Bringing Street Fighter to the big screen meant more than recreating familiar characters. For director Kitao Sakurai, it meant honoring the legendary fighting moves that generations of gamers know by heart, while giving them a cinematic edge.
To pull it off, Sakurai assembled a creative team filled with fellow fans of the beloved video game franchise, including Filipino-American stunt choreographer Jon Valera and VFX supervisor Sandra Balej.
In the same way that the actors were all super involved with how they thought about their characters, Jon Valera, our stunt choreographer, Sandra Balej, our VFX supervisor, are also huge fans of the game, so they were super passionate about bringing all the iconic moves from the game to life, says Sakurai. I think audiences are going to be totally blown away by how many of the signature moves we were able to put in the movie.
Watch the trailer:
Jon Valera takes on a legendary fighting franchise
When Valera was first approached to design the stunts and direct second unit for Street Fighter, he felt both excitement and pressure.
There was a lot of pressure behind this movie, Valera shares, very high profile, one of the most iconic video games out there. I call it ‘the Bruce Lee effect.’ As martial artists, we always say you never want to touch a Bruce Lee film because it’s almost sacred to us.
For Valera, that same reverence applied to Street Fighter.
Street Fighter ranks up there, but if I’m not afraid of a job, then it doesn’t make me work.
The Filipino-American stunt professional is renowned in Hollywood for his work across major action franchises, including the John Wick films, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the DC universe.
Valera has also frequently collaborated with Jason Momoa, who plays Blanka in Street Fighter and serves as one of the film’s producers.
Bringing classic martial arts back to the screen
Sakurai and producer Cale Boyter wanted the movie’s fight sequences to stay faithful to the video game while still feeling spectacular on the big screen.
For Valera, that meant looking back at the clean, visually striking martial arts style associated with action movies of the 1990s.
In the beginning I wanted to go a little more clean martial arts because it’s been a while since we’ve seen a clean martial arts movie like The Matrix, adds Valera. A lot of the fight styles now have gone more John Wick style. Brutal, gritty, messy. Street Fighter takes place in the 1990s, and ’90s action movies were cheesy, clean martial arts. I didn’t want to make it the cheesy, campy, clean martial arts, but to capture the beauty of it.
Each Street Fighter character gets a distinct fighting style
A trained martial artist himself, Valera also wanted the choreography to reflect the franchise’s Japanese roots.
Most of my team are also martial artists. We studied Goju-ryu, Shotokan and Judo. We wanted to take a lot of the moves in the game – Japanese based with a little flare – to stay true to the Japanese martial arts and show off the beauty of it.
That approach also helped give each fighter a distinct physical identity.
Chun-Li draws from Chinese martial arts such as Wushu, Tai Chi, and Kung Fu. Blanka fights with a wild, animalistic approach mixed with capoeira flair, while Guile relies on a military-inspired style filled with powerful, hard-hitting attacks.
Dhalsim has a unique style – we built his character on a yoga style break dancing movement, explains Valera. If yogis were throwing punches, that’s how you get the feel of it.
For Balrog, Valera looked to two famously powerful boxers.
Mike Tyson was a good model for Balrog, as well as one of my favorite characters in boxing, ‘Clubber Lang’ from the Rocky films because his style was all power hits.
An international stunt team pushes the action further
Valera assembled an international stunt team with specialists from the United Kingdom, France, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and Japan.
Their wide range of skills helped the filmmakers recreate some of the franchise’s most memorable moves.
One of our guys who helped with the spinning bird kick was a Cirque du Soleil performer, who has all kinds of special harnesses and rigs. With them, a character could be suspended in the air, with a little bit of an assist so they could stay up just a little longer than a normal human. Most of these characters are not superheroes, they’re just above a regular human.
Pre-visualizations also became an essential part of production, allowing cast members to understand complicated action sequences before cameras started rolling.
David Dastmalchian, who plays M. Bison, explains that the process helped actors prepare for elaborate scenes involving wires, breakaway walls, and intricate fight choreography.
The stunt team and VFX created these fully acted out, fully blocked, fully choreographed fights, so we could watch and get the complete sense of how this goes from beginning to end, all the little beats.
Practical stunts, VFX, and explosive action
While the production leaned heavily on practical stunt work, visual and special effects teams stepped in whenever safety or logistics demanded it.
We worked with SFX on explosions and breakaways, with everything safety tested, Valera says. Plus, there’s always situations where we can’t do everything with a real human, it’s either a safety issue or highly time consuming, so the VFX team was amazing too. This was one of the most collaborative efforts I’ve been on with those two departments.
One of the movie’s biggest sequences took nearly two weeks to film.
Known as the “burlesque scene,” the massive set piece features dozens of extras, fighters flying through the air, and precisely timed pyrotechnics.
The burlesque scene is insane, it’s the longest fight sequence in the movie, says Orville Peck (Vega). It’s pretty much every fighter. We were all really looking forward to it because it’s the moment where all of us are together in one massive explosion of action.
A Street Fighter movie made with genuine love
Andrew Koji, who plays Ryu, says the dedication behind the production could be felt throughout the entire shoot.
There was so much love put into Street Fighter, from so many people – Cale, all the producers, the writers, from Kitao, from the stunt team trying to find every little technique, from all the crew and cast. The level of care and love put into this film is unlike the making of any big film that I’ve heard of or been involved with.
Sakurai shares the same sentiment.
There was a special energy on the set that goes beyond words. A lightning in a bottle feeling of this group of people together creating something special. I think that also comes across on screen. That special energy is something that people can experience in the theater when they see Street Fighter.
He adds that he hopes audiences will feel that same energy when the movie hits theaters.
Get ready for Street Fighter on the big screen
Ready, fighters?
Street Fighter also stars Noah Centineo, Callina Liang, WWE superstar Joe “Roman Reigns” Anoa’i, and Cody Rhodes.
Catch the epic and thrilling action when Street Fighter opens in Philippine cinemas on October 14. Distributed locally by Paramount Pictures PH.
Get your tickets now.
#StreetFighterMovie
