I knew that there was word whistling around about another Street Fighter feature being made, based on the Capcom video game. I thought it was a joke at first, the kind of rumor that is spread around in a vain attempt at getting fan boys what they want. But today, according to Yahoo, the cast is nearly put together and they brought in Doom's Andrzej Bartkowiak to direct (which is never a good sign). Recently added to the cast is mild-mannered character actor Neil McDonough who will play the villainous Bison. He will be starring with a cast that includes Smallville's Kristen Kreuk, Moon Bloodgood, Michael Clarke Duncan, Chris Klein, Taboo from the Black Eyed Peas and Asian film stars Edmund Chen and Cheng Pei-Pei.

Look, I love video games like the next nerd, but didn't the first Street Fighter show us that video game movies need to have something more than Van Damme with a bad haircut? Street Fighter, as a game, is simple: kick the other guy's butt before he (or she) kicks yours. That works for games. They threw in a little bit of a story in there just to explain why people would be racking up frequent flyer miles to go from Brazil to Thailand just to lay a smackdown on somebody. But to make a movie, you need a story and some characters that you can care about. Street Fighter doesn't have any of these requiem.

Recently, there has been an argument started by Roger Ebert over the issue of video games being considered art. His argument was that if the audience has complete control over the scenario, that it doesn't allow the artists to have control over the art. While I disagree with this argument (and will post my own sometime later), there are some games that aren't artistic. That yes, they're just a game. They're the pornography of the format since all they do is feed the desire for violence or conquest. Street Fighter, Doom, Mortal Kombat, and Command and Conquer are all examples. I enjoy these games, but they do not allow for interpretive storytelling such as Grand Theft Auto (which is both satirical and thought-provoking), Final Fantasy, Super Mario, and The Sims.

More than likely, Street Fighter will only guarantee a degree of action (which will more than likely, coming from this director, be extremely lame) and will give nothing more. And for those who are eager for another Street Fighter movie, that's all they care about. But those, like myself, who want more in their action movies, might find this movie to be yet another example of a tired Hollywood system whose bankruptcy in ideas is starting to come close to foreclosure.