Noah Centineo on 'Street Fighter' Stunts: 'Insane Fights' Rooted in the Game

Adapting a beloved video game property for the big screen has always carried a particular kind of creative burden — one that stretches from narrative fidelity all the way down to the granular physicality of individual combat sequences. For the upcoming Street Fighter feature from Paramount, that burden fell heavily on the shoulders of stunt coordinator John Valera, and by all accounts, he rose to meet it in remarkable fashion.

A Roster That Demands Precision

One of the defining complexities of bringing Street Fighter to life is the sheer scope of its character roster. The Capcom franchise has, over decades of sequels and spin-offs, assembled a fighting stable that numbers close to 150 distinct combatants — each anchored to a specific discipline, region, and martial tradition. Where a film like Mortal Kombat leaned into mythological spectacle, Street Fighter has always been as much about the authenticity of its combat forms as its broader fantasy. Muay Thai, wrestling, ninjutsu, capoeira — the game's designers have long treated fighting styles as character identity, and any cinematic adaptation worth its salt must honour that hierarchy.

Noah Centineo, who portrays the fan-favourite Ken Masters in the film, made clear in comments reported by Deadline that the production took that responsibility seriously. According to Centineo, Valera undertook dedicated research into the background and fighting methodology of every character appearing in a combat sequence, ensuring that the choreography would reflect each fighter's distinct origins rather than defaulting to generic Hollywood action grammar.

Centineo on the Craft Behind the Chaos

"Every character comes from a different background, pretty much," Centineo explained, speaking to GamesRadar+. "So there's like over almost 150 characters, all the different backgrounds, different fighting styles, and John Valera, our stunt coordinator, had to research for every character and every fight that they were in their specific fighting style."

The actor, who has been making a deliberate transition toward more physically demanding and dramatically substantial roles — as evidenced by his recent work alongside Will Poulter on Union County — described the resulting sequences with evident enthusiasm, calling them "insane fights." The language is superlative, but the underlying methodology Valera employed sounds genuinely rigorous: sourcing the game's internal logic rather than imposing external cinematic convention onto it.

Why Stunt Coordination Is Increasingly the Secret Weapon

In contemporary action filmmaking, the stunt coordinator has become something closer to a co-auteur than a technical support role. The best in the field — think Chad Stahelski's work before he graduated to directing the John Wick franchise — function as kinetic storytellers, using body movement and spatial choreography to communicate character psychology in ways that dialogue cannot. Valera's reported approach on Street Fighter follows that philosophy, grounding each fight in a character's biography rather than treating combat as visually interchangeable spectacle.

It's an approach that matters especially for a property like this, where the source material exists primarily as combat. When fans arrive at the theatre — or in this case, given the film's October 16th IMAX launch, at the largest possible screen — they will carry decades of muscle memory for how these characters are supposed to move. Defying those expectations without earning it tends to alienate; honouring them, as the production appears to have done, can generate genuine excitement.

Setting Up a Franchise Moment

The October 16 IMAX premiere positions Street Fighter as one of Paramount's major tentpole bets for the back half of the year — a crowded release window that includes numerous high-profile franchise entries competing for audience attention. Whether the film can distinguish itself will depend on precisely the qualities Centineo is championing: specificity, craft, and a willingness to treat the source material as something more than a brand name to be exploited.

For the actor himself, the project represents another calculated step in reshaping a career that began in the soft-lit terrain of romantic comedy. It's a trajectory worth watching — and one whose next chapter, if Street Fighter lands well, could prove genuinely significant.

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