We’ve come a long, long way from the days of fighting games being an experience reserved for two people dueling over an arcade cabinet. The genre has exploded in popularity: long-running franchises like Mortal Kombat and Tekken are still going strong, while newcomers like the upcoming Avatar: The Last Airbender game and Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls are highly anticipated. It’s a massive, varied, and lucrative niche within the gaming industry, and it’s hard to overstate just how different things would be without the impact of 1991’s Street Fighter 2, which almost single-handedly popularized the entire genre.
But for as influential and celebrated as Street Fighter is, the franchise has had atrocious luck at bringing its pulpy, cartoonish world to the big screen. 1994’s Street Fighter and 2009’s The Legend of Chun-Li were both panned by critics and rejected by the vast majority of fans. Now, Legendary Pictures, Capcom, and Paramount are making a third attempt, and while it would be easy to assume this one will stink as well, the first official trailer for Street Fighter looks far more promising (and faithful) than anyone could have predicted.
