Harada publicly disowned the adaption - The whole dev team at Namco were kept away from having any input in the movie and how it was made and they weren’t happy when they saw the final result.

They were so angry at what they ended up with, they went so far as to have a CGI Tekken film, Blood Vengeance, made to do some damage control.

Not that it worked, or even mattered.

Blood Vengeance wasn’t exactly treated like the second coming of the Street Fighter animated movie and a few years later we got another live action film, Tekken 2 - Kazuya's Revenge

Which is actually a prequel - And managed to take the series even further away from the source.

Weirdly impressive - But we'll save that for another time.

The film version of Tekken wasn't made by people who hate the game, it's another example of an adaptation made by people who couldn't, or wouldn’t quite fully embrace what it was.

It’s frustrating on many levels - We’ve seen these things fail before with the live action Street Fighter film, and we’ve seen them get a level of success with Moral Kombat.

Which - Highlights the differences right there if nothing else.

The Namco developers were kept away from this adaptation and Midway helped set up the Mortal Kombat film - Says it all about what can happen if the right people are involved, really.

And yet, there they were in 2009 repeating the same pattern with both this movie and the Chun Li one.

I mean - Make it make sense.

And being fair again - Tekken looks right, it fights hard and it respects the surface.

But… Remove the madness and neuter the supernatural.

It just becomes another dystopian movie.

It's not terrible, it's just not faithful.

It's worst crime is that it's restrained.

Anyways - I’ve been Paul and this has been Pixels, Popcorn.

If you’ve liked this video then do me a favour and drop me a like, subscribe as well if you want - Or, don’t - I won’t be going anywhere.

Hopefully, I shall see you on the next Rewind.

Thanks for watching.