goddamn, that a very enjoyable, goofy movie. a live-action cartoon through and through. Honestly, i wouldn’t have it any other way, everyone in that franchise is a cartoon character.
I was skeptical David Dastmalchian, who usually plays subdued characters could have the charisma to be M. Bison but fuck, he does. He plays Bison as a sinister weirdo pervert well. He’s got political power enough to rule a city? country? City-State? it’s unclear but his quest to get Psycho Power is what makes him dangerous. He’s trying to look calm and reasonable but he’s a brute with extreme cruelty just under the skin.
LOTS of fun nods to the game visually and aurally that i greatly appreciated. it wasn’t like “Guile quotes his win quote” it was more like “This shot looks like an ad you’d see in a magazine for Street Fighter 2, but it’s live action”. i really liked that.
It’s not my movie of the year but it’s edging out *checks notes* Resident Evil… Huh.
Had to return to work on Wednesday after a week off, so was looking for something mindless to zone out to on Tuesday evening so I didn’t have to think about going back and ended up settling on Final Destination Bloodlines, as I didn’t end up seeing it on release. It ended up being pretty much exactly what I expected, which wasn’t a bad thing!
Predictably enough the plot and family drama is paper thin and unconvincing, but does the job of holding the set pieces together well enough, and for the most part the deaths are a lot of fun! Everyone involved clearly had a lot of fun putting together sequences full of fakeouts and subversions, with some genuinely funny twists like the football → face sequence happening in the background to an unexpected character, and the long wait for Chekhov’s vending machine to pay off.
Compared to the setups, the actual deaths this time around felt oddly one-note, with almost all involving heads being smashed - I guess it’s suitably gross, but I’d have liked a little more variety like previous entries.
Also, was delighted that the irritating child in the opening sequence wasn’t spared!