The new Street Fighter film is set to bring some of your favorite fighting game characters to life on the big screen, and more than a few of them bear quite the likeness to their video game counterparts. All of the effort went into making that happen, and now Chun-Li star Callina Liang has revealed the crazy commitment she made to bringing a game-accurate Chun-Li to the screen.
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In an interview with Empire Magazine (H/T IGN), Liang revealed the extreme work that went into bringing Chun-Li’s iconic character design to the screen. “Chun-Li is all kicks. So we did a bunch of Taekwondo training, Muay Thai, and Wushu (Kung Fu). I did two hours of that a day and strengthened my legs a lot and changed my diet drastically. When I was bulking, I ate 12 eggs a day. Every two hours I had to have a meal, and I was on the verge of throwing up. But it worked. By the end of the shoot, my thighs had grown six-and-a-half centimeters each,” Liang said.
It wasn’t just intense dieting and workouts that Liang put herself through to bring the most authentic Chun-Li ever to life on the big screen, as Liang also wanted the character to fight just like she does in the video games. That led to Liang going the extra mile and putting together an ultimate move list for Chun-Li, but she didn’t stop at one game’s moveset.
“I downloaded every single version of Street Fighter onto a PS5 and I recorded all of Chun-Li’s moves during fights on my phone in slow-mo, so I could play them back and study them,” Liang said.
Thtat’s true decidcation, especially consiering just how many Street Fighter games there are. While it’s not likely that we’ll see every single one of Chun-Li’s trademark attacks in the film simply due to time, it’s awesome to know that Liang was ready to go for whatever moves they managed to work into the movie.
When you think of Chun-Li’s skillset, a few key moves immediately come to mind. One of her most iconic moves is the Lightning Kick, which is also known as the Hyakuretsukyaku, and we can’t wait to see the film bring that amazing move to life. Another big move is Chun-Li’s Spinning Bird Kick, and right behind that one is the Kikoken, which is her most well-known move at range.
A personal favorite of mine is the Hosenka, which is a combination of the Lightning Kick and the Spinning Bird Kick, but instead of going across the screen, it launches the enemy upwards in a tornado spin before one final kick launches them back to the ground. If any of these moves make the movie, I’ll be on cloud nine, and now we know there’s even a chance we’ll see all of those and more.
Street Fighter hits theaters on October 16th.
