Fighting Games Friday: Fei Long Will Not Be Cancelled

Street Fighter character Fei Long had an unexpectedly eventful week, one he very much didn’t deserve. It was all bizarre, inane, and hilarious.

It started when Daniel Lindholm, one among several composers who contributed to Street Fighter V’s soundtrack over the years, made a surprising claim in a since-deleted Q&A video posted to YouTube. He mentioned that Fei Long would never be seen in future Street Fighter games due to the Lee family cracking down on interpretations used for “comedic” effect. He claimed that future homages needed to be “honorable.” It was tough to figure out how Fei Long’s interpretation could possibly be “comedic” and not “honorable,” but given the work Lindholm contributed to the franchise and the multiple sources he claimed to have inside and outside Capcom, this seemed legitimate.

If this was the case, the likely fault would have lied at the feet of director Quentin Tarantino. His interpretation of Lee in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Tarantino’s reaction to the criticism drew strong ire from the Lee family. Even if this was the case, it wasn’t clear what legal justification the Lee family could use to go after Capcom and other developers who created unsubtle homages to the late actor. A wide swath of Street Fighter characters would be at risk if Capcom could be so easily bullied into ceasing the usage of those who reference real-life people, though none are so on-the-nose as Fei Long and Balrog (the Japanese name for the latter was M. Bison, if anyone needed help).

Not to mention how this would have been more damaging for Tekken and Marshall and Forest Law than Street Fighter and Fei Long. The former’s Bruce Lee clone is more important to the franchise’s story and legacy than the latter’s, as shown through how Fei Long didn’t make it to the most recent Street Fighter game. Law has been involved in comical scenes, sure, but he hardly qualifies as a “comical” homage per se. No clone, from what I’ve personally seen, has qualified as that outside perhaps Dragon Ball’s unnamed Bruce Lee impersonator.

(Besides, the Lee family being involved with Bruce Lee NFTs is more comical than any homage could possibly be.)

As more time went by, the more Lindholm’s claims didn’t hold up to scrutiny. This somehow became such a big news story after it was reported by several press outlets that it prompted a response from the Lee family. The family, via Twitter, responded that they “never made any comments of this nature,” and said “his comments are entirely false surrounding the Bruce Lee Family.” The comments brought this entire saga to a comical end.

Nah, just kidding: It prompted one of the best examples of “Meltdown May” in 2022 thus far. Lindholm immediately went after the journalists who reached out to Capcom and the Lee family for comment, making sure to include “journalists” in quotes in his valiant quest to find The Guy Who Did This. Lindholm also mentioned that he’s since been blacklisted by Capcom over this, ensuring that he won’t be contributing to Street Fighter 6 or future works from the company. Lindholm has since gone on a tweet deletion storm. It’s a damned shame that I didn’t have the foresight to make copies of the tweets, because these kinds of “car crash” examples never stay up for long. But they happened.

Besides, it’s not like Lindholm stopped. He subsequently went on The Kasanova Podcast to further air his grievances about “journalists” taking his comments out of context, and claimed he was only providing opinions and a “What if? scenario. Let’s be clear: It is not possible to take words out of context by quoting a person accurately. If journalists didn’t reach out to companies and organizations involved to get the most accurate picture of a story possible, they wouldn’t be good at their jobs. I won’t deny that some of them engage in clickbait behavior, a damning indictment of the journalism medium as it needs to exist for profit (and an indictment of capitalism by extension). But Lindholm wasn’t misquoted.

That said, it would be a shame if Capcom blacklists him as a result of this considering his solid contributions to SFV. The themes for Menat, Zeku, and G are very good, as is the remix of Sakura’s and Cody’s themes. But there was never any guarantee that he and several other SFV composers would return for SF6 and other titles. The Street Fighter development was given a reshuffling following Yoshinori Ono’s departure in 2020, which took over for the final season. No composers who contributed music to prior seasons returned for the final season, with the jobs being left to Capcom’s younger internal composers like Azusa Kato, Yuko Miyata, and Yoshiya Terayama. We’ll see if that carries over to the next game.

Here’s some fun advice: If you see a figurative pile of shit on a figurative sidewalk, don’t step in it, and especially don’t try to erect your own to compete with it. Everyone in this situation looks at least a little bad. (Not me, though; I’m just talking about it.) But Daniel Lindholm is furthest up a creek. The only way this could be topped in hilarity is if Fei Long remains eligible for usability in SF6 and still doesn’t make it in. The potential for this happening is high.