Noah Centineo Says He'll Take the Criticism If Fans Don't Like 'Street Fighter'

Noah Centineo took a bold stance during an interview with Omelete: if fans of the Street Fighter franchise don't like the new live-action film inspired by Capcom's games, the team deserves "to be absolutely crucified in the reviews".

The words may sound harsh, but they align with the actor's philosophy on video game adaptations in general. When asked about the tide of well-received films in this genre, Centineo pointed to the wisdom of the fans as the guiding star for a project like Street Fighter, citing forums and lore pages as great sources of research for the professionals involved in the project.

Check out the excerpt from the conversation below.

OMELETE: This franchise has such iconic characters, such emblematic designs. Were you already a fan of the games before being cast? Is there anything in particular that you're very excited for people to see?

CENTINEO: I'm excited for people to see it all! All the characters coming together to create this insane, fun madness. It's an incredible movie. I grew up familiar with the franchise. When I was very young, my cousins ​​had the original Street Fighter 2 arcade machine, that big arcade machine, so I grew up playing with them. When Legendary called me to play Ken, it was crazy, quite an experience, very surreal. Besides this incredible cast assembled to make the movie, the other thing that excites me most – the thing I want to make very clear – is that this movie was really made for the fans of the game. For those who love the game, grew up with it, know the characters, the secret levels... There are so many Easter eggs in this movie for the fans! I'm very excited for them to see it and I hope they like it, because we tried to make the movie thinking about them. If we fail, we deserve to be absolutely crucified in the fans' reviews!

OMELETE: We've had some great video game adaptations recently, after a long period of Hollywood struggling to get it right. What do you think has changed in how filmmakers and actors approach these projects today, compared to a few decades ago?

CENTINEO: When you try to adapt a beloved intellectual property, at any point you can make a mistake and end up doing a bad job. That still happens, nobody is immune. Speaking for Street Fighter, maybe the audience will judge that we did a terrible job – but I don't think so, because I've seen some reactions from fans who have already watched it and I'm hopeful that we didn't prioritize the wrong things. The most important thing is to make the film as a fan, knowing what the audience's expectations are. The advantage of adapting an intellectual property is that the source material already shows you who the characters are, and you have a wealth of information to draw from. You can look at online forums, see the lore, the reviews, the fanfiction, and understand what the fans love. You take the best parts and use that to build the film. Kitao Sakurai, our director, the cast, and Legendary knew this and wanted to do exactly that. If we succeed, this was the formula: research the fandom, the canon, and the original material to build something from there.

Street Fighter is now showing in cinemas.