The movie Street Fighter knows what it is

At CinemaCon this week, movie fans got a new one Street fighter trailer. And it looks… incredibly stupid, not just in a good way, but in an interesting way.

Now, more than ever, IP adaptations are judged on the degree of immediate fidelity to the source material they portray. « When will Daredevil get his double Ds? », « Batman should have white eyes » and the like can dominate the general discussion as everyone tries to relate it to the creators’ commitment or insecurity to what they are currently in charge of. This is further enhanced in video games, where interactivity creates an additional layer of attachment to the character. So when an adaptation marks the first production of an actor playing a lead character, everyone has something to share. It’s one thing to know that Sophie Turner will be playing Lara Croft, and another to see her in the classic outfit, shades and all.

Capcom creates iconic characters and this is especially true for Street fighter. So when our first look at this movie was a goofy, hip-hop fueled teaser, people were understandably a bit disappointed with how some things looked. (Seeing 50 Cent rock Balrog’s hair is throwback in the worst way.) While most of the cast performed well in motion, the character posters basically undermined that and reminded you of the importance of intentional lighting. The costumes were especially jaw-dropping when watching their cinematic counterpart Mortal Kombat II, whose cast looks like their characters without veering too far into unusual territory.

But with Street fighter new trailer, it’s clear that the stupidity isn’t a bug, it’s the entire feature. Instead of aiming for realism, director Kitao Sakurai seems to wrap the film around the franchise’s sillier elements, like the bonus stages of vehicle destruction games. The particular energy it goes for gives its battles and locations more personality than anyone probably expected, a choice probably informed by the fact that you won’t be going around everyone in these games constantly doing impossible things. Unlike other CG heavy movies, it doesn’t look like it would be a problem for Ryu’s Hadouken or Zangief doing the Running Bear Grab to look weird in live action.

For every person who takes what Street fighter postponing, there will be another camp postponing this thinking the filmmakers pulled some prank on Capcom. The developer can’t exactly beat these accusations given its experience with adaptations. For whatever reason, there doesn’t seem to be any apparent slip-up on the studio’s part when Western commercials try to bring its IP to TV or film. Maybe it’s just confident in the strength of its games, or trusts the correlation between adaptations and game sales, but this approach seems incredibly rare for a major developer.

What you can feel, the presence of Nintendo or Sony over their adaptations can create an increasingly unpleasant feeling as they become more popular. Video game adaptations have spent years striving for legitimacy, so it means something that Capcom is using the « fuck it, we’re a ball » strategy with the likes of Resident Evil and Street fighter. If we want to keep getting these movies and shows, the ones based on the IP should at least try to ask the audience to meet it on its own terms. This kind of cockiness is something Capcom has always been good at, and it seems to have served the studio’s games quite well of late – so it’s easy to imagine it working in favor of its flagship fighting franchise on the big screen.

Street fighter is in theaters on October 16.

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