Tekken: The Motion Picture

Original Title: 鉄拳
Romanized: Tekken
Literal: Iron Fist

Plot Synopsis

The Mishima Conglomerate, one of the most powerful corporations in the world, has been hard at work buying up weapons companies left and right. They are well on their way to virtually controlling the world, but this hasn't gone unnoticed. The 3WC (no, not the folks who come up with HTML standards) has dispatched an agent, Jun Kazama, to investigate an island hideaway that is rumored to conceal a massive weapons manufacturing plant. How will she get in? Well, it just so happens that she's a skilled martial artist, and has been invited to an exclusive tournament held by Heihachi Mishima, the head of the Conglomerate; the victor will receive international renown along with a $1 billion prize. Not bad for a day's work, eh? But to get that prize, the top combatant will have to take on Heihachi himself, and that's if they even survive that long--you see, Lee Chaolan, Heihachi's adopted son and the heir to the conglomerate sees this as the perfect chance to secretly test some new weapons he's been working on.

Nevertheless, Jun, joined by Lei Wulong, the top Hong Kong International Police agent (who was also invited to the tournament), sets off for the island. But she is haunted by dreams of an incident that occurred 16 years ago in which a boy was thrown off a cliff by his own father as a test of strength. This boy--Kazuya Mishima, son of Heihachi--is still alive, and is entering the tournament on his own. Driven by rage, his only goal is to make it to the final challenge and kill his own father. But before the prodigal son returns, he'll have to deal with his adopted brother (and the two lethal assassins in his sway, Mina and Anna Williams), who has no intentions of letting his long lost kin return to the fold. Along their journey to the island, the two agents meet the tormented Kazuya, the rash and vengeful Michelle Chang, and a most unlikely pair, the hulking Jack and a young girl that is his companion. Everybody has a different reason for entering the Tournament (none of which are the billion bucks), but only one will get a shot at Heihachi...

Review

Rating: 1.5 / 5
Reviewer: Marc
Review Date: 2003-06-25

Not being a fan of the video game, I didn't come to this one with any particular expectations, other than all the hype that AD Vision put into it (and that it was their first DVD effort). What I found was more story and less brawling that I was expecting--it does all the right things to try and be more than just action. Unfortunately, it is also sloppy and silly enough that it ends up being a failure from my standpoint, and unlikely any better for a fan of the game.

The lack of fighting surprised me a bit; not to say that there isn't enough, but for a plot based around a tournament, there's more emphasis on story than you would think. Also leaning away from the game roots, the story focuses on four or five characters. Though it'll no doubt disappoint some fans of the game, this is a wise move, instead of trying to cram everybody's favorite fighters into one 60-minute movie, or trying to work all the fringe weirdo characters into the story somehow. It also focuses on the characters that best fit the plot, whether they're the popular ones or not (speaking of which, that jaguar mask fellow that seems to be a hit with the fans is only on screen for about two and a half seconds, and he never even kicks anybody).

But the story ends up being a bit odd, anyway. For one thing, the ongoing theme and eventual moral of this story is "fighting and revenge don't solve anything." How about that lesson coming from an action movie based on a fighting video game? This could have worked out well as a sort of sneaky contrast, but the story doesn't pull it off. The pacing is generally good, with appropriately spaced bits of action and the right amount of either machinating bad guys or brooding good guys in between, but the message comes across too heavy handedly, and the main character doesn't have enough depth for the wrestling-with-his-inner-demons type. (Actually, my favorite character probably ended up being the hulking Jack, though Lei is fun too.)

A bigger problem is the "spirit of martial arts" theme; the idea of an inherent violent spirit--"Tekken"--is introduced at the beginning, and brought up dramatically at the end, but the lack of development (or even mention) in between makes the whole concept seem forced. Some action movies (particularly in the martial arts or samurai genres) do a very good job of getting across the "honor of battle" mystique, but Tekken falls flat on that count. The lack of setup of where exactly Jun got her fighting skills and mystical powers is also a bit bewildering--she goes from being a helpless girl to one of the world's top fighters, and we're never told how or why. Guess I'll have to play the game to find out or something.

Artistically, Tekken is... interesting. The animation uses what seems to be an early example of computer compositing and background art. It isn't noticeable directly (I never thought "that looks like a computer effect") but it has a distinctly different look to it. On the positive side, this technique makes for very sharp lines and colors, and much of the animation is quite nice. On the down side, there are a few shots where the foreground cels don't fit well with the (probably CG) background, and some of the objects seem very flat or simplistic. Some of the pans also look a little... off, for lack of a better word. It's a little hard to explain, but much of it looks like a well done episode of an American cartoon (the new Johnny Quest on a higher budget, perhaps).

The animation is uneven, too. Some of the action sequences look great--a hotel-room shootout, for example. Others are a little weak, or downright awkward (some of the fighting with dinosaur commandos, for example). Speaking of which, that's the low point of the movie. The character designs are generally quite distinct and nice looking other than the fact that the main character has huge eyebrows and his dad must have the same hairstylist as the boss in Dilbert. However (sorry about the spoiler), the genetically engineered mini-T-rex creatures are downright hokey. Not only do they look like chubby dinosoid rejects from a '70s-era Hanna-Barbara cartoon, but they fight more like pro wrestlers than the raptors of a certain theme park gone wrong. In fact, they fight more like kangaroos than anything... and there is a genetically engineered one of those in this movie, too. And it looks cooler than the dinosaurs (ouch).

The acting in Tekken is solid in both languages (the DVD also includes a French track, and although I don't speak any French, that sounded OK too, if a little over the top). The casting is a little better in Japanese, but I really like the English version of the professor. I didn't think much of the English version of Heihachi, though--he and his son both sound a little too old. But in all, the acting and casting is quite good.

In the spirit of the Street Fighter 2 movie, the English version of this soundtrack has several of the background pieces of music replaced with tunes by American bands (not quite as high profile in this case), and this has an interesting effect. The original background music isn't particularly memorable, but it has a darker, slightly tragic tone to it that goes well with the movie's theme. By replacing this with some decidedly more violent and upbeat songs, it makes the fights seem more fun, but robs them (particularly the one at the very end) of some of their dramatic impact--the Earth-shattering battle between evil father and vengeful son just feels different when it's set to rap music. This may please some fans--again, it does make the movie a little more fun--but I'd have to say that it hurt things artistically.

In all, Tekken isn't downright bad, but it has a lot of smaller strikes against it that add up. The art is generally good, the fights, though a bit sparse (particularly for a fighting game movie), are generally good looking, and there is a surprising amount of story, even if it did seem forced at times. If you're a fan of the game, you may be put off by the lack of emphasis on fighting, and you're likely to miss some of your favorite characters, but overall it's worth at least a look by action fans. I can't honestly say it's worth more than a rental, though, and don't come with high expectations.

Related Recommendations

Well, of course if you enjoyed the video game, you'll probably want to have a look at this animated incarnation, but be wary. Street Fighter 2: The Animated Movie is similar in many respects, and I'd say much better overall, and Street Fighter Alpha: The Movie is even closer. The Fatal Fury movie and OAVs are (not surprisingly) pretty similar as well.

US DVD Review

This was AD Vision's first DVD effort, and although all the features for a seriously cool disc are there, this one was a real disappointment in my eyes. The menu section is great, setting the standard for future ADV DVDs; the menus look cool, are heavily animated, include sound, and they provide access to a wealth of features: English (Dolby 5.1), Japanese, and even French soundtracks; English and Spanish subtitles (that's 4 languages total); a scene selector with animated preview boxes; two different ADV Tekken trailers; the English cast list; a few slides of some choice shots from the movie; and illustrated character bios. The disc even includes 15 of AD Vision's music video-style trailers, accessed through more animated preview menus (a really cool feature--having that many extended musical trailers really is a feature, not just advertising).

But the down sides are pretty bad; for one, in the unfortunate tradition of older US Manga Corps DVDs, there is no Japanese (or French, for that matter) cast to be found on the disc. For another thing, the English subtitle track is just a transcription of the English dialogue; this would be fine if there was a direct translation too, but since the dialogue didn't necessarily line up right and wasn't translated very directly in many parts, this felt odd to be used as subtitles (the situation may be the same with the subtitled VHS version, but I haven't seen it and would suspect otherwise). But the real problem with this disc is the video transfer; for the most part, the video looks extremely sharp. Until there's a quick pan, that is. It's obviously due to some kind of sloppy encoding, but most of the quick pans (and some other active parts) produce this kind of streaking effect on the moving object that, although not horrible, was definitely distracting, and really marred the otherwise beautiful video. This and the dubtitles were thankfully a one time fluke, as ADVs later DVDs are quite good.

(By the way, if anyone is really interested, I fiddled with freeze frames for a while, and the problem seems to be that when they encoded the interlaced fields where there were parts of two separate animation frames appearing at the same time, they either encoded them both as the same full-screen frame or just did a sloppy job of it; the end result is that in much of the fast motion--though not everywhere, since some of it coincidentally lined up right--you had two unaligned frames onscreen simultaneously for long enough to see the jitter between them.)

Content Guide

Probably 13-up, though it could be 16-up; the only objectionable material is a short shower scene and a few bits of overly bloody violence. There's also a slightly edited version.

Violence: 3 - Not extremely graphic, but gets pretty bloody a few times.

Nudity: 2 - One shower scene.

Sex/Mature Themes: 1 - A very short scene with more implied.

Language: 1 - Generally mild language.

Notes and Trivia

None, other than this is a relatively early example of anime produced with computer compositing and background art; this technique makes for far cheaper production, and has rapidly replaced camera-only animation in most productions.

Availability

Available in the US from ADV on bilingual DVD (buy from RightStuf). Was previously available on dubbed VHS in edited and uncut versions.

Looking to buy? Try these stores: RightStuf (search) | AnimeNation | Akemi's a(nime)Store