When Kotaku first revealed that Capcom wanted to “do to video games what Marvel did to comics”, I have to admit I was disappointed. Overall, the Marvel movies sucked. The only good ones that come to mind are the first 2 X-Men and Iron Man. I mean, come on, all the Spider-Man’s were bad and the Hulk was awful and those were pretty much the runner ups too. Besides, Capcom already has a bunch of Resident Evils and Street Fighter: the Movie which I have not seen to this day (and will never see despite being a former die-hard Street Fighter fanatic).

When the Legend of Chun Li was announced I wasn’t excited in the least bit. Now that I hear Ken and Ryu will not make an appearance, things are starting to look up! I love Ken and Ryu as characters in the game, preferring Ken to Ryu for obvious cool-factor reasons, but still I was happy. Why? Well it’s quite simple …

There are simply too many characters in the Street Fighter world for one movie. The obvious solution is to start with a few characters and release more movies where others can be introduced. That’s what I would have loved to see with the X-Men movies. Sure, they did that to a certain extent, but not enough to my liking. When you are introduced to 20 different mutants with as many unique powers, the wow factor is just not as impressive. In this, I think Marvel is going in the right direction with the Avengers movie, even though I hate the Avengers as a super-hero team and prefer the X-Men by a mile. And in this, Capcom is also making a good decision: don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

The only thing I’m worried about is losing the star power of Ryu and Ken. If the movie is good, I couldn’t care less whether they’re there or not. This doesn’t seem to be the general sentiment judging from comments on Kotaku.com and similar sites. That worries me. If the movie does end up being good, but people don’t turn out to see it because their favorite pajama wearing martial artists are missing, that might hurt any chance of having a sequel that would feature them.

Still, the decision not to feature as many characters as possible is a great one in my eyes. It instills in me hope that the movie will actually have other good decisions. Let’s hope the gamble pays off…