Let's be real for a second: Hollywood is out of control. Everyone complains that they don't have any new ideas, but that's not even the problem. The problem is that they don't give a shit. Plenty of adaptations are good, but even when studios aren't churning out adaptations that are totally doomed to failure (Battleship, The Emoji Movie, this Settlers of Catan horseshit), they drown their adaptations in apathy-induced incompetence. Remember the D&D movie?
There was NO REASON for that to be as bad as it was. D&D is just a straight-up, middle-of-the-road fantasy world, and there are MILLIONS of good fantasy movies. Some of them even won Oscars! Somehow, though, Hollywood reduced the single most famous fantasy brand in history to a tacky rubber-costume laughingstock.
Or remember Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li? If so, I'm sincerely sorry, because that's not a memory that anybody should have to live with.
I would rather main season 2 Nash for the rest of my LIFE than spend five more minutes listening to that Nash talk. If there was a god, every copy of that movie would've spontaneously exploded before it ever reached theaters.
The good news here is that there aren't any fighting game movies rumored at the moment. But, again, the bad news is that Hollywood is out of control. It's like Mal said in Serenity: "Sure as I know anything, I know this - they will try again." Maybe with a new franchise, maybe in the same cinematic universe with different actors - but they will try again. So, given that it's an inevitability, who should direct the next fighting game movie?
Mortal Kombat: Quentin Tarantino
Who better to capture the spirit of MK's maniacal, unhinged brutality than the cinematic master of ultraviolence, Quentin Tarantino?
It's not just that Tarantino makes bloody movies. Anybody with a camera and some raspberry sauce can film a dismemberment. Tarantino's gift is that he makes horrific violence fun to watch. When people in his movies get their limbs sliced off or have their heads turned into chunky salsa by a baseball bat, it's FUCKING HYPE. And that's exactly what an MK movie should be about: not just engaging in outrageous violence but reveling in it. If anybody can get an audience excited to watch a main character get literally torn in half, it's Tarantino.
Guilty Gear: Shinichiro Watanabe
If you had to construct a resume that would be perfect for Guilty Gear, it'd look pretty much exactly like Watanabe's: he's proven that he can craft a coherent plot in a creative universe, that he can construct visually compelling worlds, that he can do creative things with the medium of animation, and that he can film one hell of a fight scene.
Plus, as an added bonus, we'd almost certainly get to hear Yoko Kanno's take on the already-sick Guilty Gear soundtrack, which would be the best thing to happen to music in a long time.
Injustice: literally anybody other than Zack Snyder
Seriously, fuck you, Zack Snyder. You had your chance, and you blew it. Go away forever.
Tekken: David Leitch
So Leitch already played Terry Bogard in a KoF movie. It, uh. It could've gone better.
But that was before Leitch got a real chance to show what he could do behind the camera. In the years since KoF, he's made some seriously hard-hitting action movies. The fight scenes in John Wick and Atomic Blonde have all the high-tension, bare-knuckle ferocity of more realistic close-quarters combat, and that's also where Tekken shines. Unlike other fighters, Tekken doesn't have a host of zoners or trap characters, and it doesn't rely on cartoony graphics or complex meter systems. Tekken is supposed to feel more like an actual fistfight, where people who get knocked down don't always snap off a clever one-liner and then get right back up, and that just so happens to be the type of action that Leitch excels at filming.
Street Fighter: Joss Whedon
Street Fighter is a hard nut to crack, movie-wise, because its strengths as a fighter are weaknesses on the big screen. The cast is super-diverse, which gives players a lot of compelling choices - but the same thing makes it hard for a filmmaker to come up with a consistent tone or a sensible plot. The same goes for the characters' fantastical fighting styles: that's great for a game, but it's hard as hell to put on film without it looking suuuuuuper dumb. The very last thing you want in your blockbuster is a Ryu who actually yells HADOUKEN every time he throws a fireball, especially if he really tries to sell it - that's a cringefest waiting to happen. It's not even easy to pull off the look of Street Fighter characters in a movie. Ryu's bare feet are cool in a game, but they're kinda hard to take seriously for a whole feature-length film.
But d'you know who just had a smash hit by unifying a diverse group of goofy-looking fighters with totally absurd powers? Joss Whedon.
And remember, this was with no X-Men, no Spider-Man, and no Fantastic Four. If Whedon can pull off a hit with Marvel's B team, I'd trust him to take a crack at the most iconic fighting game franchise in history.
Something: Edgar Wright
I dunno what would be the best fit for Wright, but c'mon, the guy deserves to be on the list. Scott Pilgrim was basically a fighting game movie already, and Wright knocked it out of the park.
Maybe he could take on Skullgirls? Samurai Showdown? Divekick? There must be some game developer out there who would be willing to hand their fighter over to Wright.
But seriously, though
I think we can all agree that Zack Snyder should never be allowed near a camera ever again. I wouldn't trust that inept dickwad to film his own kid's birthday party, let alone a big-budget Hollywood movie version of a fighting game. Fuck. That.
There was NO REASON for that to be as bad as it was. D&D is just a straight-up, middle-of-the-road fantasy world, and there are MILLIONS of good fantasy movies. Some of them even won Oscars! Somehow, though, Hollywood reduced the single most famous fantasy brand in history to a tacky rubber-costume laughingstock.
Or remember Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li? If so, I'm sincerely sorry, because that's not a memory that anybody should have to live with.
I would rather main season 2 Nash for the rest of my LIFE than spend five more minutes listening to that Nash talk. If there was a god, every copy of that movie would've spontaneously exploded before it ever reached theaters.
The good news here is that there aren't any fighting game movies rumored at the moment. But, again, the bad news is that Hollywood is out of control. It's like Mal said in Serenity: "Sure as I know anything, I know this - they will try again." Maybe with a new franchise, maybe in the same cinematic universe with different actors - but they will try again. So, given that it's an inevitability, who should direct the next fighting game movie?
Mortal Kombat: Quentin Tarantino
Who better to capture the spirit of MK's maniacal, unhinged brutality than the cinematic master of ultraviolence, Quentin Tarantino?
It's not just that Tarantino makes bloody movies. Anybody with a camera and some raspberry sauce can film a dismemberment. Tarantino's gift is that he makes horrific violence fun to watch. When people in his movies get their limbs sliced off or have their heads turned into chunky salsa by a baseball bat, it's FUCKING HYPE. And that's exactly what an MK movie should be about: not just engaging in outrageous violence but reveling in it. If anybody can get an audience excited to watch a main character get literally torn in half, it's Tarantino.
Guilty Gear: Shinichiro Watanabe
If you had to construct a resume that would be perfect for Guilty Gear, it'd look pretty much exactly like Watanabe's: he's proven that he can craft a coherent plot in a creative universe, that he can construct visually compelling worlds, that he can do creative things with the medium of animation, and that he can film one hell of a fight scene.
Plus, as an added bonus, we'd almost certainly get to hear Yoko Kanno's take on the already-sick Guilty Gear soundtrack, which would be the best thing to happen to music in a long time.
Injustice: literally anybody other than Zack Snyder
Seriously, fuck you, Zack Snyder. You had your chance, and you blew it. Go away forever.
Tekken: David Leitch
So Leitch already played Terry Bogard in a KoF movie. It, uh. It could've gone better.
But that was before Leitch got a real chance to show what he could do behind the camera. In the years since KoF, he's made some seriously hard-hitting action movies. The fight scenes in John Wick and Atomic Blonde have all the high-tension, bare-knuckle ferocity of more realistic close-quarters combat, and that's also where Tekken shines. Unlike other fighters, Tekken doesn't have a host of zoners or trap characters, and it doesn't rely on cartoony graphics or complex meter systems. Tekken is supposed to feel more like an actual fistfight, where people who get knocked down don't always snap off a clever one-liner and then get right back up, and that just so happens to be the type of action that Leitch excels at filming.
Street Fighter: Joss Whedon
Street Fighter is a hard nut to crack, movie-wise, because its strengths as a fighter are weaknesses on the big screen. The cast is super-diverse, which gives players a lot of compelling choices - but the same thing makes it hard for a filmmaker to come up with a consistent tone or a sensible plot. The same goes for the characters' fantastical fighting styles: that's great for a game, but it's hard as hell to put on film without it looking suuuuuuper dumb. The very last thing you want in your blockbuster is a Ryu who actually yells HADOUKEN every time he throws a fireball, especially if he really tries to sell it - that's a cringefest waiting to happen. It's not even easy to pull off the look of Street Fighter characters in a movie. Ryu's bare feet are cool in a game, but they're kinda hard to take seriously for a whole feature-length film.
But d'you know who just had a smash hit by unifying a diverse group of goofy-looking fighters with totally absurd powers? Joss Whedon.
And remember, this was with no X-Men, no Spider-Man, and no Fantastic Four. If Whedon can pull off a hit with Marvel's B team, I'd trust him to take a crack at the most iconic fighting game franchise in history.
Something: Edgar Wright
I dunno what would be the best fit for Wright, but c'mon, the guy deserves to be on the list. Scott Pilgrim was basically a fighting game movie already, and Wright knocked it out of the park.
Maybe he could take on Skullgirls? Samurai Showdown? Divekick? There must be some game developer out there who would be willing to hand their fighter over to Wright.
But seriously, though
I think we can all agree that Zack Snyder should never be allowed near a camera ever again. I wouldn't trust that inept dickwad to film his own kid's birthday party, let alone a big-budget Hollywood movie version of a fighting game. Fuck. That.
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