Is this the great­est ever video game movie performance?

Main­stream movies and video games have for some time shared var­i­ous nar­ra­tive and styl­is­tic sim­i­lar­i­ties, from a heavy reliance on spe­cial effects to immer­sive scripts and fan­tas­ti­cal sto­ry­telling. Yet the two medi­ums have shared an awk­ward, arm’s length kin­ship. When­ev­er one tries to step into the other’s world, the results are near­ly always disastrous.

Beloved fran­chis­es like Res­i­dent Evil, Mor­tal Kom­bat and Super Mario have pro­duced for­get­table films full of crass humour and non­sen­si­cal plots. Equal­ly dis­ap­point­ing con­clu­sions arise when films have attempt­ed to dip their toes in the video game world. Games based upon ET, Fri­day the 13^th and Jaws are regard­ed as some of the worst ever made, gain­ing infamy in the gam­ing industry.

One of the first signs that these two forms of enter­tain­ment were fail­ing to bond was the 1994 adap­ta­tion of Street Fight­er. The beat ​’em up was, and still is, one of the most adored and respect­ed video games in his­to­ry and antic­i­pa­tion was high among fans. Inevitably, the film bore almost no resem­blance to the actu­al game. Pop­u­lar char­ac­ters like Ryu and Ken were rel­e­gat­ed to sup­port­ing roles and the game’s famous fin­ish­ing moves, such as the Hadouken, were nowhere to be seen. Instead, view­ers were treat­ed to a 102-minute sub­par mar­tial arts movie cen­tred on a war between a phoney NATO oper­a­tion and a mega­lo­ma­ni­ac dictator.

Jean-Claude Van Damme com­mand­ed an $8m fee for his part as allied nations’ com­man­der William F Guile, which ate up most of the film’s $35m bud­get. This forced oth­er roles to be hand­ed to unknown actors or else those who were hor­ri­bly mis­cast, like a com­plete­ly out-of-her-depth Kylie Minogue as British mil­i­tary intel­li­gence agent, Cam­my. The pro­duc­tion itself was ham­pered by the sit­u­a­tion in near­by Myan­mar not to men­tion the end­less med­dling of the Street Fight­er own­ers, Cap­com. Almost every­thing about this movie was a calami­ty. Except, that is, for one man: Raul Julia.

By the mid ​’90s, Julia was well known for his role as Gomez Addams in the Addams Fam­i­ly movies, and had pre­vi­ous­ly starred in films like The Pan­ic in Nee­dle Park and Kiss of the Spi­der-Woman while also work­ing with high-pro­file direc­tors like Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la and Sid­ney Lumet. Julia was an extreme­ly flam­boy­ant, fun­ny and charis­mat­ic actor. He would bounce around the screen like a dancer and his end­less reper­toire of facial expres­sions would often leave you in stitch­es. Julia was far too good an actor for Street Fight­er but his com­mit­ment to the role can­not be questioned.

The then 54-year-old only agreed to be in the film on the request of his chil­dren, who were fans of the game and helped him to pre­pare for the role of the evil war­lord M Bison. Sad­ly, Julia was suf­fer­ing from stom­ach can­cer at the time of film­ing, and yet his pale com­plex­ion is the only indi­ca­tion that this was a man near­ing death.

Street Fighter’s dia­logue is rid­den with clichés and hyper­bole – espe­cial­ly Bison’s, whose deter­mi­na­tion to con­quer the world via an army of genet­i­cal­ly enhanced sol­diers, requires him to give sev­er­al ridicu­lous if impas­sioned speech­es. Indeed, Julia’s dis­tin­guished deliv­ery wouldn’t be out of place in a seri­ous dra­ma: the wood­en­ness of the oth­er actors sim­ply doesn’t touch Julia. He exag­ger­ates his man­ner­ism with the kind of self-indul­gent van­i­ty that is befit­ting of his char­ac­ter. He not only man­aged to rise above the turgid script but pro­duced some­thing that was dis­tinct­ly enter­tain­ing in its own per­for­ma­tive right.

Also worth men­tion­ing are the strik­ing sim­i­lar­i­ties between Bison to Gomez Addams. Despite their dif­fer­ing goals, Julia inhab­its both char­ac­ters with dan­ger­ous feroc­i­ty. They are instant­ly like­able because of Julia’s nat­ur­al charm but a small ges­ture or glance is enough to remind us of the insan­i­ty that lies just beneath the sur­face. Con­sid­er­ing the mul­ti­tudes of prob­lems he was deal­ing with away from act­ing, it’s aston­ish­ing that Julia man­aged to cre­ate some­thing that evoked the macabre genius of Gomez.

Julia died on 24 Octo­ber, 1994, two months before Street Fight­er was released. The film is ded­i­cat­ed to his mem­o­ry. It’s almost as if Julia knew that this was going to be his last movie and, despite the medi­oc­rity with which he was pre­sent­ed, still endeav­oured to give a tru­ly accom­plished and com­plete per­for­mance. Street Fight­er may not have been the lega­cy that Julia intend­ed for him­self – he cer­tain­ly appeared in bet­ter films – but it per­fect­ly cap­tures his unique abil­i­ties as an actor. His Bison is fun­ny, men­ac­ing, clever, camp and more inter­est­ing than every­one else in the film. Even in the direst of sit­u­a­tions, Julia brought cred­i­bil­i­ty, dig­ni­ty and poise, and that is a mem­o­ry worth preserving.