Skip to main content

DTV Madness: Tekken!!!!

I think the first Tekken game came out when I was just hitting my teen age. Although a few of my friends got really into the game, I just couldn't muster the same love for the game. Even before it was released, I was raised on Street Fighters and Mortal Kombats — not this no-fireball nonsense. To its credit, Tekken had a really deep, technical and intensive combat system, but I guess I just preferred something easier... plus, I liked fireballs and fatalities.

It seems as though there is going to be a triad of bad movies based on fighting video games. The gauntlet was laid down last year with release of the box office smash hit Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li (cue sarcasm). Not to be outdone, Namco answered the challenge with Tekken and SNK also threw their name into the hat with The King of Fighters, which should be out soon. But let's talk about Tekken.

Tekken takes place in a futuristic Earth, where the continents are taken over by corporate entities. We follow a young fighter named Jin Kazama as he seeks to avenge the death of his mother, killed by an evil group led by one Heihachi Mishima, who also happens to be president of the Tekken Corporation. However, in order to get to Mishima, Jin needs to enter a tournament held by the Tekken group — a tournament to find the toughest fighter in the world.

Now, I don't know the Tekken canon very well, so I'm not too sure if the story followed the game's story closely or not. It's pretty much a straight up action movie with a few cheap twists along the way. The tournament element of the movie made it really similar to Mortal Kombat, in that our hero needed to enter himself in in order to get to the big boss. Speaking of Mortal Kombat, Cary Tagawa who played Shang Tsung in MK also played the big boss in Tekken. If only he played M. Bison in Street Fighter, he could have completed the set.

Bryan Fury VS Jin Kazama!

The movie is filled with a handful of characters from the video game and thankfully, doesn't make the mistake of over-saturating it a la Mortal Kombat Annihilation. Many of the characters though have little significance to the story other than being fodder for the next fight sequence.

So as per DTV standards go, I was quite entertained with the movie. The movie was action packed and hardly let its guard down. The movie clearly used some small sets, but they did well with the budget they were given and it ended up looking pretty good (again, as per DTV standards). We don't get many cyber punk movies nowadays, especially in the mainstream and I thought it did a good job of adding a bit of that element to it.

What can I say? I was entertained. I enjoyed it much more than I did with last year's Street Fighter and I think it's mostly because they kept the story simple. So give me a simple story, throw in some action, mix in some cheesy dialogue and at 80 minutes, you can't go wrong. King of Fighters, let's see what you've got! Til next time, later geeks!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

THE ARTIST!!!!!!!

The Artist is director Michael Hazanavicius ode to the silent films of yesteryear. Not only focus on a silent movie actor and movie making, but it in itself is also a silent movie. The movie follows a silent movie actor named George Valentin through the rise and fall of his career. At the start of the film, we see George as this superstar celebrity; he loves the glitz and glamour of being a famous actor and soaks in all the attention he can get. He loves having his photos taken and being adorned on the front pages of newspapers. He is THAT kind of celebrity. At the premiere event of his latest movie, he bumps into one Peppy Miller – a young woman with big ambitions and dreams in Hollywoodland. The lives of the two intersect and an attraction immediately blossoms. The romance could only go so far as Valentin is a (happily?) married man. George’s superstardom reaches its height at a precarious time. And as the 1920s are ushered out, so are silent movies. The new decade brings w...

Finally, the Xbox 360!!

So as I mentioned in a previous post, I received an Xbox 360 for Christmas from my dad. A great present it was! I've had 3 weeks to enjoy it so I guess I can give you my impressions of it now. First the controller. In truth, I haven't felt a controller this comfortable in my gaming life before. As a child who grew up on the 8-bit generation, with just a directional pad and 2 buttons, there was quite a learning curve getting used to using two analog sticks at the same time. You might say, "Hey Lam, how bout the PS2? You have that machine, and that has analog sticks". True, but of the twenty or so games I have for that, all of them used either only 1 analog stick, or allowed the option to switch on to the directional pad. Using 2 sticks at the same time was at first just uncomfortable. This made for all sorts of trouble as I was playing Gears of War . Luckily for me, I had computer controlled teammates that watched my back. I love the Media Center capabilities...

The League of Denial (2013)

The topic of concussions in sports is a dialogue that’s been growing the past number of years.  Do a search on ‘concussions’ and ‘football’ and you’ll get several thousand hits on the controversy that’s surrounded the sport.  It’s a challenging topic as the research is all relatively new, and the topic itself challenges the mentality and philosophy adopted by football loving Americans.  Now, I’m not a fan of football or NFL but when I saw this book lying at the local bookstore, my interest was piqued.  Although I’m not a fan of football, those that know me know that I’m an unabashed fan of prowrestling.  Talks about concussions are also quite a hot topic even within the prowrestling sub-culture.  Earlier this year, one of the hottest wrestlers of the current era, Daniel Bryan, retired early at the age of 34 due to a history of concussion related issues.  Interestingly, he was not permitted to return to the ring due to the disapproval by WWE’s medic...