It is indisputable that Street Fighter is the most important and influential fighting game franchise ever made – without 1991’s Street Fighter 2, it’s uncertain whether or not the entire genre would even exist in the same way, or if the massive community of fighting game players that keep the ecosystem alive would have even sprouted up in the first place. And yet, for some reason, it has totally failed to translate that international success to film or television. Outside of a handful of OVAs and the original Street Fighter 2 animated film, every attempt at bringing the franchise to the big screen has failed – the Jean-Claude Van Damme film was ravaged by critics and fans at the time (even though it’s gone on to become something of a cult classic, mostly due to Raul Julia’s operatic turn as M. Bison), and 2009’s The Legend of Chun-Li fared worse, with it frequently being cited as one of the worst films ever made.
With over ten years to recalibrate and workshop a new approach, it’s possible that Capcom and producing partner Legendary Pictures may have finally broken the mold, because there’s yet another Street Fighter reboot releasing in theaters later this year. Unlike previous attempts, director Kitao Sakurai looks like he’s hewing as close to the source material as possible, retaining every bit of the kinetic maximalism the games are known for – a quality that seems to have earned him a very important collaborator.
