TL;DR: The fights in Paramount’s Street Fighter were designed by Jon Valera, a Filipino-American stunt veteran who has worked on John Wick, Atomic Blonde, Aquaman and Birds of Prey. In a new behind-the-scenes look, he talks about the pressure of adapting one of gaming’s most iconic franchises, why he went with clean martial arts over gritty John Wick-style brawling, and how a Cirque du Soleil performer helped pull off the Spinning Bird Kick. Street Fighter opens in Philippine cinemas on October 14.
Last week we covered the Ken vs. Ryu featurette and how the new Street Fighter movie is built around the most famous rivalry in fighting games. Paramount has now shared more about the people who made those fights happen, and one of the key names is one of our own. Kabayan natin.
Jon Valera served as the film’s stunt choreographer and second unit director. He’s Filipino-American, born and raised in Virginia, and he started martial arts at around eight years old before competing nationally and internationally. Those competitions led him to Hollywood stunt work. He eventually joined 87Eleven Action Design, the stunt team behind the fight scenes of the John Wick films. His credits also include 300, The Expendables, Atomic Blonde, Aquaman and Birds of Prey.
“The Bruce Lee effect”
Valera admits that he was excited when director Kitao Sakurai’s team approached him, but kinda kinabahan din.
“There was a lot of pressure behind this movie,” Valera says. “Very high profile, one of the most iconic video games out there. I call it ‘the Bruce Lee effect.’ As martial artists, we always say you never want to touch a Bruce Lee film because it’s almost sacred to us. Street Fighter ranks up there, but if I’m not afraid of a job, then it doesn’t make me work.”
Fans of the 1994 Van Damme movie will understand that pressure. That film is mostly remembered as a meme today. Sakurai says Valera and VFX supervisor Sandra Balej are both “huge fans of the game,” and that the team worked to fit in as many signature moves as possible.
The film also reunites Valera with longtime collaborator Jason Momoa, who plays Blanka and is one of the film’s producers.
Clean martial arts, 90s style
Valera made one choice that may surprise people: he moved away from the brutal, messy fight style that John Wick made popular.
“It’s been a while since we’ve seen a clean martial arts movie like The Matrix,” he explains. “Street Fighter takes place in the 1990s, and ’90s action movies were cheesy, clean martial arts. I didn’t want to make it the cheesy, campy, clean martial arts, but to capture the beauty of it.”
To stay true to the game’s Japanese roots, Valera and his team, most of them trained martial artists, drew from Goju-ryu, Shotokan and Judo. “We wanted to take a lot of the moves in the game, Japanese based with a little flare, to stay true to the Japanese martial arts and show off the beauty of it.”
A Cirque du Soleil assist for the Spinning Bird Kick
Valera put together an international stunt team from the UK, France, New Zealand, Australia, Canada and Japan. Each member brought a niche skill. One was a former Cirque du Soleil performer who brought special harnesses and rigs for Chun-Li’s Spinning Bird Kick.
“A character could be suspended in the air, with a little bit of an assist so they could stay up just a little longer than a normal human,” Valera says. “Most of these characters are not superheroes, they’re just above a regular human.”
That’s the right instinct. Street Fighter characters are basically extreme martial artists, not Avengers.
Practical first, VFX only when needed
The team relied on practical stunts wherever possible. Special effects handled the explosions and breakaway walls, and VFX filled in only when a real stunt was unsafe or would take too long to shoot. Valera calls it “one of the most collaborative efforts I’ve been on.”
The production’s biggest set piece is reportedly the “burlesque scene,” which took almost two weeks to shoot. It has dozens of extras, actors flying through the air and timed pyro effects. “It’s the longest fight sequence in the movie,” says Orville Peck, who plays Vega. “It’s pretty much every fighter… one massive explosion of action.”
Why this one hits different for Pinoy fans
A lot of us grew up at the arcade, feeding tokens into a Street Fighter II cabinet and arguing over who gets Ryu. It’s good to know that the person in charge of making the Hadoken and Shoryuken look right on the big screen is a fellow Pinoy who takes the source material as seriously as we do. Sana lang talaga it pays off on October 14.
Street Fighter stars Andrew Koji, Noah Centineo, Callina Liang, Jason Momoa, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, David Dastmalchian, and WWE’s Roman Reigns and Cody Rhodes. It opens in Philippine cinemas on October 14.
Photos: Paramount Pictures