Tekken: Blood Vengeance is the CG Tekken movie you’ve been waiting for.
Going all the way back to the early days of Tekken on the PlayStation, one of my favorite parts of the series has been its computer-generated cutscenes. The characters in the King of Iron Fist tournament have always been entertaining to watch, especially the boxing kangaroo/dinosaur. Namco Bandai recently announced something for people like me: a full-length CG Tekken movie coming in summer 2011, in stereoscopic 3D no less.
Tekken: Blood Vengeance will tell a parallel story that takes place between Tekken 5 and Tekken 6. Project leader Katsuhiro Harada says that fans have been asking for a 3D movie, and the team wanted to put together a full-length feature after creating the intro for Tekken 6‘s scenario campaign. He hopes to make a movie that anyone, even non-Tekken fans, can enjoy.
There have been Tekken movies before in both anime and live-action form, but both received generally mediocre to bad reviews. Harada says Namco Bandai isn’t trying to “rewrite those wrongs,” and is instead just focusing on making a decent CG film. Dai Sato of Cowboy Bebop fame has been enlisted to write Blood Vengeance‘s screenplay.
It’ll be voiced in both English and Japanese with subtitles, though the movie’s characters will evidently speak their native languages too. Namco is using as many of the game’s voice actors as possible.
The first teaser shows just the kind of action a Tekken film should, including fight scenes with leg-sweeps to aerial armbars and boots to the face. None of those moves stand much of a chance against giant hands made out of debris or Devil power though.
I’ve got to say, the teaser has me intrigued, so maybe Namco Bandai will put out something cool here. At the very least, it’ll have a cyborg girl riding on a panda. If it does well enough, Namco Bandai teases that a TV series is a “possibility.”
Source: Eurogamer
