Julia’s remarkable performance makes more sense when we consider why he took the part in the first place. Although he had acted in a wide range of projects, ranging from playing Gomez Addams in the Barry Sonnenfeld movies to acclaimed turns in Kiss of the Spider Woman and Moon Over Parador, to the Mystery Science Theater 3000 classic Overdrawn at the Memory Bank, Julia wanted to make a movie for his kids. They loved the Street Fighter franchise and aided his research for the character.
Of course, it helps that Julia gets to deliver some wonderfully hammy lines from de Souza. De Souza made his name writing whip-smart scripts about fast-talking tough guys, movies like 48 Hrs., Die Hard, and Commando. He knows how to give characters absurd lines to match the absurd tone, amping up the theatricality. Like Julia, de Souza learned of Street Fighter via his kids, but he really took the job because it allowed him to direct a feature, and a big budget one at that. By now the longheld legend that de Souza wrote the movie in one substance-assisted overnight binge has been debunked. However, both de Souza and Capcom, the company behind the games, had high ambitions for the project. De Souza saw the film as his shot at making a legendary genre movie. Capcom wanted the film to launch a franchise with wide appeal, especially in the States, which led to decisions such as casting Van Damme and changing the focus away from the usual protagonist, Japanese fighter Ryu (Byron Mann in the movie).
For the most part, these delusions of grandeur resulted in a messy film that pleased neither fans nor casual viewers. However, it also gave Julia room to chew some scenery while delivering hair-raising speeches.
Take another infamous moment in which Bison describes the motivations behind his super-soldier program. “Why do they still call me a warlord? And mad?” Bison asks his minions Zangief (Andrew Bryniarski) and Dee Jay (Miguel A. Núñez Jr.) “All I want to do is to create the perfect genetic soldier! Not for power, not for evil, but for good. Carlos Blanka will be the first of many. They shall march out of my laboratory and sweep away every adversary, every creed, every nation, until the very planet is in the loving grip of the Pax Bisonica. And then [beat] peace will reign, and the world, and all humanity, shall bow to me in humble gratitude.”
Julia relishes every single word, striding through a model of his ideal city while bellowing the speech. Even better, he delivers the monologue like a true believer. In addition to studying the character from the games, Julia spent time researching real-world dictators, people who described their actual plans for world domination with conviction.
Julia’s devotion to the part isn’t just a gift to his kids and to us viewers, something we can enjoy 30 years later. It’s also a model for talented actors today in our current IP-driven media landscape. Without question, it’s not good that only franchises and fan-friendly adaptations get most of the funding from studios now, and not just because it limits the roles available to actors. However, condescending to the material doesn’t help anything.
