We Need a Street Fighter Movie Reboot

The Street Fighter franchise has been around since 1987. After 30 years, it’s still as successful as ever, which makes me wonder why Capcom hasn’t made another live action movie. I’ve compiled a list of reasons why they should make a new Street Fighter movie. Hopefully someone up there at Capcom agrees with my list and makes plans on rebooting the Street Fighter movie franchise!

So first and foremost, the first Street Fighter movie came out back in 1994, and that movie was actually successful. It had a budget of 35 million dollars and made 99 million dollars in the box office. It took them forever, but they made a spin-off live action movie called Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li back in 2009. That movie was a box office disaster with a budget of 50 million and only making 12.8 million at the box office. This is probably the single reason why Capcom and movie studios are staying away from another live action Street Fighter movie. Regardless of what kind of box office hit the first movie was, the follow up movie did so miserably in the box office, it’s scared them off.

In the meantime, there have been numerous animes and web series that show the popularity of the Street Fighter franchise. The fact that people are still interested in the stories of their favorite Street Fighter characters after 30 years shows the dedication of the Street Fighter fanbase. The character arcs of the main protagonists of Street Fighter, Ryu and Ken, are particularly interesting. Both the aforementioned movies did not use the most popular characters as main characters in their stories, whereas they did in the popular anime and the web series.

Over the course of 30 years, lots have happened to each of the characters in the Street Fighter universe, and all of these stories are somewhat intertwined with one another. The Street Fighter universe is more fleshed out now than it ever has been. There are comic books dedicated to the series and push the envelope with the Street Fighter universe. I realize writers love artistic freedom to make whatever stories that they want, but studios love things that work. And if there’s already a proven formula ready for them, why not use it? Good Street Fighter stories exist all around us and are here for the taking. A live action series can work. This was proven with the popular Street fighter legacy web series.

Today we aren’t limited in special effects either. Back in the day, fireballs and electricity looked utterly ridiculous in live action movies. I guess they can still seem kind of ridiculous, but today special effects are so much better. They can now implement these effects into a movie more organically, making it seem way more natural and not-so out of place. We’re seeing more movies that we previously thought were unfilmable in live action.

Another thing we see nowadays are reboots. Capcom should capitalize on this popular trend and get in while the franchise is hot and people are still accepting of reboots. You know your demographic way better. Also how many Resident Evil movies are there? Clearly Capcom isn’t afraid to make movie franchises from their game franchises. Those were terrible movies, yet they kept on making them. In their defense, though, the Resident Evil movies did make them a lot of money.

With all of that being said, I do understand why Capcom wouldn’t want to risk another box office bomb, but there is tons of evidence that a Street Fighter movie reboot could be successful under the right people. Please put it in the hands of someone that knows the Street Fighter demographic and knows how to please their audience. If not, I’m okay not having another Chun Li disaster.