Kitao Sakurai says Street Fighter uses an alternate early 1990s world to support the games' stranger character designs. He wanted to emphasize unusual hair and costumes, and needed a setting where they belonged. His separate interest in Robert Altman's ensembles helps explain his attraction to a group of people who seem mismatched [1].
A world that supports the designs
In Mike Ryan's October 16 IndieWire interview, Sakurai describes a tendency he wanted to avoid in video game adaptations: softening elements that seem difficult to translate into film. His examples are Guile's hair and the characters' clothing, particularly in Street Fighter II. He says his approach was to emphasize those strange qualities. The alternate setting was a way to support that choice [1].
Sakurai explains that he was imagining a slightly different world with its own early 1990s identity. He gives October 3, 1993 as an example of the precise date he was not trying to establish. That distinction matters when reading his design explanation: the period provides room for heightened characters without committing the film to a reconstruction of one specific day [1].
The period as a filmmaking intention
Sakurai also wanted Street Fighter to feel as though it had been made in the 1990s. He describes production choices as almost being in character for that period. This adds a second purpose to the setting: it informed how he wanted the movie itself to feel, alongside providing a fictional world for the costumes. His comments describe an intended effect, without specifying a technical recipe for achieving it [1].
Why he brings up Nashville
When explaining his enthusiasm for the project, Sakurai names Robert Altman's Nashville. He says he loves films in which the energy of an ensemble means something, then describes his interest in strange groups of people who do not seem to belong together. The reference concerns what attracts him to an ensemble. It gives context for his interest in Street Fighter's collection of different characters [1].
That comparison has a specific limit. Sakurai's account supports a connection between his admiration for Altman's ensembles and his interest in bringing mismatched people together. It does not establish that Street Fighter gives every character equal attention or uses particular Altman camera or sound techniques. Those would require evidence beyond the intention he describes here [1].
What this explains for a reader
For a reader asking why the costumes and characters can look so different from one another, Sakurai offers two related interests: a fictional period that can accommodate unusual designs, and the energy of an unlikely group. His interview explains why he wanted to retain those differences. Whether the finished film achieves that intention remains a separate question [1].