Tekken: The Motion Picture

I'm a huge fan of the Tekken series, as well as of anime movies, so it was only natural that I would see this film eventually. Here's my quick take on it.

The Tekken video games, despite popular belief, have very deep storylines. There are over fifty characters, all connected to one another via relationships, grudges, sordid pasts, and anything else imaginable. The filmmakers decided to crush this level of depth into sixty minutes of screentime. Obviously, only a few of the characters could be focused on, but they made a gosh-darn good effort at trying to squeeze every last character they could in there anyway. Some fighters were touched on, then lost, others existed solely to be killed by the more popular characters. The ones that did last long enough to have a real storyline were horrendously twisted from their video game counterparts', again, all in an effort to fit as much as humanly possible into an hour long movie.

The Tekken part of the movie was mangled, but sadly, also was the anime part, which could have been it's redeeming quality. In true anime style, there were long-winded speeches, sappy emotional connections, over-the-top fisticuffs, and more gore than you can shake a proverbial stick at. However, the movie takes these elements to such a level that they appear to be almost a charicature of anime. The conversations are dull and pointless, punctuated by awful voice-actors and unnecessary background music that mercifully drowns out parts of it. The emotional scenes are overdone and don't evoke any real emotions. The fights, when they do occur, consist of talking mostly, with the occasional bloody beat-down. When dinosaurs get released all over the island...well, things just get ridiculous in that department.

With all the bashing this movie has received from other critics and me, don't think you necessarily have to avoid it at all costs, either. There are some good, action-packed scenes that make it almost worth suffering through the bad ones. All in all, Tekken: The Motion Picture is good, campy fun that should be seen by all fans of the games once...and only once.

OK, Tekken the movie..... First of all, the cons are that it is far too short, seemingly will lead into a sequel yet at the same time will not, and most of the minor characters only show up and do not interact with the story in any way.

However, for the most part the pros beat out the cons. For one, the story does go into Kazuya, the main character of Tekken 1 and 2's story, the dubbing isn't horrible (Except for Law), the soundtrack is amazing with Stabbing Westward, Offspring, and some other late 90's rock artists, and often fits with the action.

Overall, if u like the game, see it first then think about buying it from there, if u haven't played the game, its a good rent, but you probably wont want to buy it

This movie is about a rich man, Heihachi Mishima, who is obsessed with destroying the devil in order to create a better new world. He intentionally throws his son Kazuya from a cliff creating a devil within Kazuya. However, nobody has ever seen Kazuya ever since. Certain that Kazuya will go for it, Heihachi announces a martial arts competition. The one who get to Heihachi first and the manages to defeat him, wins the prize-money and the title of "King of Iron Fist". Kazuya shows up indeed but as he attempts to kill his father he is consistently stopped by Jun, a girl from his childhood, who was there when Heihachi threw him off the cliff. Now is there at the tournament and she won't stop at nothing to release Kazuya from the devil within him.

Although this Anime is not the exactly best, I think they did a very good job with the story. Considering the amount of Tekken characters in existence (52, including the ones that are not in the game)they managed to get many of the characters in it without harming the continuity of the story. On the other hand I thought there was too little of Devil in it and Jun just doesn't stop talking. 6/10

Rating: *

In 1993, NAMCO released the fighting video game 'Tekken' about a martial arts contest held by the powerful Mishima corporation. It was extremely successful, and was followed by the greatest fighting game of all time-- named (what else?) 'Tekken 2.' At this point, there have been four more sequels, including a Tag Tournament and a Game Boy version. This anime follows the storyline in the first two.

Let me start off by saying that I think anime stinks for the most part. Only one show, 'Dragonball Z', is any good, and it drags its stories out far too long. This adaptation of the game series, however, has the opposite problem: it is far too short.

The fight scenes are pitiful and don't even start to get thrilling. Of all the characters in the game, only Kazuya, Heihachi, Lee, and Jun get any decent screen time (Lei and Jack-2 are the only others that get any real time at all). And they're not developed nearly enough.

A couple of Lee's scenes are interesting and there is one attempted assassination on Kazuya by Nina that's sort of okay, but otherwise this is a badly written, boring anime flick.

And when a sixty minute movie is boring, you know you're in trouble.

Anyone not familiar with the story line will be utterly confused and find the film completely incomprehensible. Those familiar with it will be disappointed by how poor it is.

The script is so bad that the writers call 'Tekken' a mysterious thing that doesn't make sense. After Lee's two incomprehensible sentences about it, it is completely ignored. What is it-- the Force? A magical fighting style? An underwear style? Who knows.

Tekken means Iron Fights, and the geniuses who wrote this piece of crud don't understand that this is supposed to make just a little bit of sense. Not to mention that what is understandable is extraordinarily stupid and illogical.

Besides the script reeking, the rest stinks, too. The voice acting (I am talking about the English version) is awful, the direction is pointlessly poor, and the music score wanders between okay and really, really annoying.

If you aren't familiar with the games, avoid this at all costs. If you have, you might consider seeing it on TV as a point of interest, but don't waste any money on it. There aren't a lot of films worse than this.

Rating: *

As far as this movie goes, I can only say this... WHAT HAPPENED!?

The movie starts oddly enough with Kazuya Mishima getting tossed off a cliff by his father, Heihachi which didn't really do anything for this movie.

The only real good parts about this movie were the music in the English version, (good choices) and a shower scene and implied sex scene between Anna Williams and Lee Chowlan.

Other than that... this movie sucks.

On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being bad, and 10 being excellent, this gets a big fat goose egg!