Speed 2 Month 2016 Day Two – Less Time, More Quality

It's a Crime Fighting boat.

SPEED 2 Month: a yearly exposure of the futility of movie-making has been going on for many years now, in a variety of forms. For the last few it’s been a focal point of this weblog, of which has been all but abandoned otherwise. Unfortunately for 2016, I’ll be unable to fulfill a full 31 days of comeuppance to Jan de Bont’s King of Excrement. June is the true SPEED 2 Month and it’s already been postponed to July as time has become heavily constrained to new jobs, a more intense focus at From the Hip and the FtHSoapbox website, and a living situation that is tenuous, at the best.

Regardless, SPEED 2 Month will continue, in a limited, sporadic format for this year on this page. In subsequent years it may move again to a new home if I wish. That’s another year or so away and not to be decided now.

How did SPEED 2 Month start? Well, I’ll let my words of last year tell the tale, because no SPEED 2 Month is worth its salt if there isn’t some mention of John Amenta in it.

Some years past, while discussing films and comic books and other geek nation topics at a nearby comic and game store, I happened to mention SPEED 2 and the horrifying displeasure this movie impressed upon me. It, to be blunt, was a ridiculous mess of a story, with acting better suited for a Junior High School setting. This apparently was somewhat upsetting to a friend of mine who was there at the time, Mr. John Amenta. John claimed to have enjoyed the movie, disagreeing with me that it was the worst he’d ever seen. I took umbrage to the fact that he, a man of esteemed good taste, could even find a minutes worth of entertainment in the 122 that made up the waste of celluloid. SPEED 2 became a running gag for me, particularly in response to anything that John made claim to enjoy. For myself, I took immense pleasure not only in teasing John, but in discovering how many movies, no matter how bad, are not nearly on the low level of SPEED 2.

This… celebration of inadequacy… began as an oft-mentioned topic when A Leaf on the Wind began as a weblog at Myspace. It became a daily event through the month of June a few years back, though only being fully realized last year. If you’re of stout mind, you can go through the archives and read what was done last year in conjunction with this year, which may prove to be a landmark thirty days.

So yes, there are a number of years’ worth of reading previous columns, with a different movie in each one. I have yet to repeat films as there are hundreds upon hundreds that I’ve never ever witnessed, not to mention the many that I have seen which have not yet been featured in this event. Yesterday started SPEED 2 Month with a look at a video game stinker and the next one will be within the same vein. And if you see this guy at a convention or dog park, make sure you tell him that “SPEED 2 sucks!”

Not Lord Viggo, the other guy

Speed 2 Month 2016 Day One -- Fighting in the Streets

It’s a few days into SPEED 2 MONTH, which I delayed due to some personal conflicts of the greatly chaotic 2016. Of course, it’s Independence Day here in the States, where we all enjoy blowing up small parts of the land in celebration of a divorce from our best friend in the world. I suppose I should start this year’s exploration with the movie that steals the holiday’s name, but that would be too easy. Plus, no matter what you say about it, INDEPENDENCE DAY (ID4) was so far superior to SPEED 2 that it’s just not worth the exercise. Instead, I’ll go into a movie I recently retched... er, watched, STREET FIGHTER: THE LEGEND OF CHUN-LI.

I will assume readers are all aware of Street Fighter, the video game or at least, the manga and comics. Chun Li is one of the principal characters of the storyline in all aspects of the game and subsidiary product, as well as one of the most popular. She’s a Chinese national, at least in most interpretations, with pseudo-traditional dress to make her stand out. In the video game she has a signature fighting style that made her fun to play, pushing her to heights of pop culture nobility far exceeding the games.

The video game is pretty simplistic storytelling, getting dense when you explore character backgrounds. It was pretty much the grand daddy of all character driven fighting games, setting the stage for many, many, many others. I’m guessing that the simple story of the game is generally why any live-action production garnered from the game attracts so many dungflies.

Street Fighter has had two English-language films based off of it, the second of which is LEGEND OF CHUN-LI. I’ll maybe handle the first movie next year, because two Street Fighter movies during this month might break my already fragile psyche. In fact, if I wasn’t drinking right at this moment, reliving LEGEND OF CHUN-LI might make me run out and burn down a building. Awful is the name of the game here, people. It’s the prettiest, most bad-ass, tv-actor-to-movie-actor-filled slugfest of total boredom I’ve ever seen. O yes, it’s terrible. Not as terrible as the ineptitude of the King of All Crappy Movies, SPEED 2, but hey, that’s a tall mountain to climb.

Where does STREET FIGHTER: LEGEND OF CHUN-LI fail? Well. Let’s start with the lead. Kristin Kreuk, late of the CW series Smallville, where she did her level best to ruin the hearts of fans as the lovely Lana Lang, takes on Chun-Li as a Chinese-American. Fail one. Chun-Li, at least in the games and other supporting material, is a very strong personality. Here, it’s an origin story and not a good one. It takes most of the movie for the real Chun-Li to finally appear, which, if this was to be a franchise builder, would not necessarily be a bad thing. Sadly… I kept waiting for Ming-Na Wen to show up. That’s a pithy, pop-culture reference that some of you might get. Google it if you need to.

Neal McDonough is the big baddie, M. Bison. He is usually lots of fun to watch, but here it ain’t happening. If he took the role for a new roof, I get it. Even actors have to pay bills. Well, most of them do. He brings nothing to the role, which was handled so much better in the previous Street Fighter film by a very sick Raul Julia, which is even more displeasing, as I personally enjoy McDonough in everything, even stinkers like WING COMMANDER. Fail three.

To assist our hapless heroine, we get a Mortal Kombat film veteran, Robin Shou. I didn’t even recognize him in this oxygen-stealing stinker. His fight scenes were weak and poorly clapped together, a failure if there ever was one as he was arguably the best athlete in the MK movies. To add to this, most of the fight scenes were not well done, so fail five.

Fail six: Chris Klein.

Where is the movie good? It’s pretty, as stated before. Kreuk is one helluva looker for film and she does gain some great headshots from this celluloid clunker. Some of the chase scenes are fun and action packed, a few of the fight scenes are okay and Shou and Kreuk actually do have some bond going on screen that makes their time together watchable. But the ONE, SINGLE THING that makes the movie so, so much better than SPEED 2: Cheng Pei-Pei. Likely best known for her role as the misguided character Jade Fox in CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON, she eats up every scene she gets in every movie she appears in. Just for this alone, STREET FIGHTER: LEGEND OF CHUN-LI stands apart from SPEED 2. Do yourself a favor and watch anything this great actress has done. You won’t be sorry.

SPEED 2 Month 2016 Day One: Taken down by a video game adaptation. Maybe this will be video game movie month vs. SPEED 2. Maybe.

More tomorrow, with an explanation of all things SPEED 2.

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