I watch bad videogame films so that you don’t have to (Pt. 1)

Welcome to episode 1 of ‘I watch bad video game films so that you don’t have to’. The plan is basically for me to spoil four already-spoiled films tied in to the resurgence in popularity of the fighting game genre.

This week: Tekken.

I love me a bit of Tekken; all those bad stories rolled into one, with the added delight of panda bears and dragons ripped from anime series.

The recent film is having none of that; shit got serious. Its story goes that the whole world has collapsed and is run by a group of corporations called ‘The Iron Fist’, which is funny because if I was going to try and run the world I would want to call my conglomerate something innocuous like ‘Barry’. The most powerful company runs what was America (obviously, because the USA is where every company would go to find an easily exploitable workforce) and is called Tekken.

If that isn’t the most awesome plot line ever then I don’t know what a good one is.

The opening runs through this really sweet parkour scene following the hero, Jin Kazama. Well, it would be a totally sweet parkour scene if the cinematographer and stunt co-ordinator had known the difference between their arses and their elbows. Instead it is a bunch of shakycam bullshit.

Jin is a loner. He works with the resistance but he won’t join them, and instead he gets involved in flashbacks about how his mum taught him to fight. That and he hooks up with a blonde chick who likes a lot of chocolate on her biscuit, if you know what I mean.

No, really, she likes chocolate. Get your mind out of the gutter.

Chocolate and Jin penis.

Anyway, Shang Tsung from Mortal Kombat is like the head honcho of everything and he’s really excited about holding the Iron Fist tournament at the Tekken corporation. Not sure why; I phased out for that part because I was completely blown away by his mental haircut and eyebrows.

Back to the story: while Jin was busting a nut in blondey, Hispanic Ben Affleck gets all pissy and decides to blow Jin’s mother up. Something to do with Jin supplying a 200 GHz thingamajig to the resistance. “Who is Hispanic Ben Affleck?” you ask: to be honest that didn’t become clear to me until much later. All I knew is that he was not happy about Jin and Jin’s dalliances.

It does not go well for Jin’s mum who is blown up while being suppressed by two Tekken soldiers. Jin gets really emotional and decides that even though his mum has been like “don’t you be messin’ with the Tekken”, he is going to fight in the Iron Fist tournament as a means to kill Shang Tsung whom he holds responsible for his mother’s nuking.

He goes for the chance to become the people’s choice, and meets up with one of the ex-members of Bros. Bros’ character’s name is Steve Rodgers, but for the sake of this narrative he is Bros.

Jin has to fight a guy called Marshall Law. Everyone is like ‘who is this guy?’ about Jin; even Bros doesn’t believe that he has it in him to defeat Marshall Law.

Of course Jin busts out some sick moves and wins.

There is a lot of waffle about all these tournament fighters and how awesome they are; they even have a montage of fighting styles.

Shang Tsung appears to get a stiffy:

Jin then meets a new woman with a ridiculous costume. Next some Capoeira happens, because every fighting film needs Capoeira in it now (alright, alright, Tekken had a Capoeira fighter in it before that shit was popular).

Jin goes to a night club, ignoring the fact that he is in the middle of a major fighting tournament, not to mention that he’s supposedly getting revenge for his mother’s encounter with a missile and he already has a girlfriend.

Yes, he looks like a twat in motion too.

So, having already forgotten blondey, Jin tries to hook up with the aforementioned fighter woman. However some crazy assassin chicks start trying to kill him instead.

I know what you’re thinking – I wasn’t expecting so many plot twists myself.

Jin is generally fine, despite Bros and the new squeeze being a bit peeved. Some fighting happens.

Hispanic Ben Affleck swears revenge (for it is he that sent the assassins). He then takes over Tekken and tells Shang Tsung to go fuck himself.

Soon everything gets out of hand. Turns out that the notorious HBA is actually Jin’s dad and that Shang Tsung wasn’t responsible for Jin’s mum’s incineration; in fact when HBA raped Jin’s mum (I know, fucked up) Shang Tsung saved her… by dumping her in the slums where she eventually sucked on an explosive. Bros knows all about this too, but never made the connection that two people with the same fighting style who also share the surname Kazama are related. Everyone escapes to the slums and has a heart-warming moment.

That doesn’t last long as HBA and his troops break up the party, which doesn’t go well for Bros or Shang Tsung as the Latin Ben decides he is going to fuck them all up. He doesn’t explain why he keeps Jin or the lady fighter alive, but he does make Jin fight again.

He gets to fight my personal favourite from the series: bullet-belt wearing Bryan Fury. Obviously it is to the death after Fury kills some Russian dude. I may have forgotten to mention that previously.

I could leave you in suspense about the result of the fight between Jin and Bryan.

But I won’t.

Hispanic Ben Affleck decides to go kill his son on live television but the fighter lady is all “no, you can’t!” This confused me as I would reckon that with HBA now in charge of the biggest corporation in the world, he could do whatever he damned well pleased.

Anyway, HBA and Jin duke it out. It all seems a little unfair as Spanish Affleck has two axes. Fortunately this is the films so Jin, despite being completely screwed up, slashes up Ben and, instead of killing him, just walks off.

I’m not sure where they wrote these rules but according to Tekken, if you do that it makes you the boss. Jin looks all moody, on a path for justice or something.

Everyone cheers.

Blondey seems surprisingly happy (or high), which I guess is because she doesn’t know that Jin has been cheating on her yet.

The End

Most fucked up thing about this write-up? I wrote it whilst watching Martyrs; man that movie does not know when to quit in terms of gruesome depression.