King of Fighters: The Official and Inferior Studio-Made Film
Remember yesterday, when I posted that pretty cool fan-made Tekken live-action trailer? I bring it up because my pal GodLen of AnimeVice found a trailer (interspliced with some crappy interviews) for an actual, studio-made live-action King of Fighters film, and it looks so much worse than the Tekken fan trailer it’s astounding. I mean, we live in a world where studios try to suck any kind of originality out of these fan properties, we know that, but I’m still astounded at how the fan-made Tekken trailer, with just some decent locations and CG work, blows an actual studio film out of the water.
The first problem with King of Fighters is that it’s trying to turn it into a clone of Mortal Kombat — I mean, different dimensions? Really? Why not just make a fucking MK movie then? The second problem is that they took away the KoF designs, making all the characters boring and undistiguishable — from each other and any other generic fighting movie. Sure, the kids in the Tekken trailer looked goofy trying to replicate the looks and hairstyles of the Tekken fighters, but at least they look interesting — and furthermore, I could tell them apart.
Third, the fighting on the KoF movie just looks shitty and generic. Sure it has some crappy CG energy blasts, but if the people behind the CG aren’t doing anything cool, all the blue lens flares in the world won’t help. I have to give props to the Tekken kids, because their fights actually looked cool — cooler than this professional, studio-made film, at least.
About The Author
Robert Bricken is one of the original co-founders of the site formerly known as Topless Robot, and its first editor-in-chief, serving from 2008-12. He brought the site to prominence with “nerd news, humor and self-loathing” as its motto, raising it from total internet obscurity to a readership in the millions, with help from his savage “FAQ” movie reviews and Fan Fiction Fridays. Under his tenure Topless Robot was covered by Gawker, Wired, Defamer, New York magazine, ABC News, and others, and his articles have been praised by Roger Ebert, Avengers actor Clark Gregg, comedian and The Daily Show correspondent John Hodgman, the stars of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Rifftrax, and others. He is currently the managing editor of io9.com. Despite decades as both an amateur and professional nerd, he continues to be completely unprepared for either the zombie apocalypse or the robot uprising.