Transcript note: This transcript is based on the original working script. It may contain production notes, draft wording, spelling mistakes or other material that differs from the finished video - these scripts were meant to be spoken, not read.

Street Fighter has historically, never really had a good time when it comes to live action, interpretations.

But back in 2010, that changed.

Joey Ansah and Christian Howard, developed an idea based around the World Warrior storyline that would eventually become a short proof-of-concept called Street Fighter: Legacy.

Sure, it looked like a fan film - And that’s how it was presented.

Capcom had actually funded it through their marketing budget, but had got cold feet before release.

The decision was made to take the CAPCOM branding off and just release it as an endorsed fan project instead - Just in case people didn’t like it…

But - They pulled it off..

Ryu actually looked like Ryu, Ken looked like Ken - And - Even more impressively…

They fought like Ryu and Ken.

Street Fighter Legacy did well enough that it gave Joey and Christian the confidence to go back to their original, and much bigger idea.

Let’s take a look at that idea - Let’s take a look at Street Fighter: Assassins Fist

[intro]

Strangely, Assassin's Fist isn’t really about Street Fighter, as such - It’s very much a prequel to the whole thing.

And, as we know - These film prequels to beloved game franchises very often go wrong. Very wrong.

But this is a much smarter version of it.

The filmmakers didn’t look at Street Fighter and think:

“People won't take this seriously.”

They looked at it and asked:

“How - do we make people take it seriously?”

And when you look at it that, well - you’re already doing something different….

The film follows a young Ryu and Ken training under Gouken - They’re young, still learning and sparring with each other.

They’re who you expect them to be - Ryu is quiet and disciplined, Ken is confident and flashy.

An important part of their journey is to learn the history of the fighting style they are being taught, Ansatsuken.

And through that lens we get shown Gouken as younger man with his brother Gouki and their master Goutestu - And eventually, Akuma.

And that’s the simple story we’re told - Two generations of brothers being taught the same martial art, and what happens when one of them becomes obsessed with the power behind it all.

The Satsui no Hado.

The Dark Hado.

The really important thing here is, nobody is trying to apologise for Street Fighter.

Hadoukens exist.

Shoryukens exist.

The supernatural side of the martial arts exists.

And it takes it all very seriously.

The throws, stances and attacks were deliberately pulled from the games,

The style itself evolves as Ryu and Ken train -

As the filmed they began to actually construct a fighting style around Ansatsuken rather than simply using generic movie martial arts and occasionally sticking a familiar special move on the end.

Even when the special moves happen, they are treated as something the characters have to learn rather than buttons they suddenly press when the script needs something exciting.

You see the process, the breathing - The stance and concentration needed.

The Hado begins as something barely controlled before eventually becoming the thing we recognise from the games.

In effect, they took a smaller side story from the game and they made it the story they wanted to tell..

Which might be the smartest decision anyone has ever made with Street Fighter on screen.

But, if you sat around expecting Blanka, Chun-Li, Guile and Bison battering each other around the world...

Well - You’d be waiting a while.

They’re not here, and that restraint is also why it works.

Joey Ansah deliberately chose the Ryu and Ken origin because it could be told properly with the money they had.

And - OK - While the restraint is good, the story is good - It doesn’t make for the most exciting film ever, either.

It’s actually more like watching a really good episode of prestige TV than a film - And I don’t mean that as a bad thing - Just managing expectations here.

The whole thing was done with around two million dollars - And that doesn’t sound like a lot, and - Well - It isn’t - Remember, this had grown out of what was basically a fan-film project

It became so much more than that though.

Because by this stage, Assassin’s Fist had left the whole fan-film thing behind it. Capcom had licensed and approved it.

Yoshinori Ono personally went through the treatment, and according to Joey Ansah, once it had been approved Capcom pretty much left them alone after that.

They didn’t help fund it though - They had to do that for themselves.

There is a Kickstarter that gets mentioned a lot as well, there was one - But the campaign was actually cancelled when private funding came through, meaning they no longer needed to crowdfund the production.

Members of the core team reportedly deferred large chunks of their own pay so the money could stay on screen.

So they had around two million dollars and, well - A fair amount of goodwill

But what they did with it is what matters most.

Because the production itself has no right looking as good as it does.

The Japanese mountain setting?

Bulgaria.

Those dojos?

They built them.

Not just a front with a studio behind it.

Actual structures with actual interiors.

Joey Ansah and Christian Howard specifically wanted to avoid using green screen trickery and make the world feel like somewhere these people genuinely lived and trained.

The visual effects team even used practical lighting on set so the Hadoukens would throw actual light onto the actors and scenery before the energy itself was added digitally.

At one point they were using LED lights in people's palms and experimenting with ways of physically creating the effect before finishing it in CGI.

The weird thing about Assassins Fist is that - Well, it isn’t really a movie.

It started life as a twelve episode web series and was released through Machinima in 2014.

Later on they’d be recut into longer television episodes before eventually being repackaged again as feature length home release.

Not a bad little outcome for a pair of fans just wanting to see their favourite franchise done right, especially with what Hollywood had done.

We’ll not bring up the classic animated adaption again, and stick mainly to live action here - But taking a look at the 1994 film we can see it do exactly the opposite of what Assassin's Fist did.

It stripped away most of the fantastical elements because apparently a film based on Street Fighter needed grounding in reality.

Most of the fireballs and recognisable special moves were stripped away or reduced to little nods.

Well - Except Bison for the most part.

It took Street Fighter and spent a surprising amount of effort trying not to look like Street Fighter.

Then The Legend of Chun-Li came along and did its own version of the same thing.

Dark clothes, Crime thriller with, uhm - Property developers.

A grounded Chun-Li stripped of most of the things that actually made her Chun-Li.

Assassin’s Fist just...

Does the most basic Street Fighter thing it can do and makes it work.

Although they didn’t fund it, Capcom themselves did end up promoting its release and called it the proper live-action series Street Fighter deserved, and even now its collected film version has a very strong Rotten Tomatoes score - albeit from a small number of reviews

So - you’d think they’d go on to make a proper full-scale sequel, or - something bigger at least.

But, no.

There was another short series in 2016 called Street Fighter: Resurrection.

That was made around and used to promote Street Fighter V and jumped several years forward in the timeline.

But Joey Ansah was still talking about a sequel, World Warrior, as the real direct continuation - something much larger that would need proper television-sized episodes and a proper budget.

But - It never happened.

World Warrior was intended to be Prestige TV, hour long episodes with an ensemble cast with a proper budget.

In 2016 he was looking for a proper partner to help realise his vision, and - he actually got one for a little while - Entertainment One picked up the project in 2018 - But - It didn’t go according to plan.

Executives changed, including people involved when the original deal was made - Then there was talk about him staying on as an executive producer, but if that happened he wouldn’t be able to offer the same kind of guarantee of quality.

And eventually they just ran out of road, or - luck.

Entertainment One only had the rights for a limited development period, and according to Joey, by the time they tried to sell the finished idea to a network - it was too late.

The deal expired, the rights reverted back to Capcom, and in 2020 Joey confirmed that World Warrior wasn’t moving forward.

So. Yeah. Great.

Finally, a live action Street Fighter that worked.

And it worked without a Hollywood budget, without trying to reinvent the whole core concept of Street Fighter and without apologising for what it was.

But when they tried to make it bigger, the people who’d actually made it work slowly started losing control of it - until eventually the whole thing just fell apart

Which is - Frustrating.

Because Assassin’s Fist proved something that really shouldn’t have needed proving at all.

Street Fighter was never the problem.

You don't need to ground it.

You don't need to apologise for it.

You don't need to turn its characters into reporters, property developers or arms dealers.

You just need to understand why people liked Street Fighter in the first place.

Assassin’s Fist did.

And for once, live-action Street Fighter actually looked like Street Fighter.

Anyways…