{"id":869430,"date":"2026-08-26T20:30:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-26T20:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/869430\/"},"modified":"2026-08-26T20:30:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-26T20:30:14","slug":"david-dastmalchian-studied-cult-leadership-for-street-fighter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/869430\/","title":{"rendered":"David Dastmalchian Studied ‘Cult Leadership’ For Street Fighter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes, Street Fighter is more than just a game<\/a>. That was the approach of David Dastmalchian when getting ready to press play on Kitao Sakurai\u2019s film adaptation<\/a> of the beloved fighting series, as the star stepped into the boots of the series\u2019 villain: M. Bison. A cruel dictator who wields considerable power, Bison has been a major figure in the games since Street Fighter II \u2013 and in preparing for the role, Dastmalchian wanted to go more than pixel-deep on what exactly makes Bison such a compelling leader.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m curious about films where there are these villainous leaders that have endless armies of foot soldiers willing to throw themselves into certain death to defend them,\u201d he tells Empire. \u201cI was like, \u2018How do you achieve that authentically? How do you become the person that all of these people are going to follow into the fire?\u2019\u201d He looked for answers in much more serious places than you might expect from a side-scrolling video game movie. \u201cWe started studying cult leadership and historical figures that were able to use terror and intimidation, but also cunning, charm and seduction, to make these major movements happen,\u201d he says. \u201cPeople like Idi Amin, Jim Jones and Mussolini. We dove in with a very serious approach. People might think, \u2018Oh, it\u2019s just a video-game bad guy. It\u2019s just a big boss,\u2019 and I was like, \u2018No, it\u2019s something much deeper than that.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

After putting in the background research, Dastmalchian really found the character when he donned Bison\u2019s costume \u2013 stomping around in it while listening to Tool, and the Imperial March from The Empire Strikes Back<\/a>. \u201cPutting on the costume for the first time was right up there with the greatest moments in my career,\u201d he enthuses. \u201cI had my boots the summer before we started filming, so, much to the chagrin of my children, I had been wearing them around and learning how to live in them and feel the power in them. I\u2019m not someone who can find a character without first figuring out how he walks. So that was so crucial.\u201d\u00a0 Get ready for a KO.<\/p>\n

\"Empire<\/p>\n

Read Empire\u2019s full Street Fighter feature in the Digger issue<\/a>, on sale Thursday August 17. Pre-order a copy online here<\/a>. Street Fighter comes to cinemas on October 16.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sometimes, Street Fighter is more than just a game. That was the approach of David Dastmalchian when getting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":869431,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,134,344],"class_list":["post-869430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=869430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869430\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/869431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=869430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=869430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=869430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}