Well then. So, about an hour ago, they dropped the first official trailer for the Machinima-backed Street Fighter webseries – Street Fighter: Assassin’s Fist!  The project started filming 9 or so months ago, and they’ve done a good job of keeping interest by dropping BTS footage and teasers here and there.  Here, however, we get a real good look at the mood and production quality.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99XiMYKsHl8

I do think they’re doing a lot of things right.  Fights look cool.  Visually, the casting is great. General mood feels spot on. What I fear, however, is that this might suffer the same ill fate as Mortal Kombat: Legacy, another Machinima-backed webseries based on a classic fighting game.  I can’t really speak to the second season of that series, but in the season one, there was a definite downward trend in episode quality.  The first episode was quite nice, and then you started seeing the budget.  You started seeing the lack of polish in the storytelling, and the vfx, and the editing, and the costume design.  Of course, there was the acting, which was wildly inconsistent – and not even inconsistent in a range of “great acting” to “porn acting.” It was more like “decent student film acting” to “porn acting.”

Of course it’s unfair to judge an entire series’ worthiness according to one trailer, but I’m seeing hints of those same earmarks peeking through in the trailer.

And as always, when I have a so-so reaction to a trailer, I hope I’m proven completely wrong when the first episode drops.