Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Apologies

I feel like I must apologize for my harsh criticisms of Street Fighter and Dragonball, that's not the purpose that I started watching these films. Actually, I think the real reason I wanted to watch these films was for laughs, but in respect to my "Bad Movie Series," that I've been doing, the movies are precisely that, bad movies, the logic behind that being I might learn what not to do.

So I feel I must apologize because I spent the previous posts ranting about how bad the movies were and not discussing the educational experience that I've had from both, so here's what I learned.

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li

1.) Develop Relationships -- There were scenes where a character died and I just didn't care because, even though the character was significant to the main character, I didn't know them and I didn't care about them.

2.) Montages show us progress but not struggle -- The montage that I have particularly in mind is when Chun Li is learning and finally mastering this technique, but since I didn't see a huge struggle in the first place or, for that matter, a lack of dedication/determination to get this technique done in the first place, I only see a series of images telling me she's got it and that it seemed easy. Nothing should be gained easily by the main character.

3.) Establish why the main character is uniquely important -- There is a specific scene when Chun Li is told by her master that "only you can save your father" but nothing else is elaborated in terms if that. Does she posses something that no one else does? An ability, a connection with a charm, etc... that would allow her to do what no one else can?

4.) Similarly to #3, don't make a character seem special and then negate it -- As mentioned before, her master tells her "only you can save your father," and then, ==Spoiler Alert== her father dies, so guess what? Not even she could save her father, which takes away any sort of unique labeling that she may have been given by that one line.

5.) Spend more time on the character's situation and how they got there -- When Chun Li moves to Thailand she lives on the streets and begs for food. How did she get to that situation? Did she choose to live like that? I would think so since just moments ago she lived a rather wealthy life in Hong Kong.

6.) Get good actors -- While Kristen Kreuk wasn't bad, everyone else was. Enough said on that. Also, it was very clear in fight scenes that Kristen Kreuk is not an extremely athletic person. Her Chinese also sucks... which takes me to my next point.

7.) When you have people speaking in languages they don't know, get a language coach for them. -- This holds especially true for when people speak a tonal language like Chinese.

That's all for that. I'll do Dragonball another time. I don't think I have enough energy for it right now.

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