Chun-Li’s powerful legs are central to her identity in Street Fighter. For the upcoming film adaptation, recreating Callina Liang’s carefully developed physique required more than the character’s familiar blue qipao and twin buns: her stunt double also used butt pads to match Liang’s shape.
Training Chun-Li’s signature legs
During a cast and crew Q&A, director Kitao Sakurai explained that the stunt doubles needed extra padding after Liang completed an intensive physical transformation for the role. The aim was to maintain a consistent silhouette whenever the stunt performer replaced the actor on screen.
Sakurai said he realised how extensive the process was while filming a later scene, when he noticed Chun-Li’s stunt double wearing the pads. Noah Centineo, who plays Ken, joked that the cast wore them as an act of solidarity, while Liang summed up the result by saying that everyone involved ended up with remarkably large legs.
“Whatever it takes to become Chun-Li.”
Callina Liang’s demanding preparation
Liang previously described her preparation in an interview with Empire Magazine. Her routine combined martial arts training with a high-protein diet, and she said the intensity of the programme repeatedly left her close to being sick.
Because Chun-Li’s fighting style is built around kicks, Liang trained in Taekwondo, Muay Thai and Wushu. She completed about two hours of training each day, ate as often as every two hours and consumed 12 eggs daily while bulking. By the end of filming, she said her thighs had increased by 6.5 centimetres—approximately two inches—each.
Liang also studied the character directly by downloading several Street Fighter games onto her PlayStation 5 and recording different Chun-Li attacks. That attention to the source material should interest fans who follow arcade news and gaming history, particularly those familiar with Chun-Li’s long-standing place in fighting games.
When does the Street Fighter movie release?
The new Street Fighter film is scheduled to reach cinemas on October 16. For further background on Liang’s physical transformation, IGN’s report covers the training process in more detail.
While the film’s performers prepare Chun-Li for the big screen, fans can revisit the character’s arcade roots with classic arcade machines or explore the practical considerations in RETROCADE’s arcade machine buying guide.
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