No one ever imagined 2026 would be the year the two most iconic ’90s video game fighting franchises hit the silver screen. Not that it was a battle between Mortal Kombat II earlier this year and, more recently, Street Fighter, but the latter could be the better choice. Truthfully, I never played either game on console or arcade, so I only know the characters fairly well and remember people telling me the second game was a massive improvement. When I kept seeing the trailers, I didn’t think much of it. Yet part of me knows it isn’t gonna aim to be spectacular, but all I wanted from this reboot was for it to be fun. This was the third attempt to adapt the Capcom series since the 1994 Version with Jean-Claude Van Damme, which is a mess, and the less said about 2009’s The Legend of Chun-Li, the better. Maybe this Street Fighter can fall in line as a genuinely decent guilty-pleasure watch since the bar was already low. Instead, it becomes an exhausting experience that doesn’t give me what I wanted.
What’s the Story: In 1987, Ryu (Andrew Koji) became the first World Warrior tournament champion after his finishing move awakened the demon Akuma (Joe “Roman Reigns” Anoa’i). It was then that Akuma murdered his and his adoptive brother Ken Masters’s (Noah Centineo) mentor, Gouken, with Ken blaming Ryu for failing to use his abilities to stop him, which led to a bitter estrangement between them. By 1993, Ryu has gone into hiding to find peace and hasn’t fought since, while Ken has become a washed-up fighter, more interested in partying with his manager and best friend, Dan Hibiki (Andrew Schulz). But the dictator of Shadaloo, M. Bison (David Dastmalchian), plans to organize a second World Warrior tournament in Metrolao City to draw Ryu out of hiding and seize his powers. This catches the attention of Chun-Li (Callina Liang), an undercover agent seeking revenge for her father’s death.
Honestly, Street Fighter had me hooked from the get-go. The opening anime sequence was visually cool. They did this a few times throughout as flashbacks and exposition for Ryu and Ken’s backstory, and they were certainly the most interesting parts of the movie, to the point where I asked myself, why was this entirely animated? But really, will fans of the games get tons of mileage from this? Probably. For me, it’s nothing more than an incoherent mess of frame story perspective. The concept alone aims to be pretty campy, and that mixed with martial arts is enough to be worthwhile. Credit to director Kitao Sakurai for giving this an impressive ’90s aesthetic to drop these familiar characters into, in contrast to the recent Mortal Kombat movies. But it’s never interested in meaning in any sense, or in balancing good action with strong characters to care about, which makes me think he and co-writer T. J. Fixman know the series well enough, but almost too much. Just the thought of the excitement Danny and Michael Philippou originally brought to directing gave me some hope. Now I’m wondering if their vision would’ve been better.
If the new version centered on Ryu and Ken coming together and fighting again, that would be perfectly fine. This made the mistake of treating what’s meant to be taken seriously as pointless character arcs; it didn’t land well. After a while, I couldn’t remember what I was following and wanted them to focus on the action. But even the action didn’t get me as hyped as it should’ve. Most of the choreography is faithful to what I read for their signature moves, but it’s stylized and over-the-top, and the editing makes it feel frantic to follow. The World Warrior tournament is meant to be a huge deal since it involves the fighters, yet it feels like an afterthought. What’s the point of skipping an entire fight and not finding out who won? Maybe the only sequence that stood out was Ryu fighting Blanka (Jason Momoa), the green monster who emits an electric current, in this prison. Momoa was all CGI, and it didn’t look real enough to buy, and he’s one of the characters that went nowhere since he’s in two scenes and is gone. And don’t get me started on the comedy; it was desperate for laughs, especially when the jokes involving Eric André as Don Sauvage and Andrew Schulz as Dan fell completely flat.
You can argue the casting got mixed reactions when it was announced, yet it’s not all their fault they’re stuck playing one-dimensional characters from the games. Centineo and Koji were fine as Ken and Ryu; I just had a hard time finding the dynamic between them, since I mostly found Ken an annoying bro for the first two-thirds, which made me less invested in Centineo’s performance. Cody Rhodes as Guile might be the closest fit. However, he’s a wrestler, not an actor, and all I remember is his ridiculous hairstyle. The most pointless inclusions were 50 Cent’s Balrog and Orville Peck’s Vega. I’m to assume they cast him because he wears a mask in real life?
As for Liang, there’s not much of Chun-Li, but she’s there to make her look sexy physically. It’s a decent performance; I wish she’d had more opportunity to flesh out her character. And based on the costume, she’ll be remembered as one of the sexiest characters we’ll think of by the end of the year. That not only wastes Kyle Mooney, but his character should’ve been cut completely, since he’s there to simp for her and disappear right after. David Dastmalchian is a great actor, but the first few scenes as M. Bison slowly showed he was miscast. Nothing about his performance screamed threatening, even when he had the worst dialogue to work from, even when the character belongs in a B-movie. Nothing will ever compare to how the late Raul Julia brought the role in the 1994 version, when he worked the campiness to a fault. The man was dying from Cancer and gave it his all.
Then you have the music. I think the score from Leo Birenberg and Zach Robinson was really solid, and I can see myself listening to it a few days later. But this is another movie this year where the needle drops don’t work for songs I like. My biggest nitpick is that, since this takes place in 1993, a few songs played were released later. There’s no reason why Ryu is listening to 4 Non Blondes’ “What’s Up” six years prior, or why they’re playing “Who Let the Dogs Out” by Baha Men or “Boys Wanna Be Her” by Peaches when they came out in the 2000s.
Maybe I was tired after a crap week, but I still felt the pacing after the first act. It ran so long that it dared to end abruptly on a cliffhanger, setting up a sequel that might happen. I’ve always hated movies that build up to save what’s to come next, only for the mixed reception to mean it might not come out, which makes me roll my eyes when the credits hit. It better to finish the abandoned plots that never got started in the first place.
Street Fighter had room to improve to be a worthy video game adaptation. Instead, it’s more frustrating to know you can’t have a good time watching average fight scenes in a messy, convoluted story that holds no interest. Say what you will about the last two Mortal Kombat movies; at least they know what they’re offering. And after how great Resident Evil turned out, this feels like a step backward in making video game movies fun.
