Tekken: The Motion Picture (1998) User Reviews

Informative, but Poorly Done

[kajin_phoenixlord · 4/10 · 17 June 2005]

I was really disappointed and mad after I watched this movie. My expectations were too high. The beginning of the movie was the best part because it was giving the information of the story. Beyond that it started to decline more and more. The thing that really made me mad was why show characters from Tekken 3 at the opening credits if they weren't in the rest of the movie. That's just stupid in my eyes. Once the tournament started, what happened with all the characters? Yoshimitsu, Marshall Law, Paul Phoenix, King, Armor King, all were seen and didn't show them throughout the tournament. Everyone had a story to tell in that game, but they only centered it on Jun and Kazuya. They only thing that was a plus was that it was filled in some of the blanks on Tekken 2 between the two of them. Lee Chaolan was just an idiot on the movie. I understand that in game story he was obsessed about controlling the Mishima Zaibatsu, but he would never go as far to kill himself and and destroy the company so no one else would get it. He's not that insane.

Overall, the movie really let me down. Like I said before the only thing that was good was the information. At least now we know that how Jin came to be born. I just wish we could've learned more about the other characters. That's the only thing that was wrong about the movie. Hopefully, if they do another movie they would get it right, but that's only going on hope.

Ridiculous, but still a little fun

[rbverhoef · 6/10 · 12 April 2004]

From the video game 'Tekken' comes an anime movie, 'Tekken: The Motion Picture'. The story begins the same as the story of 'Mortal Kombat'. As in 'Mortal Kombat' the main villain makes sure another person has to seek revenge, as in 'Mortal Kombat' martial art experts get on a boat to arrive on an island, and as in 'Mortal Kombat' a tournament is the reason to do so. We follow a couple of different persons who all want to kill the villain, all with their own reasons. On their journeys they encounter some strange enemies and of course hidden secrets are revealed.

Although the animation is not as good as we normally see in this kind of movies there still is some energy, especially in the fighting sequences. This is not a very good movie but since it is not that long, less than an hour, it was quite watchable. Although most things are ridiculous, even for anime, I was entertained. Because of its running time it doesn't find a chance to become really boring. There are better movies from the genre but for only an hour there is a good chance you will like it.

Wasted potential and awful English version.

[omega2064 · 5/10 · 8 June 2005]

Tekken: The Motion Picture is based on a popular sort of arcade fighting games and a series of console ports as well. Anime and even live action films based on such fighters are quite common, ranging from series like Street Fighter, to movies like Mortal Kombat and everything in between. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. Tekken:The Motion Picture falls somewhere in the "they don't" category.

Before I get to the English version problems I'll start with the animation itself. For the most part the movie plays well with only a few moments of very noticeable poor work. Usually during panorama sequences for some reason. The fights themselves are interesting and dynamic. But all far far too short and some end very abruptly or unexpectedly. The direction and pacing in this movie leave a lot to be desired. but better than some other efforts that seem to end with no real closure or wrap-up. At a mere 60min, Tekken could have seriously used an additional 30 min of fighting and development. And far too much of the film is spent re-hashing at least 3 times an opening moment.

Now for the English version. The voice actors were good at least. ADV does at least keep a good stable of talent and each character has a distinctive voice that fits to one degree or another. Only Jack with his stilted talking came off slightly less, but was still acceptable. The decision of ADV to totally rework the music track though for the most part failed. While none of the music was particularly bad. None of the music fits quite right either. Some more-so than others.

Now for the movie itself and what it is about. Some spoilers may follow. Young Kazuya and Jun have a opening comment that will be replayed several times throughout the movie. Kazuya is hurled from a cliff by his father, Heihachi Mishima and left for dead. But determination and a powerful will for revenge save him. We move forward to the present, which appears to be a near-future date and a government organization that polices the uses of outlawed bioweapons and other problems. Jun is now a member of this force and is by chance mysteriously invited to the Tekken tournament along with wise cracking inter-pol agent Lei WuLong. They plan to investigate mysterious and likely illegal activities on the island while attending the tournament. Elsewhere Lee is plotting against Kazuya and sends Anna to assassinate him. This fails and later Jun and Lei meet up With Jack and a little girl. The story progresses from here to the island and the tournament. We get to see some cameos from main and side characters of the game (Looks to all be Tekken 2 crew,) and some sparring along the way to the climax, which is slightly anti-climatic.

Good for a rental or for those who must collect everything Tekken. not a bad entry really, just not a good one either. Wasted potential in the end. But do give it a try if you like fighter anime. Judge for yourself. You might enjoy it more, or less.

excellent game, horrible movie

[patking13 · 2/10 · 18 January 2005]

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.

It was pretty good for the most part

[tomservo88 · 7/10 · 16 October 2005]

OK, Tekken the movie..... First of all, the cons are that it is far too short, seemingly will lead into a sequel yet at the same time will not, and most of the minor characters only show up and do not interact with the story in any way.

However, for the most part the pros beat out the cons. For one, the story does go into Kazuya, the main character of Tekken 1 and 2's story, the dubbing isn't horrible (Except for Law), the soundtrack is amazing with Stabbing Westward, Offspring, and some other late 90's rock artists, and often fits with the action.

Overall, if u like the game, see it first then think about buying it from there, if u haven't played the game, its a good rent, but you probably wont want to buy it

Not recommended

[du_man · 2/10 · 12 June 2003]

Rating: *

In 1993, NAMCO released the fighting video game 'Tekken' about a martial arts contest held by the powerful Mishima corporation. It was extremely successful, and was followed by the greatest fighting game of all time-- named (what else?) 'Tekken 2.' At this point, there have been four more sequels, including a Tag Tournament and a Game Boy version. This anime follows the storyline in the first two.

Let me start off by saying that I think anime stinks for the most part. Only one show, 'Dragonball Z', is any good, and it drags its stories out far too long. This adaptation of the game series, however, has the opposite problem: it is far too short.

The fight scenes are pitiful and don't even start to get thrilling. Of all the characters in the game, only Kazuya, Heihachi, Lee, and Jun get any decent screen time (Lei and Jack-2 are the only others that get any real time at all). And they're not developed nearly enough.

A couple of Lee's scenes are interesting and there is one attempted assassination on Kazuya by Nina that's sort of okay, but otherwise this is a badly written, boring anime flick.

And when a sixty minute movie is boring, you know you're in trouble.

Anyone not familiar with the story line will be utterly confused and find the film completely incomprehensible. Those familiar with it will be disappointed by how poor it is.

The script is so bad that the writers call 'Tekken' a mysterious thing that doesn't make sense. After Lee's two incomprehensible sentences about it, it is completely ignored. What is it-- the Force? A magical fighting style? An underwear style? Who knows.

Tekken means Iron Fights, and the geniuses who wrote this piece of crud don't understand that this is supposed to make just a little bit of sense. Not to mention that what is understandable is extraordinarily stupid and illogical.

Besides the script reeking, the rest stinks, too. The voice acting (I am talking about the English version) is awful, the direction is pointlessly poor, and the music score wanders between okay and really, really annoying.

If you aren't familiar with the games, avoid this at all costs. If you have, you might consider seeing it on TV as a point of interest, but don't waste any money on it. There aren't a lot of films worse than this.

Rating: *

If you're a Tekken fan, you'll like this movie.

[shilrah · 6/10 · 20 December 2001]

This movie is about a rich man, Heihachi Mishima, who is obsessed with destroying the devil in order to create a better new world. He intentionally throws his son Kazuya from a cliff creating a devil within Kazuya. However, nobody has ever seen Kazuya ever since. Certain that Kazuya will go for it, Heihachi announces a martial arts competition. The one who get to Heihachi first and the manages to defeat him, wins the prize-money and the title of "King of Iron Fist". Kazuya shows up indeed but as he attempts to kill his father he is consistently stopped by Jun, a girl from his childhood, who was there when Heihachi threw him off the cliff. Now is there at the tournament and she won't stop at nothing to release Kazuya from the devil within him.

Although this Anime is not the exactly best, I think they did a very good job with the story. Considering the amount of Tekken characters in existence (52, including the ones that are not in the game)they managed to get many of the characters in it without harming the continuity of the story. On the other hand I thought there was too little of Devil in it and Jun just doesn't stop talking. 6/10

Oh dear.

[Lodrin · 1/10 · 18 April 2001]

This movie had so much potential, but just blew it. The problem is that it tries to have a good story about a few of the tekken characters. The problem then is that some of the other characters get absolutely no screen time. No Paul, no King and no Yoshimitzu. Oh, and theres almost no fighting either. Just character development, something thats unnecessary in a movie like this. Maybe people who havnt playd the games wil like it, but i hated it.

Shallow game = shallow anime

[jaywolfenstien · 4 July 2003]

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.

Descent story

[jared-02224 · 6/10 · 10 February 2024]

Tekken the emotion the storyline is basically is a combination of Tekken one and two it's not really that hard to follow of course back in the '90s that's when fighting games are so popular we don't actually follow the story is much we just play the game and enjoy it so if you want the story you have to read it for yourself on the Internet or in the booklets that each PlayStation game actually had I've actually seen this movie before I even read the actual story that was canon I can understand that some people dislike this movie but I've actually enjoyed it myself so it wasn't bad I've seen worse.

Awful...just plain embarrassing

[sticky_pinkerton · 1/10 · 6 June 2005]

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...

Probably the best Tekken movie I've seen

[wadejesen-96537 · 8/10 · 19 August 2020]

I think I enjoyed this movie more than I should have, as a huge fan of the Tekken games. I can understand it's bad rating and hopefully one day we get a Tekken movie that's done right but until then I think this is the best one to watch.

If you've ever wondered how bad anime could get...

[mrplaid2001 · 2/10 · 24 May 2003]

Few people in anime's massive fanbase seem to be willing to accept the fact that most anime is pretty awful. Most anime has terrible pacing, incredibly awkward dialogue, cliched plots and characters, and poor animation in the case of most non-feature anime. Tekken has all of these faults and more to the point where it's so bad you shouldn't miss it. Most notably, for a movie based on a fighting game, there doesn't seem to be very much fighting. Most of what little combat there is is of the Dragonball variety, which involves people standing about ten feet apart and speaking in run-on sentences about their hastily put-together back stories. When the characters aren't 'fighting' they're yammering on about the hilariously lame plot which involves some kind of devil and an island and the end of the world or something. I was too busy laughing through most of it to catch any of major story points. Speaking of laughing, one of the major action sequences involves the characters fighting freaking INVISIBLE DINOSAURS. I'm not kidding. They also managed to work the stupid boxing kangaroo into the story. I caught this movie on cable with the terrible English dub, which gives it another point on the Hilariously Bad scale. There's just so much wrong with this movie that it's great. If you consider yourself an anime fan, do yourself a favor and watch this so you know where the bottom of the barrel is.

I actually thought this would be good... big mistake.

[Tenchi64589 · 29 March 2003]

As far as this movie goes, I can only say this... WHAT HAPPENED!?

The movie starts oddly enough with Kazuya Mishima getting tossed off a cliff by his father, Heihachi which didn't really do anything for this movie.

The only real good parts about this movie were the music in the English version, (good choices) and a shower scene and implied sex scene between Anna Williams and Lee Chowlan.

Other than that... this movie sucks.

On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being bad, and 10 being excellent, this gets a big fat goose egg!

Mediocre at best.

[mfettema777 · 3/10 · 3 April 2007]

I've played the Tekken games. They are fun, visually stimulating, in places madly complicated, but always worth playing.

This movie, on the other hand, is a waste of time and effort, on both the creator's part and the viewers.

To begin with, there are many characters in the Tekken game which a 60-minute movie cannot hope to address appropriately. We are given glimpses of some characters who are key to the game's storyline, but in the movie? You get the oh-so-terrible 2-second "Hey look! There's (insert name)!" shot, but never once get to see them in action, which is just a waste. An extra half an hour would have done well just to see these guys in action.

The drawing style and choices of shots are clichéd and average at best. No atmosphere is brought across by the visuals. The English dubbing borders on awful, the dialogue repetitive and prone to spoon-feeding the viewer the bleeding obvious, and the soundtrack in places misplaced.

There were some nice ideas in the storyline, but it's so badly executed that you can't enjoy it, even as a fan of the game series.

3/10. Don't bother with it.

The trailer to the movie is better than the movie itself

[maxyg18 · 4/10 · 5 September 2006]

TEKKEN: THE MOTION PICTURE wasn't really impressive at all. The script was poor and really cheesy but the animation was good and the fight scenes weren't too bad. But the thing is, why won't people ever learn that movies based on video games don't work at all? It really annoys me, GAH!

This crap movie is about the character Kazuya Mishima, before he became Jin's father, wants to kill his dad, Heihachi Mishima after he almost killed Kazuya on purpose but the only way to kill him, is by joining the Tekken fighting tournament on an island guarded by the military.

I think you'd rather be playing the game than watch this garbage because TEKKEN: THE MOTION PICTURE gives you the reason why you should never watch movies that are based on video games.

There's a saying that I made up called 'you've played the game, now don't watch the movie'.

Well Tekken.. right?

[handsomjansom · 5/10 · 18 July 2005]

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.

Manages to be worse than the live action movie.

[xamtaro · 3/10 · 9 August 2010]

In 1994, the success of "Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie" rocked the anime world. Three years later, ASCII and studio deen collaborated on "Tekken: the motion picture" in a possible bid to replicate the success of the previous video game anime adaptation. The result however was less than satisfying: a sub par product that was inferior in every way as an anime movie.

If the opening monologue about the nature of "the tekken" (supposedly the "complete knowledge of one's flesh, blood and fist" that would be the "key to life") does not confuse you, the rest of the movie might. The story somewhat follows that of the first two Tekken games: Special investigator and martial arts expert Jun Kazama is made to join the....."Tekken" tournament hosted by the mysterious Mishima corporation under Heihachi Mishima. This is a pretense for her to infiltrate Mishima's island fortress and ascertain whether they are producing dinosaur-like bio weapons. In another part of Singapore (OMG! this anime takes place in SINGAPORE!!), Kazuya the rogue son of Heihachi Mishima is attacked by an assassin Nina. This prompts him to stowaway aboard a ship destined for Mishaima's island in order to exact his revenge upon his father.

Along the way, it is revealed that Jun and Kazuya have a shared history. When they were young, Kazuya tried to help Jun. His father Heihachi saw that act as an act of weakness and, believe it or not, THREW KAZUYA OFF A CLIFF! All the while, waxing philosophical about how Lions throw cubs off cliffs as a test of strength. Thats to that event, Kazuya is now a cold heartless fighter obsessed with vengeance.

Running at 60 minutes, it barely has enough time to develop the main story of Jun and Kazuya. To make things worse, other fighters like Lee (who is jealous of his brother Kazuya and wants to kill him), jack (who's story seems ripped from Terminator 2 about the machine who values human life) and Nina hog the screen time with their own little story arcs. This leads to none of their characters being fully developed. Although the voice actors do a great job, Cheesy lines about "grasping your own truth with your hands" and "don't let the darkness in your heart take over" permeate the entire narrative. Along with some drivel about machine self-awareness, justice and truth and the purpose of fighting, iT gives the feel of an anime desperately trying to sound as complex as its contemporaries. Instead it all sounds very silly and juvenile once given a little bit of thought.

And then there is the animation, which looks no better than a standard 1997 TV series animation. It does not do justice to the quality of anime movies which are meant to have a bigger budget. Character movements are lazily animated, frame rate is barely adequate and the fights lack a certain energy. Every motion comes across and stiff but at least the level of detail in the art is consistent. Cost cutting techniques are obviously used. For example, Conversations involve a long pan over a still scene, Motion lines on a still picture and there are even some repeated scenes thrown in.

Fans thinking that this could not be worse than the recent live action Tekken movie, think again. This is worse. Though the characters look exactly like they do in the game, the entire thing is ludicrous. Invisible dinosaurs, boxing kangaroos, cyborgs, psychic powers, devil energy, genetic alterations and Jun's ability to sense a "fighter's spirit", all concepts that are never explained. Even the final duel between Kazuya and his father is sadly anti-climatic.

Tekken The motion picture fails in every way to mimic the success of Street Fighter The Animated movie despite even lifting some scenes wholesale from that anime: A nude shower scene, an attempted assassination in a bedroom and even a sumo wrestler character that parodies Street Fighter character E Honda. Overall a major disappointment, not even worth the time to watch on youtube.

2/10 for this horrid let down.

An extra point since its set in Singapore for 3/10

If you don't play the game then don't watch it

[sagarghaghada-67164 · 10/10 · 25 February 2019]

Simply the best tekken film there's been. It encapsulates the basic story that we already know and adds elements that have either been kept from us or doesn't really work in game form. Its just good

Short and almost sweet.

[theanomaloushost · 5/10 · 16 July 2020]

It's stupid, but it is entertaining. Had the potential to be better.

What could have been a incredible martial arts anime, never worked out.

[raven-pictures · 4/10 · 23 April 2002]

Tekken the movie is based on the namco game with the same name. It features some of the best fighters in the world, brought together to compete for the title as best martial arts fighter in the world in the "Iron fist tournament".

After just watching the film I feel like the producers could have done so much more with this film, it felt incomplete. The character development never worked out, the voice actors ( refering to the English version ) where awfull. Even though the animation was acceptable, it was far from good.

The story was thin and never introduced you to most of the characters from the game.

I would give it a 4 out of 10, sadly but true it doesn't deserve much more.

Two good elements, too badly represented

[RetroActive · 9 March 2004]

I'm a huge fan of the Tekken series, as well as of anime movies, so it was only natural that I would see this film eventually. Here's my quick take on it.

The Tekken video games, despite popular belief, have very deep storylines. There are over fifty characters, all connected to one another via relationships, grudges, sordid pasts, and anything else imaginable. The filmmakers decided to crush this level of depth into sixty minutes of screentime. Obviously, only a few of the characters could be focused on, but they made a gosh-darn good effort at trying to squeeze every last character they could in there anyway. Some fighters were touched on, then lost, others existed solely to be killed by the more popular characters. The ones that did last long enough to have a real storyline were horrendously twisted from their video game counterparts', again, all in an effort to fit as much as humanly possible into an hour long movie.

The Tekken part of the movie was mangled, but sadly, also was the anime part, which could have been it's redeeming quality. In true anime style, there were long-winded speeches, sappy emotional connections, over-the-top fisticuffs, and more gore than you can shake a proverbial stick at. However, the movie takes these elements to such a level that they appear to be almost a charicature of anime. The conversations are dull and pointless, punctuated by awful voice-actors and unnecessary background music that mercifully drowns out parts of it. The emotional scenes are overdone and don't evoke any real emotions. The fights, when they do occur, consist of talking mostly, with the occasional bloody beat-down. When dinosaurs get released all over the island...well, things just get ridiculous in that department.

With all the bashing this movie has received from other critics and me, don't think you necessarily have to avoid it at all costs, either. There are some good, action-packed scenes that make it almost worth suffering through the bad ones. All in all, Tekken: The Motion Picture is good, campy fun that should be seen by all fans of the games once...and only once.