Back in the days before “video games movie” became a term nearly synonymous with “box-office bomb”, movie studios were eager to get their hands on the rights to the most popular games of the day, and gaming companies were more than willing to sell. That well dried up pretty quickly after the release of one too many stinkers, but Street Fighter: The Movie was a pioneer. When the decision was made to turn the franchise into a film, only Super Mario Bros had been unlucky enough to be ridiculed by critics and fans alike. Maybe it was just bad luck? Surely a꧑ game with a story tailor-made for a𓆉n action movie would fare better.

As everyone attached to the project would soon learn, there are many difficulties that come with making a video games movie. Having to please two masters, for one, means that the final product has to make some sacrifices: Street Fighter 2 might have had a short backstory, but its existence was driven by action and concept over storytelling. The extended universe we know today did not exist. Screenwriters had to make 🀅up a story to justify the 90 minutes running time. On the other hand, inventing a longer story out of thin air means that what little details the game did💖 present to its players was mostly ignored.

Despite its shortcomings, Street Fighter remains a delightfully camp classic, and the story of what was going on behind the scene is often even better than the movie. In that spirit, here are 25 facts about what was really going on during the filming of Street Fighter.

25 Last Minute Decision ൩

It would seem like “has all of its main characters” should be an important item to check off your list before you start filming a movie. And yet, director Stephen de Souza had not cast his lead actress by the time he was on a plane to Thailand, where Street Fighter was supposed to start shooting shortly. With time running out, he thankfully received inspiration 🎃from a magazine he found on the plane, which featured Australian sensation Kylie Minogue on the cover. Thinking that she would be perfect as Cammy, de Souza somehow convinced her to take a meeting for the very next day. She was hired almost immediately, with her previous work on a soap opera giving her experience with learning her lines at the last minute. The fact that the production would move to Australia shortly was only the icing on the cake.

24 💖 🔯 For Your Eyes Only

With this being their first foray into movie-making, Capco💃m was extremely protective of their property, and were very hands-on when it came time to choose a director and writer.

The plans included the intention to give M. Bison a secret island

Everyone who was interested in getting the job was sent a special package which contained screenshots and artwork from Street Fighter 2, character biographies of every fighter, and top-secret plans fo🍌r the future of the series so that scripts would be in line with future games. The plans included the intention to give M. Bison a secret island which would serve as his lair from which to take over the world, something which intrigued Steven E. de Souza, the man who would eventually win the directing job. This inspired him to write M. Bison as being the megalomaniacal would-be dictator of his own state, which set the rest of the plot in motion.

23 An All-Ameriꦫcan Secret

Jean-Claude Van Damme is a man of many talents. He can do the split like no one else, and he has a grace to him which can be seen in the smooth way with which he kicks people in the face. This alone made him a perfect fit for Guile and his famous Flash Kick, if it wasn’t for a single fact🅰. Guile is an extremely American man with a flag tattoo, while Jean-Claude Van Damme is an extremely Belgian man with a goofy accent. This peculiar casting choice was a demand from Capcom, which insisted that they wanted Van Damme and no one else.

Guile is an extremely American man with a flag tattoo

It did not matter to them that JCVD alone would cost $൲8 million out of the $35 million budget, or that he could not sound American even if his life depended on it. Van Damme looked like Guile, and that’s all that mattered.

22 The Magnificent Seven ꧟

During his first meeting with Capcom, director Steven E. de Souza could see some trouble on the horizon. Capcom wanted the movie to showcase the entire roster of Street Fighter 2. At the time, this would have meant sixteen characters battling for screen time. De Souza was able to convince them that at most, seven characters was all that the public would be able to focus on. He cited the Seven Dwarves, the Seven Wonders of the World, and the Seven Samurais to strengthen his point, arguing that a smaller cast would make the story easier to follow. Capcom relented, and a script was finally able to be written, which meꦦant that casting could finally start. Maybe dealing with the very protective company would not be so bad after all?

21 “I Amও Altering The Deal”

With the script completed and casting underway, Capcom contacted de Souza to make a small demand: they wanted to add two morౠe characters to the movie, bringing the number up to nine. The director accepted reluctantly to keep the peace with his benefactors, even though this meant rewriting the script and casting more people. If he had known how bad things would get, he might have argued harder to keep the status quo. A little later, Capcom aske꧒d for another two, and another two, and so on, until everyone but Fei Long was written into the movie. Every addition meant a script rewrite, and additional casting, which caused delays and crippled the movie’s budget. By the time filming started, the movie was nothing like what de Souza originally envisioned, and some characters were basically reduced to cameos.

20 What Did You Call Me? 🦄

We now know that Ryu is supposed to be pronounced “Ree-oo”, or at least something close to that. For a long time, the North American public had been misled to think that the pronunciation was “Rye-you”, and we have the original Street Fighter movie to thank for th꧑at, spec🦂ifically actor Damian Chapa. Chapa portrays Ken, who basically spends the entire movie hanging out with Ryu.

Chapa was simply incapable of pronouncing his partner’s name properly

During the first da🐼y of filming, Chapa was simply incapable of pronouncing his partner’s name properly. After several failed takes, the director approached the pair, and decided that for the sake of efficiency, the character would be renamed “Rye-you”. Production was able to move along,🌜 but it ingrained the mistake in the mind of North American gamers for years to come.

19 Introducing Kenya Sawada As Ca🎐ptain S💛awada

There is only one main character in the movie which had no previous basis in the Street Fighter franchise: Captain Sawada. Acting as the third in command behind Guile and Cammy, Sawada was created out of necessity by d🧜e Souza. Capcom wanted Japanese actor Kenya Sawada to portray Ryu, while de Souza wanted Byron Mann. His argument was that Sawada’s grasp of the English language was not good enough to carry the dialogue and the jokes included in the script. To appease Capcom, he created Captain Sawada as a way to get their pick in the movie while being able to keep Mann as Ryu. As for Sawada the actor, it seems like de Souza was right: all of his lines, except for one spoken in his native Japanese, had to be overdubbed in post-production because they were incomprehensible.

18 ꧋ Julia’s Last Stand 🐼

Street Fighter was Raul Julia’s last movie befor🥃e the actor died from cancer. The actor had been cast as M. Bison because of his dramatic background, with the hope that his performance would bring some dignity to an otherwise silly action movie. The only problem was that Julia had to get surgery🌊 right before filming started, and the production was not made aware of his condition. When he arrived on set, he had lost a lot of weight, and his level of energy was low to say the least.

Julia had to get surgery right before filming started

The filming schedule was thus changed to allow Julia more time to recuperate and hopefully gain some weight. While he was able to get better, his conꦏdition still had to be concealed on screen with the judicious use of wide shots and lots of 💟make-up.

17 On The Flip Side… 💖 𝓀

Moving the filming of scenes with heavy dialogue to later on in the schedule did wonders for Raul Julia’s condition, but it meant that fighting scenes and stunts would need to be filmed first. This was a problem because a movie with such a heavy use of stunt work would usually necessitate several weeks of preparation to make sure th🌳at no one gets hurt and everything goes smoothly. Instead, the stunt coordinator had to come up with choreography on the same day scenes were being shot and the crew were given little time to prepare the sets. Actors did not have time to be trained properly and some of them picked up martial arts (even sword fighting) with the help of some extras. Considering that the fights are some of the best parts of🎀 the movie, it all turned out surprisingly OK.

16 Van Damme’s Thailand 🌌 🌳

Jean-Claude Van Damme’s time making Street Fighter can be boiled down to two things: Cocaine, and Kylie Minogue. For the first one, Van Damme has admitted that he had a big substance problem at the time. In fact, the production hired a handler whose entire job was to keep Van Damme under control. Unfortunately, the guy was so star struck and entranced by his client’s lavish lifestyle that he would often go out to party with him. JCVD would then show up late the next day, spending the morning recovering from the previous night’s shenanigans. As for Kylie Minogue, Van Damme told The Guardian in a 2012 interview that the two were involved during filming. Famously, he says “I knew Thailand v꧑ery well, so I showed her my Thailand.” I am so impressed by Van Damme’s way with words that I have been referring to my junk as “Thailand” ever since.