TEKKEN: The Motion Picture (1998)

This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

The acting in this movie is really good.

Indeed, how well can you do a story based on a game where you hit the other guy, and there's a cast of 20-30 fighters? How do you give everyone screen time? Is there enough time to give lip service to most or all of the cast, but still have something resembling a coherent story? And even if the story is coherent, is it good? In the case of Tekken: the Motion Picture, the answer is clearly a resounding NO. Tekken normally has about 20-30 characters and they only concentrated on only 9 of them and more on Kazuya, Heihachi, jun, Lei, Lee, Jack while smaller roles were given to Nina, Anna, Michelle and Roger and Bruce. the movie was supposed to be as good as the game but it wasn't most of everyones favorite characters like king or Yoshimitsu were only shown for a second i mean if you'd blink once you'd miss 10 of them. the plot for Kazuya and Jun was very well but nothing was said about the others it was like they never existed. The animation in Tekken is all digital, but since it's done by GONZO, it looks dull and boring. I blame director Kunihisa Sugishima. You'd think that Namco could find someone a little better to handle the adaptation of their flagship fighting series-- like maybe Masami Obari. Also not worth the computer they were saved on are Kazuki Yanagisawa's character designs, which are pointy, and very, very ugly.

When I first began to watch this movie I was awash with curiosity. I hadn't heard of a film version of Tekken before, and it didn't look too promising, but as Tekken 3 is my all time favourite fighting game I thought I'd check it out - A genuine waste of an hour of my life I will never get back.I don't usually post reviews on IMDb, but I just had to warn anyone who felt as curious as I did about this that it WILL disappoint you unbelievably. The voice acting is horrendous, each actor doing the worst they could from a clunky script that has each character stand there and explain there entire back story in between fighting. As for the fighting, it was just silly. The few fights there were managed to conquer the market in pure dull punch and kick tedium.The story itself barely goes through any of the characters. Obviously we get the main story between Heihachi and his son, but favourites such as Paul are left to pose all "fierce" in ensemble shots while dull characters such as Lei steal all the limelight.Now for some good news. Unfortunately, all I could think of was to work the "so bad it's good" angle, and if that's what you're after there are a few unplanned giggles here and there from the use of the boxing-gloved kangaroo and some invisible dinosaurs (don't ask). Don't give your hopes up, though, as these will evoke no more than minor chuckles from the embarrassment you will feel for the people that thought up such a ridiculous mismatch of illogical plot and, in the female lead, the most irritating protagonist this side of...well, ever.In all, the only movie I've ever seen which I would actually pay money to avoid seeing ever again. I'm sure if you're a fan of the games that you're curiosity is bound to overpower you, but YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED...

I personally am a huge fan of the Tekken series (specifically 3 and Tag Tournament), and when I saw that there was a Tekken anime, I was thrilled. Since I couldn't find it anywhere, I set it to download on Kazaa. It took two or three days to download, building up the anticipation of seeing one of my favorite video games brought to life. When I finally watched it, I was thoroughly disappointed. This movie had very little redeeming qualities to it: the characters were mostly annoying (ie- Lee Chaolan, Nina and Anna, Heihachi, Jun Kazama), and as has been mentioned before, the fighting and character development were minimal. Seemed like the most interesting character was Jack and the little girl, though it seemed a little corny and done before (the whole machine learning how to feel, etc...). The plot line went all over the place and ended up barely resembling the game. What also bothered me was that some of the more interesting characters from the series (Paul Phoenix, King and Armor King, Yoshimitsu, etc...) were in it for about 5 seconds in the background in the final scene. Much of the movie was completely gratuitous (Anna's shower scene, the stealth mutant dinosaurs). This movie gets a 2 for effort and the couple half-interesting scenes with Jack.

This was a bad idea from the get go. Tekken is not a game that would translate to the screen very well. First of all Tekken has 20+ characters, most of which have little connection to one another so in order to get everyone on screen for a remotely decent length of time it would be a giant montage of fight scenes (because no one is about to sit through the slow development of all 20 characters out of which only 5 are worth talking about). There are too many characters to work with so it's inevitable that they focus in on a select few. But which few? Most have nothing to do with each other. Adding insult to injury, this anime also tries to morph the plotlines of Tekken 1 and Tekken 2 together. Yay, more characters. If they stuck with the Tekken 1 premise – a simple tournament and a simple father/son rivalry, this would have worked much better. They should have focused in on Kazuya's past, his rise throughout the tournament, the very beginnings of his dealing with Devil, and his confrontation with Heihachi. The narrative could stick with Kazuya as he faces off with different people and occasionally jump to other fights by the main characters thereby incorporating them into the overall story as well - then it might be worth watching.That would leave the door open for a Tekken anime sequel, it would keep the non-Tekken literate viewers informed as to the whole mythology around Tekken, and it would have been an overall better film. Also that approach would give them plenty of time to either kill off or incapacity and/or address certain characters so they don't have to deal with as many in a sequel. But nope, they tried to pack everything into one film – even Tekken 2's joke characters which had no place in the game, much less the movie. So we get lots of characters on screen who ramble and add nothing to anything and hardly ever fight despite being based on a fighting game.Another point – for one I did not like for the quality of this anime's drawing. It wasn't very inspiring. Add to that the fact all of Tekken's characters previously have been strictly CG-rendered which makes a drawn interpretation feel like a fish out of water; looking across the characters I found myself saying, `That's not Lei Wu Long; that can't be Kazuya . . .' and I couldn't buy into much of it from then on out. Final thoughts: Tekken isn't a game that lends itself too terribly well to anything other than its own medium. It's shallow as a fighting game, so it's no surprising that the anime adaptation reflects this so well.