Street Fighter Director Says the 1994 Film Was Meant to Be Funny

Steven E. de Souza says his 1994 Street Fighter was supposed to make audiences laugh. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, published on 30 October 2026, he called the film "intentionally funny" and rejected critics who said its comedy was accidental.

The timing is hard to miss. A new Street Fighter film, from Paramount and Legendary and directed by Kitao Sakurai, has opened at No. 1 at the box office, the same outlet reported. The new film stars Noah Centineo, Andrew Koji and Callina Liang.

De Souza said he was surprised by recent social media posts praising the new film for its humour. Some of those posts said that, unlike the 1994 version, it does not take itself so seriously. He did not dispute the praise for the new film. He simply pointed out that his own movie was playing for laughs too.

The 1994 film starred Jean-Claude Van Damme, Raul Julia and Ming-Na Wen. It was the first attempt to bring the Capcom video game series to the big screen. Its worldwide total came to nearly $100 million, the Reporter said.

De Souza also described the making of the film's fight scenes. He said they were cut back to almost Saturday-morning-cartoon level. The reason, he said, was timing: the ratings board review fell in November 1994, the same month as a school shooting in Wickliffe, Ohio. The ratings board is the body that decides which age group a film is suitable for, and the cuts were made with that review in mind.

The new film nods to its predecessor. It includes callbacks to the 1994 movie, among them the villain M. Bison's line, "For me, that was a Tuesday."

De Souza is better known as a screenwriter than as a director. He wrote Die Hard, 48 Hrs. and the original The Running Man. The 1994 Street Fighter was his only directing job at a major studio, and the Reporter's interview gives him a chance to explain how he sees that film now, three decades on.