Tekken: Blood Vengeance

Greetings, commoners. It is I, Emilie De Rochefort the Great. Due to the informal situation, you may call me Lili.
As many of you have no doubt noticed, Namco made the very questionable decision to omit me from the CGI feature "Tekken: Blood Vengeance". Instead, they offered me to watch and review it for this particular website, an offer I graciously accepted.
Now, many (or all) of you may find my omission from this movie to be highly alarming. After all, I am the main character of the Tekken franchise, and the entire plot revolves around me and my exciting exploits. But I suppose that some ... fans of the series would enjoy seeing the side characters get 93 minutes in the limelight.
Now, without further ado, let us get to the bottom of things. Sebastian, bring our guests some chairs. We'll be here for a while.

The story revolves around some high school girl I don't know being hired by some evil corporation to spy on a strapping young lad named Shin Kamiya, whom you may know from the hit Tekken spin-off: A Certain Ridiculous Plot Device. Hm? What's that? Shin wasn't actually in any of the games and was just created for the sole purpose of being a generally unimportant non-character to fill empty spaces in promotional images? O-of course I knew that! I was just testing you. And you passed! G-good job!
Sebastian, shut down the Tekken Wiki for feeding me false information!
Anyway, none of this is actually important, as it is simply pointless build-up to a highly ridiculous finale where a father and his beloved son turn into dragons and start firing laser beams at each other.
And no, it doesn't make any more sense in context.

The main flaw of the story is that plotlines are frequently picked up and then unceremoniously dropped mere moments later. Was Shin Kamiya actually relevant to anything ever? Was there a point to the whole Xiaoyu and Alisa friendship story? Was the convenient ancient power buried under some castle ages ago that the villain used to fashion a giant mecha made of wooden statues ever explained or given any foreshadowing whatsoever?
The answer to all of those questions, children, is no. None of the characters have their personalities fleshed out, and none of their motives nor objectives were ever clearly explained. Indeed, my presence would have greatly improved this vulgar display of plotting incompetence. I might even go so far as to say that I would have come up with a much more satisfying story.

But enough of that. Did I ever mention that I have a beautiful singing voice? In fact, my debut single, "I Am Wonderful (And You Wish You Were Me)" is available for download at bTunes right now. I do believe your life would be greatly improved by purchasing and listening to said work of musical art.
Speaking of voices, that is something I found myself to be mildly delighted with in regards to this production. The English cast (I did not feel like forcing myself through this a second time to form an opinion on the Japanese audio track) includes a plethora of well-known names, many of which did a very competent job on conveying the very flawed script.
The soundtrack was more or less what one would expect from my humble franchise, with generic techno and rock pieces playing over the fight scenes.

Ah, the fight scenes. Indeed, one of this movie's greatest strengths is the animation. The fight choreography is elaborate and the CGI is, in general, very pretty. Obviously, my very graceful fighting style would have worked wonders in attracting moviegoers, and I would of course have won all the fights. There is no fighter in this world who would even hope to stand a chance against fabulous moi. Would you perhaps like to watch a demonstrative film of my eloquent fighting moves? Sebastian, prepare the projector. We must make sure to entertain our loyal audience.

Getting back to the topic, though I would rather not do so, I suppose this feature could be described as "all style, no substance". The action is fast and stylish, but the storyline is, to put it in vulgar terms, an absolute mess of biblical proportions.
Actually, everyone who has already watched this movie is in agreement that me taking on the star role would have made the entire production at least eight times better. I know it's true because I read it on the "inter-web". As a modest lady, I cannot flat-out state that I think the same, but let it be known that I do, and that the primitive minds at Namco have committed an act comparable to inefficiently slicing off their own heads with wooden spoons by refusing me a role in this utter travesty.

Sebastian, get Producer Harada on the phone and tell him that I will not stand for any more of this nonsense. I think it's time that he learned his rightful place in the world.

Oh? You're still here? I advise you to stay away from this sordid trainwreck, as it is nothing but a load of nonsense peppered with occasional overblown battle scenes. Namco seem to have realised their mistake, as they are now preparing a full TV anime series by the name of "Magical Fighter Lili II: Saving The World With A Smile ~A Tekken Story~". I am certain that it will be the most popular show of the Summer 2015 season.

It's time for my afternoon tea. Farewell.

Ah... where to begin? The nonsensical plot? The horrendous dialog? The non-existent character development? If it weren't for the gorgeous 3D visuals of the movie it would be a complete and utter failure.

Harada and Sato's mission to create an accessible and enjoyable Tekken film for non-Tekken fan falls flat on its face. Only someone with a flawless understanding of the Tekken lore could understand how this movie makes sense. With only a passing knowledge of the Tekken story line, it's very difficult to understand where this fits and why it was necessary.

The story of two ... rival corporations, G-Corp run by Kazuya and Mishima Zaibatsu run by Jin, both vying to control the M-Gene makes absolutely no sense. Their reason for hunting for this mutation is never clearly explained and by the end of the film is not even relevant, as that plot-line gets completely abandoned in favor of a flashy ending fight scene. It's not an understatement to say that nothing about this film makes any sense.

Those hoping that some snappy and thought provoking dialog saves a sinking story should abandon those hopes. The dialog is legitimately laughter inducing for all the wrong reasons. With lines like "sometimes you have to fail to succeed," it sounds as though every line from this film was pilfered from a budget store greeting card.

As far as character development, there honestly isn't any. The characters are as one-dimension and static as possible. Their motivations are never clear and even if they were, the incomprehensible plot would make them impossible to understand.

If there's one thing positive to say about this film, it's that it is absolutely gorgeous. The CG-animation is in a league of its own. Relatively realistic facial and body animations and well choreographed fight scenes make the movie a joy to look at, at the very least. The film probably would have been better off abandoning any plot or character related scenes and just presenting itself as a long montage of fight scenes to showcase the beautiful animation and jaw-dropping 3D effects.

Despite this meager success, the film even fails to deliver to dedicated Tekken fans as only a fraction of the cast makes an appearance. The cast of this movie will certainly seem adequate to die hard Xiaoyu or Alisa fans, but the fact that Sato couldn't even add a few random cameos for some other fan favorites is downright sad.

This movie doesn't appeal to anyone, even diehard Tekken fans will be immensely disappointed. And those without an encyclopedic knowledge of the Tekken lore will be absolutely lost. Even taking into account the amazing animation and 3D tech used in the film, it might be wise to wait until it's featured in another film that can deliver on other merits besides simply being a technological marvel. The fact that Harada and Sato put their name to this is astonishing, but don't be fooled, this movie totally sucks. Avoid at all costs.

Whoever composed the trailer for this film deservers some sort of award for editing, because i for one was whole-heartedly anticipating this film a great deal.

Given the sheer amount of characters and character turnover, and the fact we're now approaching the 6th generation of games, the story has been somewhat of a shambles for some time. That said they do attempt to the focus the story on a handful of cast members, with the odd cameo appearances from Tekken regulars.
Xiaoyu, Jin, Kazuya, Anna and Nina make up the main stays, joined by newcomer from the most recent game Alisa Bosconovitch.
Xiaoyu is recruited by Anna ... on behalf of Kazuya to investigate Shin a former class mate of Jin's. I frankly have lost track of if she's still looking for Jin as was the case at some point, but i assume this to be her motivation for going along with this.
The story was, even by Tekken standards pretty terrible, poorly constructed and largely unnecessary, the story merely serves to gather all the characters behind the scenes together for big show down, rendering the leads as little more than spectators.

The CGI doesn't seem to have made any real progress from the first Final Fantasy film. It generally all looks very nice, and the action scenes flow very well and look highly impressive, but they've still got a long way to go with the character models. Xiaoyu looks down right creepy at times, any time they attempt to animate anything facially the whole process falls down horribly, and looks terrible and often deformed. Alisa came out better, but there's still plenty of off moments. Claire Redfield's model in Biohazard: Degeneration single handedly destroyed the film for me, and with that setting the bar pretty low the efforts here have not done much better.

Xiaoyu and Alisa's friendship in the film actually worked for me and was one of the better aspects of the film. I'd not learnt anything of Alisa from the last game, but her voice acting was good and most of her scenes with Xiaoyu were enjoyable. The rivalries between Jin and Kazuya and Nina and Anna also feature heavily as a secondary focus, none are fleshed out in any meaningful manor, but this was clearly aimed at existing fans, so entirely forgiveable.

Now i doubt many people expected much from the story, so what about the fights? The answer is very hit and miss. All the early action is very average, Xiaoyu and Alias's mid way fight was probably the high point for me, with the end 3 way show down being hugely disappointing, although i did enjoy getting to see all the devil forms in action. There's allot of wasted potential here, I'd have enjoyed nothing more than seeing Jin and Kazuya go at it as often as possible, there's a total lack of focus, or downright epicness to the fights, i was left feeling largely unsatisfied and would have no real desire to re-watch any of the sequences, there just not that technically good.

Overall there's just allot of wasted potential, i get that they couldn't do anything to drastic to the Tekken universe, but the fights we did get were just hugely underwhelming, the story wasn't well thought out and there's not allot to praise, i can't help but wish one of these game film adaptation's would adapt the actual game material, the events between Tekken 2 and 3 would have made for an excellent story, hint hint.