The Street Fighter franchise doesn’t have the best relationship with live-action film. The 1994 Jean-Claude Van Damme/Raul Julia adaptation has become a kitsch classic, but is still a terrible movie and doesn’t adapt the franchise at all faithfully. Remarkably, the next attempt was even worse, as 2009’s Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li starred Kristin Kreuk and Chris Klein and is so bad that even as a diehard Street Fighter fan, I couldn’t make it all the way through. It eventually took a fan film, Street Fighter: Assassin’s Fist to produce something that was of an acceptable quality.
But in my opinion, Street Fighter is still crying out for the full Hollywood treatment. With superheroes still riding high, the game’s crew of bizarre martial arts fighters, big personalities and completely bonkers backstories could be a giant hit and now, BossLogic has given us an idea of what that project might look like, and he’s picked the perfect Guile in Chris Evans.
Fans of the franchise will know that Guile is one of the most all-American characters in gaming: he’s a United States Air Force Colonel with stars and stripes tattoos on each bicep and one of the most iconic haircuts in gaming. That might make Chris Evans, already known for Captain America, feel worried about being typecast, but he sure looks the part.
If they did make a movie, I’d like to see them go for a fairly straight adaptation of the games’ story. Have it set around a worldwide fighting tournament, with some of the Shadaloo crime empire stuff going on in the background to give the core heroes (Ryu, Ken, Guile and Chun-Li) a reason to team up against the dictatorial M. Bison.
If they were in search of a template, they could do far worse than the 1992 Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie. This early anime film still holds up for the most part, with the battle between Chun-Li and Vega kicking ass. But my favorite fight comes right at the beginning, when we see Ryu battling Sagat, giving him his famous scar. C’mon, who wouldn’t want to see this in live-action?