Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (2009)

In the vacation shuffle I must have missed the Japanese trailer for Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li. I should just take the oversight as a blessing, but it’s some sort of sign that I’ll never be able to honor my New Year’s resolution, which was to not post anything about the awful Street Fighter movie.

Since I don’t speak Japanese, I’m not entirely sure what the overexcited voice over guy is trying to tell us. I hope it’s a subliminal explanation of why they decided to make another movie based on the 20-year-old Street Fighter video game series.

Or maybe he’s narrating the unnecessary flips and spins the characters are performing. “Look there’s a guard. Jump and… Back Flip Kick! There are some guys in the alley, leap, and Kick off the wall! Vega needs to get on a building, so he jumps and Side Spins!

Source: NewsInFilm.com

How It Fared:
Budget: $50M
Box Office: $12M

The Audience Speaks:
IMDB Rating: 4.0/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 30/100
Metacritic Rating: 17/100
Overall: F

Dragonball Evolution (2009)

While story details are being kept under wraps, The Hollywood Reporter's synopsis says Dragonball "centers on an adult humanoid alien named Goku (Chatwin) who, after discovering he was sent to Earth to destroy the population, tries to fulfill the wish of his dying grandfather and collect all seven of the world's mystical Dragon Balls to keep them out of the hands of the evil aliens." Variety added that Bulma's "father's Dragon Ball is stolen by Piccolo."

Source: IGN

How It Fared:
Budget: $??M
Box Office: $58M

The Audience Speaks:
IMDB Rating: 3.3/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 36/100
Metacritic Rating: 45/100
Overall: F

Cowboy Bebop (2010)

It’s no secret that Keanu Reeves loves anime – a main influence on the “Matrix” series. It’s also common knowledge that the actor holds a place in his heart for sci-fi, as evidenced by films like “A Scanner Darkly,” “Johnny Mnemonic” and the currently-tops-in-theaters “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” It’s no surprise, then, that Reeves’ latest passion project revolves around his desire to make a live-action “Cowboy Bebop.”

“Oh yeah, cool,” he said when I asked him about the flick recently. “We’re trying to do that.”

As fans of the Japanese classic TV series know, “Bebop” follows a crew of bounty hunters traveling around the universe in the year 2071. Reeves hopes to play Spike Spiegel, one of these futuristic cowboys forced to pick up the slack after a population crash and hyperspace gateways have left law-enforcement unable to capture many of the galaxy’s most ruthless criminals.

Source: MTV.com