Street Fighter's First Clip Finally Reveals The Film's Superpowered Combat
It's safe to assume we'll see more than a few Hadoukens this time around.
One of the things that has established Street Fighter as being on the Mount Rushmore of fighting games, along with impeccable mechanics that have withstood the test of time, is the eclectic variety in its roster. Ki-garbed human martial artists like Ryu and Ken can fight alongside a masked Spanish ninja like Vega, or a monstrous nigh-demon like Akuma. Alongside probably Mortal Kombat, the Street Fighter franchise has the most recognizable cast of characters in fighting games and one of the most iconic ensembles in gaming period, and it’s easy to see why when each addition is filled with personality.
The personality of those individual characters, like any fighting game, translates to the movesets of each character as well. Although the Hadouken fireball special attack was introduced in the original Street Fighter, the input to complete the move was notoriously difficult to the point of redundancy; however, the introduction of frame buffering in the acclaimed Street Fighter 2 made the move a lot easier to perform and in the process helped make it a mainstay of pop culture. Despite being B-movie hokey, the iconic fireball doesn’t appear in the 1994 Jean-Claude Van Damme movie, but the first officially released clip from this year’s live-action Street Fighter reboot lets us know to expect not only the Hadouken, but a whole buffet of superpowered martial arts combat as well.
Paramount Pictures and Legendary offered fans a surprising treat this morning, dropping a brief glimpse of an action setpiece on YouTube. The scene features Ryu (Andrew Koji) in a prison cell, being asked by David Dastmalchian’s M. Bison to show him what he’s capable of – a request that leads to an entrance by the green-skinned giant Blanka (Jason Momoa). Blanka promptly massacres the prisoners tasked with dragging him by chain into the arena, and forces a reluctant Ryu into fighting him, which culminates in Ryu unleashing an instantly-recognizable blue fireball.
Street Fighter, from the beginning, has operated on a sort of Saturday Morning Cartoon logic that provides a heightened charm to the game – the 1994 film mostly did away with the cartoonishness of the source material but it’s reassuring to see that director Kitao Sakurai is leaning into it this time around. Not only does the clip tease the film’s sense of humor (there’s a hilarious absurdity to the raving prisoners crowded around to watch the fight like a WWE steel cage match), but it also shows off the electricity-based powers that Blanka uses in the game. You can’t adapt the franchise properly without combining kinetic martial arts choreography with superpowered abilities that feel like they’re ripped straight from a comic book, so with this first look, Sakurai is confirming that his upcoming Street Fighter film isn’t shying away from the less believable elements of the series.
