Callina Liang knew exactly what she was walking into when she signed on to play Chun-Li in Street Fighter. The 1993-set reimagining of the iconic game franchise, directed by Kitao Sakurai, has been a lightning rod for debate since the first footage dropped, and the actress isn't pretending otherwise. Rather than duck the skepticism, Liang says she has chosen to embrace it head-on - and she's opening up about two pivotal moments that ultimately got cut from the finished film.
"Let Them Doubt"
For Liang, the online chorus of doubters that greeted her casting wasn't a surprise so much as a familiar soundtrack. Fans of the long-running Capcom series have strong opinions about Chun-Li, and the actress told reporters she understood the scrutiny from day one. Instead of trying to argue her way past it, she leaned into the pressure as fuel.
The way Liang sees it, skepticism and affection tend to come from the same place. People are protective of characters they've grown up with, and she'd rather be judged on the work itself than on a preemptive defense. It's a refreshingly grounded stance from a breakout star who finds herself at the center of one of the fall's most debated releases.
Two Scenes That Didn't Make the Cut
Liang also revealed that the theatrical version of Street Fighter is missing a pair of sequences she found especially meaningful - material that dug deeper into Chun-Li's interior life than the finished 120-minute cut allows. She described both as scrapped moments that gave the character a quieter, more vulnerable register away from the tournament's bone-crunching set pieces.
Neither scene, she suggested, was removed because it failed creatively. The reality of a two-hour action ensemble is that hard choices get made, and connective tissue is usually the first casualty. Liang spoke about the deletions with clear warmth rather than frustration, framing them as chapters of her performance that exist even if audiences won't see them on screen.
A Familiar Face in a New Corner
The film itself flips the usual hierarchy: in this telling, Ryu and Ken - played by Andrew Koji and Noah Centineo - are estranged warriors dragged back into the fight when Chun-Li recruits them for the next World Warrior Tournament. What starts as a clash of fists spirals into a deadly conspiracy that pits old friends against each other and forces both men to confront the demons of their past. If they can't, the movie's tagline warns, it's game over.
Surrounding Liang is a cast built for chaos. David Dastmalchian steps in as the villainous M. Bison, Andrew Schulz brings comic relief as Dan Hibiki, Joe Anoa'i looms as Akuma, Cody Rhodes takes on Guile, and Jason Momoa transforms into Blanka. It's the kind of lineup that promises spectacle, and Sakurai's film leans into the over-the-top spirit of its source material.
Since opening on October 13, the movie has landed a 6.38 out of 10 rating on TMDb - a middling score that reflects the split between devoted franchise fans and newcomers expecting something else entirely. For a big-screen take on a fighting-game legend, that divisiveness arguably comes with the territory.
The Long Game
Liang's approach to the noise feels like a page from a veteran's playbook: acknowledge it, absorb it, and keep moving. The skepticism she's fielding now is the same skepticism every actor faces when they step into a beloved role - and the only real answer is the performance itself.
Whether audiences ultimately warm to her take on Chun-Li remains an open question, but her willingness to talk candidly about the cut material and the online reception suggests she's not just surviving the conversation - she's steering it. And if those two scrapped scenes ever surface, fans may get a fuller picture of what she was building all along.
Street Fighter is in theaters now.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
