时代广场布置“真人大小《街头霸王》街机”宣传即将上映电影

We are one week away from the release of the energetic, highly stylised, and somewhat dubious-looking movie Street Fighter, adapted from Capcom's legendary fighting game franchise. To promote the film's October 16 release, producers Paramount and Legendary outfitted New York's Times Square with a life-size "Street Fighter Arcade", complete with its own World Warriors.

In video captured by entertained/bewildered onlookers, we can see two performers - portraying SF poster boys Ryu and Ken - throwing down "on-screen", surrounded by an enormous cabinet mockup complete with a giant-sized control panel. Imagine the bill from Sanwa on that one. The Times Square cabinet only supports two buttons, as opposed to Street Fighter's six - so good luck pianoing your Hundred Hand Slap.

Notable is the larger yellow button, which is reminiscent of the pressure-sensitive buttons used on the original Street Fighter "Deluxe" cabinet, before arcade owners got sick of fixing broken panels and Capcom replaced them with standard arcade controls.

The publicity stunt is part of Paramount and Legendary's ongoing hype drive for the new movie. In addition, certain U.S. IMAX theatres will be hosting "Bonus Round" opening nights, with patrons receiving exclusive goodies for attending first screenings. A Guile-themed popcorn bucket, seemingly designed specifically to break all known rules of theatre etiquette, has been revealed to help get bums on seats.

The Street Fighter movie features a stunt ensemble consisting of WWE stars Roman Reigns and Cody Rhodes, rapper Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson, stand-up Andrew Schulz, and comedian Eric Andre. David Dastmalchian dons the formidable cape of the villain M. Bison, with Andrew Koji and Noah Centineo knuckling up as Ryu and Ken, respectively. Jason Momoa plays jungle beast Blanka, Callina Liang is sporting Chun-Li's hair buns, while Mel Jornsen braves the DOLLS bodysuit of Alpha-era Cammy.

Kudos to Liang, who embarked on a crash course of bulking up, along with intense martial-arts training. Liang practised Taekwondo, Wu-Shu, and Muay Thai, while hugely increasing her dietary intake and eating an ungodly amount of eggs. 'Tis a tough path to becoming The Strongest Woman in the World.

How's the film looking? Well, the paraphrased consensus from the trailer is that it looks like "turn-your-brain-off, goofy fun", which has fast become 2020s cinematic shorthand for "Not very good, but let's agree not to say it". Respect to Legendary for going all in on replicating the costumes, locations, and even bonus stages from the classic games. Recent evidence demonstrates the path to victory with video game tie-ins is to stick as closely to the source material as possible. Isn't that right, Sonic the Hedgehog?

I'm sure it'll be harmless fluff. For me, personally, it comes down to the choreography of the actual fights. Cosplaying the roster 1:1 is all well and good, but if the action itself falls completely flat, then you're just giving us a lot of flash and noise. Flash, noise, and Cody Rhodes as Guile.

Here's hoping Paramount can deliver a PER-FECT when Street Fighter hits theatres on October 16.

[source x.com]