It is beyond doubt that Street Fighter stands as the most significant and influential fighting game franchise ever crafted – without 1991’s Street Fighter 2, it’s uncertain whether the entire genre would exist in its current form, or if the vast community of fighting game players that keeps the ecosystem thriving would have even come into being in the first place. And yet, for some reason, it has utterly failed to translate that global success to the realm of film or television. Apart from a few OVAs and the original Street Fighter 2 animated film, every attempt to bring the franchise to the big screen has fallen flat – the Jean-Claude Van Damme film was savaged by critics and fans at the time (even though it has gone on to become somewhat of a cult classic, mainly due to Raul Julia’s theatrical performance as M. Bison), and 2009’s The Legend of Chun-Li fared worse, often being cited as one of the worst films ever made.
After more than a decade to reevaluate and devise a new approach, it’s possible that Capcom and producing partner Legendary Pictures have finally broken the mold, because another Street Fighter reboot is set to hit theaters later this year. Unlike previous efforts, director Kitao Sakurai seems to be hewing as close as possible to the source material, retaining every bit of the kinetic maximalism that the games are known for – a quality that appears to have earned him a very crucial collaborator.
A recent clip posted by the official Street Fighter game account on Instagram revealed that the set of the film was visited by none other than Takayuki Nakayama, the director of both Street Fighter 5 and 6. Nakayama had a tough task to fill in replacing Takashi Tsukamoto, the director of 2008’s widely acclaimed Street Fighter 4 (the first mainline game in the series since 1997), but 5 and 6 were successful in their own right, and since 2020 Nakayama has become something of a creative guiding light for the series. The fact that he was invited to visit the set is concrete evidence that Sakurai is doing his utmost to honor the larger-than-life legacy of the games, unlike previous adaptations that were clearly embarrassed by the cartoonish nature of the original material.
In the video, Nakayama is shown hanging out with the cast on set and actually playing Street Fighter 6 with them, while different stars such as Andrew Koji, Callina Liang, Cody Rhodes, and Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson speak warmly about their individual ties to the series. Nakayama himself even praises the production, stating that “the director and everyone involved in the production love Street Fighter” and going on to say plainly, “this is the Street Fighter I know.”
With the franchise’s history dotted with notable failures, there’s an understandable hesitation from the community to believe that characters like Ryu and Chun-Li will ever truly be done justice on screen. However, the high-octane playfulness of the film’s first teaser shows that Kitao Sakurai isn’t ashamed of the source material and is determined to replicate the absurd, Saturday morning cartoon energy that makes the series so beloved. Having received Takayuki Nakayama’s approval, it’s clear that at least the folks at Capcom are confident that fans will be satisfied when the film arrives later this year.