I watched this about a week ago and it was definitely great. I was hooked on it. The dialogue and action was great, but the only fault it has is Akuma’s flashbacks with the girl. Him training in the cave and woods was dope, but when that girl was brought in it was just boring and I was waiting for them to go back to present day. I also liked how the present is set in the 80s.
I wouldn’t say hustled 
it’s still pretty awesome! I look forward to Vol2. The song when they go in the club is called “Fight the Fight”
its a movie cut up into episodes.
Visually, I thought the actor who played Ryu was excellent. Looked very close to his game counterpart, and was reasonably muscular. In terms of acting, he was quite poor, often sounding like he was mechanically reciting lines. The difference between him and Ken (who was obviously a more experienced actor) was very evident.
Still, finding an Asian actor who has the right physical proportions, the right facial look, the right amount of muscle mass, is the right age, can do the fight choreography, and can act is fucking hard as hell, especially on such a small budget. So I’m impressed with what they managed to do.
Doesn’t really matter how they approached it (and many movies have the same problem). It was still 8 episodes’ worth of solid content stretched out to 12. Hey, I understand the economic realities of having a standard length 12 episode season, and filming extra content probably would have been too expensive.
However, I would have preferred 8 good episodes over 12 decent ones.
What would you have cut out? I thought it was well paced. 4 episodes is 40+ minutes of footage.
As for Mike Moh, dude bulked up in 6 months or something like that. It’s not like they went looking only for someone of his current size. I agree, his acting wasn’t spectacular, but it wasn’t bad.
Did you read my first post above? Thankfully, I have copy and paste;
-In particular, spending so much time on Akuma’s mastery of the Dark Hadou made no sense. Fans of the SF series are already familiar with this. And non-fans just won’t give a shit, since it’s a bunch of boring scenes of him meditating, doing pull-ups, and squatting with astonishingly little weight.
-The ratio of talking scenes to fight scenes wasn’t ideal, especially since the same points kept getting re-hashed over and over by the characters. Again, fans of the series know this shit, and even non-fans probably got tired of the monotony. Longer, more extensive, elaborate fights would have made the series better.
Unless one is on steroids, which Moh doesn’t look anywhere close to, you can only bulk up so much in 6 months around the age of 30. He had a good body for the role.
I’m not an acting connoisseur by any means, and can tolerate some pretty bad acting (I watch a fair amount of exploitation flicks), but there were times that Moh’s delivery was so mechanical and robotic, and so obviously reciting a line, I was completely drawn out of the work.
Yeah… why did they even make Assassin’s Fist? SF fans already know the story. Non SF fans don’t care about a boring story. Should have just made it 8 episodes of Ryu and Ken fighting over and over.
Man i disagree with like…all of that lol.
I was hoping we could avoid this fanboy bullshit, even if this is a topic about an SF series on a SF message board.
The first thing I noted in my post was that the series was decent. I then noted a number of things I liked about it, and several I didn’t. You focused on the few negatives I mentioned, asking me for further explanation, while also making it clear you didn’t actually read my first post in any detail. (You asked for what I would cut out, which I mentioned extensively)
Then, when I re-post my thoughts, you reply with this exaggerated bullshit. (Because when I write that a very specific series of scenes were extraneous, I clearly mean that the ENTIRE story was unnecessary, amirite?)
If you’re convinced the series is a perfect masterpiece and any post that is not overwhelmingly praising it is wrong, cool. But then why the fuck do you bother responding to me and arguing? You’re clearly not interested in any kind of coherent discussion.
So does that mean you are a little child who is threatened by views different than your own?
Akuma was wrong, this is Messatsu.
The things you liked were minor imo. What you didn’t like was basically what the whole series was about, and also what made it good. And I guess not enough action. As for the choreography I disagree with what you posted as well. The whole getting up slow is like saying in the game you spam hadokens and srks, but they didn’t spam it in AF.
The whole series was about Goki’s training montage of pull-ups and squatting with water buckets? Or the endless talks about the Dark Hadou after Goki’s banishment? And that’s the only thing that made it good in your mind? I think you’re insulting the series and selling it horribly short.
Since you disagree, does that mean you think the fights were NOT decent and well-shot? And that you thought they sucked and were shot poorly?
Also, I don’t know how familiar you are with the genre, but there is a reason no decent martial arts film has a combatant getting knocked down, only for the opponent to wait patiently while he very slowly rises. (They used to do this in some of the really low-budget, mostly crappy American martial arts films in the 80s and 90s, which is not a style to emulate)
Slayer your just bullshittin to get an argument
If this iconic battle isnt good enough, ill gladly share with you thousands of epic fights by the greatest martial art masters of cinematic history. Now GGPO nigga.
You must be young. Or think that there’s never been an ‘honorable’ fighter to ever exist. UFC, movies, whatever.
~K.
waiting for an opponent to get up is a concept held in most old school movies old school in concept. its only modern aged movies do they tend to rush in for a beat down…but most martial arts movies taking place 80’s and earlier use this concept of honorable waiting.
also remember this is karate…ground fighting isnt really a thought yet.
Mike Moh was a rather late addition to the cast so he didn’t nearly have as much time to prepare as Ryu. But you guys already know that considering you understand what he did in only 6 months was no easy task (putting on 30lbs). Compare this with Joey (Akuma) and Christian(Ken) who had like 3-4 years to get shredded as hell. Mike put on so much extra weight that his ankle swelled up on the first day of shooting because his body went through such an extreme change within such a short period of time. Dude would wake up in the middle of the night just to gulp down weight gainer shakes. Mad props to Mike, even if he didn’t get enough time to be get cut. He’s acting may not have been great, but given Ryu’s stoic nature the monotonic line delivery was rather fitting oddly enough.
I think the basic and rudimentary feeling SlayerofBodom gets from the choreography is because there’s less of a reliance on creative editing (quick shots that are constantly cutting into multiple angles and always focusing on different things to provide an illusion of action). To me, it feels more authentic seeing the same dudes who do the acting, go through the stunts as well. I’d rather that for this than watching some hocus-pocus filled camera work. Also, this is a made up form of martial arts that they’re choreographing here so for it feel like something you’re not accustomed to, only adds to the basic and rudimentary feeling imo. I like the fact that they’ve taken the effort to stay true to the games though and I’m sure many fans have as well.
I’ll agree that the fighting and non-fighting scenes are dis-proportioned, but loading it up on action was never the goal behind the series. Joey has said it many times over and over in interviews that at the heart of it Assassin’s Fist is a character story. Akuma is as much of a significant character in this as much as the others, to ‘trim off the fat’ by ignoring his portion of the story only serves to weaken the rest of the series and the other characters in it. There’s a whole plethora of themes and storylines to follow in Assassin’s Fist: Father versus son, bother versus brother, love triangle, tragedy, betrayal, banishment, rebirth, a master trying to pass on tradition but still protect the new generation from the tragedy of the previous so it isn’t all just about the fighting. Plus having fewer fights will help add further tension whenever they do occur, and make the scene that much more impactful. Piling on fights after fights, runs the risk of diluting the action and making it feel stagnate.
To disregard a significant story element of Assassin’s Fist in favour of more fighting, is a doing major disservice to the series and missing the creative vision that Joey had for this imo. Sure the origin story may have been told and done multiple times before, but they also conflict with each other and the street fighter story is one that is incredibly convoluted since all the different source materials just retrofit stuff to however they see fit. These are Joey’s words on why he did what he did with Assassin’s Fist
If the main complaint was that they dedicated a whole episode to Gouki training in the mountains then that’s because they needed to build up his transformation into Akuma so viewers would have an opportunity to buy into it while not breaking their suspension of disbelief. Just like how you’re slowly introduced to the Hadouken, how it works and the principles behind it. You’re first introduced to the concept of qi/chi/ki and then you see Ken and Ryu gradually develop the ability to harness it and bit by bit it manifests. This is a much more effective storytelling method than simply seeing a fireball out of the blue which in effect is telling the audience “yea these guys throw fireballs because they just can and the story requires it lolgofigure”. You have to rope people in on the fundamentals first, the characters and the story, before you get too supernatural and fantastical. Otherwise people will go “This is kiddy Harry Potter shit, it’s not for me” and that’s when you’ve effectively lost your audience.
Also, while the series may not have been some big hot-shot Hollywood type production, the grassroots efforts is very misleading for the amount of experience and talent behind the cast and crew. The people you see are all professional actors, who have managed to break into the industry working either with some big names or some pretty big productions.
[details=Spoiler]http://kungfukingdom.com/interview-with-akira-koieyama/
First up is our interview with Akira Koieyama, a famed Japanese actor who played Master Gouken, Ken and Ryu’s wise teacher. A veteran of the movie industry for over two decades he has appeared in such heavyweight movies as The Last Samurai, 47 Ronin, as well as Ninja, Rush, Scopia and Color of Pain.
This is our interview with Togo Igawa, the second of our exclusive Street Fighter: Assassin’s Fist series of interviews, where we catch up with the actor who played the powerful Master Goutetsu … He’s featured in The Last Samurai, Memoirs of a Geisha, an endearing one called The Hedgehog and even done voice work on 47 Ronin, and Thomas and Friends! Let’s hear from him what it was like being involved in SFAF and see if we can pick up some more clues about this, probably the most awaited video game adaptation eve
Here’s part 3 in our SFAF series with an interview with Gaku Space who plays Young Gouki, the Ansatsuken student of Master Goutetsu. An up and coming talent from Japan, he’s co-starred in well known TV shows such as “How I Met Your Mother” (CBS) and “Shake It Up!” (Disney Channel). His movies include, “The Passion” (2009), “It’s Jennifer” (2011) among doing other stage plays and notably will soon be working with another “Street Fighter” legend in his own right – Sonny Chiba!
Chris has of course worked before on Street Fighter: Legacy, as well as with Jean-Claude Van Damme, Scott Adkins and starred as the leading man in British indie martial arts film “Warrioress”. With a developing talent for acting and choreography which now takes him around the world, he’s again taking the part of Ken upon his broad shoulders.
Continuing our SFAF series, we tracked down Shogen who plays the respectable young Gouken in Street Fighter: Assassin’s Fist. In this, his first full-length English interview, we learn that Shogen, a down to earth surprise package with heaps of acting talent, has made about ten movies and has worked with on screen luminaries such as Sonny Chiba and Ken Wantanabe. He talks to us about his inspirations, training and experience fulfilling the role of young Gouken as well as his acting career so far in Japan and how he’s breaking into the US with some promising roles.
As part of our Street Fighter: Assassin’s Fist coverage, today we come to our interview with Mike Moh who plays the most famous character in the fighting game genre, the silent, humble and smoulderingly introspective Ryu! He’s worked with the likes of Jackie Chan, Matt Mullins and many others and has gained wide exposure starring in TV series such a “Kamen Rider” and “Supah Ninjas”.
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This Joey one I’ve put outside the spoilers since it touches a bit on how story and character is what makes a fight scene really memorable. He played Desh in the Bourne:Ultimatum btw.
The only legitimate complaint is that ryu is way too skinny.
Ryu is ripped…don’t get the world warrior legend vibe from him.
Not biting for that one again.
wait a minute, so there were people that wanted Moh to do a Better job as acting as the samurai wandering homeless man that can barely shows emotion and maintains a one track mind all the way to Sf3?
What?
Care to share what canon streetfighter game ryu wasn’t robotic in before sf3?
…the street fighter V series…