*heavy sigh* I’m out of town for Halloween weekend, I’ve got so much to do ahead of then, and my watchlist is still way too long. Time to show up at my local multiplex and get a ticket for whatever’s playing next whenever I happen to show up. What’s the luck of the draw this time? Street Fighter (2026)? Sounds great, let’s do it.
Yes, after a couple of famously godawful live-action Street Fighter adaptations, and fresh off a couple of live-action Mortal Kombat films that were kind of okay, here we are with a new attempt at a live-action Street Fighter movie. This one was kick-started by the unlikely filmmaking duo of Danny and Michael Phillipou — both longtime fans of the franchise — fresh off the breakout success of Talk to Me. But then they backed out for unclear reasons, replaced by comedy filmmaker Kitao Sakurai, who also took a pass at the script.
(Side note: Apparently, the Phillipou Brothers obligingly came back long enough to appear as one of the many, many cameo players in this picture.)
Right off the bat, the film proudly wears its influences on its sleeve. The film is peppered with flashback scenes, all of which are lovingly rendered in fluid hand-drawn anime style. The soundtrack alternates between classic ’90s needle drops and new arrangements of the classic “Street Fighter II” character themes. The fight choreography is loaded with special moves lifted directly from the games. There are Easter Eggs and franchise callbacks and references packed into every corner. We even get a PG-13 yet laughably gratuitous nod to Chun-Li’s infamous shower scene from the 1994 animated movie (still arguably the best cinematic adaptation of the franchise).
From where I’m sitting, only two things were noticeably missing. For one thing, if Guile (here played by Cody Rhodes) ever launched his signature Sonic Boom attack, I never caught it. For another thing, I found it curious that Sagat — one of only two or three franchise mainstays who predated “Street Fighter II” — was never announced as part of the cast. Imagine my pleasant surprise to find that Sagat does indeed make a silent yet prominent cameo in one of the aforementioned flashbacks. It’s in this animated prologue when we get to see the foundational and fateful matchup between Ryu and Sagat.
Conveniently, the filmmakers take that opportunity to introduce us to the Satsui no Hado, which is here simply referred to as “Hado”. For the uninitiated, the Hado is basically the Dark Side of the Force. It’s hatred, pride, jealousy, greed, and other such negative emotions all rolled up into a seismic power boost that slowly destroys the user and quickly destroys everything around him. If you’re at all familiar with the “hadoken”, the fireball projectile made iconic by franchise co-leads Ryu and Ken… well, it’s right there in the name. There you go.
Long story short, Ryu and Ken (respectively played by Andrew Koji and Noah Centineo) were brought up as brothers under Gouken (Don Lee), a martial arts master who specialized in controlling and mastering the Hado for good. Trouble is, Ken could never quite get the hang of it, while Ryu was such a natural that he started tipping dangerously close to the Dark Side. Close enough to get visions of Gouken’s evil brother (Akuma, played by Roman Reigns), who pretty much embodies the temptation to give in to anger and access unlimited power, yada yada yada. Things finally reached a breaking point after Gouken died under mysterious circumstances.
Ryu dropped off the face of the earth so he could live in peace as a total nobody and swear off fighting forever. Ken took the opposite route and became a laughable tabloid sellout, the fighter that every other fighter in the world laughs at. Ryu deliberately keeps everyone at arm’s length, while Ken keeps learning the hard way that being famous doesn’t mean being respected or loved. Ryu is a bona fide champion who’s terrified of his own power, while Ken is a second-rate fighter with an obsessive need to prove himself. The point is effectively made that however much they may hate each other, the ties between them run deep and strong and the two of them need each other. The filmmakers did the right thing making Ryu and Ken the focal point of the movie, and it works well enough to power the rest of the film.
On the subject of Ryu and Ken, I’d be remiss not to mention Dan Hibiki, here played by Andrew Schulz. In the games, Dan is a joke character whose whole deal is that he’s a disappointment to his father and everyone around him, and he’s literally incapable of succeeding at anything. Even so, the character’s optimistic spirit and unstoppable persistence has made him a fan favorite.
In this movie, Dan’s backstory is unclear. The filmmakers try to shoehorn in certain elements of his backstory from the games, while also making it clear that Dan has direct personal knowledge of Ryu and Ken and Gouken and their whole backstory without ever explaining why Dan isn’t in any of the flashbacks… it doesn’t really fit.
What’s clear is that Dan has been repurposed to serve as Ken’s business manager. In any other movie, he’d be the parasitic leech exploiting Ken for his own profit, and several characters accuse him of exactly that. But when the chips are down, it’s repeatedly proven that Dan truly and sincerely is a brother figure for Ken. He’s hardly a proper substitute for Ryu, but at least he’s reliably there in those times when Ryu isn’t. While this is hardly an authentic adaptation of Dan, there’s a quiet kind of dignity to the character, a steadfast refusal to back down regardless of how many times he’s humiliated, and I think the fans will respond to that.
Anyway, we should probably get back to the plot. Cut to 1993, six years after Ryu beat Sagat to become World Champion. We lay our scene in… someplace called “Metrolau City”. Is that supposed to be some half-assed combination of Metro City and Shadaloo? Seriously, this whole movie is so rabidly committed to its own over-the-top silly tone, a country named “Shadaloo” seems like a weird place to draw the line. But forgive me, I’m digressing again.
David Dastmalchian plays M. Bison, the tyrannical monarch of whatever the hell we’re calling this city. (And yes, the character’s name really is “M. Bison”. If you think that’s a stupid name that doesn’t remotely fit the character, blame Mike Tyson. It’s another long story.) Bison’s deal is that he’s trying to gain superpowers and supreme physical form by draining what’s essentially the “life force” of the strongest human beings he can find. Trouble is, Bison is exactly the kind of greedy egomaniacal asshole who doesn’t know the meaning of the word “enough.”
Also, he has a foot fetish. I couldn’t make that up if I tried, folks. I have no idea where that came from or why that was included here.
Bison’s white whale is Ryu. After witnessing Ryu’s victory over Sagat, he’s been trying for years to gain the Hado or anything else like it. And after so many years of trying and failing to find the elusive Ryu, Bison finally throws a Hail Mary and stages a tournament of the world’s greatest fighters in the hopes of baiting Ryu out of hiding.
Enter Chun-Li, here played by Callina Liang. This is the character who travels the world on behalf of M. Bison, seeking out the world’s strongest fighters — including and especially Ryu and Ken — to invite them into joining the tournament. This stands in stark contrast to the games, in which Chun-Li is an Interpol agent with a personal grudge against the power-mad dictator who killed her father. Luckily, the filmmakers find a way to square all this with the revelation that Chun-Li is a double agent trying to infiltrate Shadaloo. Even better, her obsessive personal vendetta and her unsubstantiated claims of Bison’s dark energy “psycho power” make her effectively a rogue agent. It works surprisingly well, and Liang plays the character like a stone-cold badass.
But here’s the only thing I cared about with this character: Does Chun-Li get fridged? Despite Chun-Li’s iconic status as the First Lady of Fighting Games, easily one of the most beloved and instantly recognizable characters of the games, I’m sorry to say that Chun-Li has a long and depressing history of getting captured, incapacitated, and/or outright bodied to make the villain look so much more evil and/or to motivate a male protagonist. Yet as strong as this portrayal of Chun-Li otherwise is, I’m sorry to say that this movie keeps up the tradition. Imagine my disappointment.
The above-mentioned characters — Ryu, Ken, M. Bison, Chun-Li, and Dan to a lesser extent — are effectively the lead characters of the movie. Every scene in the movie is either about one of those characters or features one of those characters. And then we have a metric shit-ton of supporting characters from the games, with a nice mix of beloved franchise mainstays and deep cuts.
Eric Andre (a recurring Sakurai collaborator) is a particular highlight as the M.C. of the tournament. Blanka (Jason Momoa) and E. Honda (Hirooki Goto) also get a surprising amount of mileage out of so little screentime. I wasn’t particularly fond of Guile, here played by Corey Rhodes with too much cartoonish machismo and less of the military precision typically associated with the character, but at least he fit in well with the tone of the greater film. The clear losers here are Cammy (Mel Jarnson) and Juli (Rayna Vallandingham) who might as well have been merged or switched or swapped out with other characters or cut entirely for all the difference it would’ve made.
Overall, the movie does a surprisingly good job of balancing out such a massive cast and making sure everyone gets at least one chance to leave a memorable impact. Certainly, it’s a factor that everyone on all sides of the camera shows a palpable love for the games, leaving no doubt that everyone wanted to do right by every single character featured. The fight scenes are another huge factor, all so expertly shot and choreographed with plenty of expressive banter, so we get to learn a lot about the characters while they’re beating each other up. It also helps a great deal that the actors were all superbly cast and they all came ready to play. Which brings me to the single most important factor: This movie is permanently stuck at full-throttle.
There is no straight foil anywhere to be found in this picture. There is no nuance whatsoever. This movie is loud, juvenile, silly, stupid, outrageous, over-the-top, and totally unapologetic. On the one hand, I can understand how that would drive away a certain kind of audience. I might add that the film is so aggressively fast-paced that the filmmakers needed to gloss over several plot events and resort to pathetically lazy exposition dumps in the mad dash to cram everything into two hours. On the other hand, I can honestly respect a movie that knows what it wants to be, putting so much effort and passion into hitting their mark perfectly. I need hardly add that this is a goddamn Street Fighter adaptation, what else was anyone expecting?
To my pleasant surprise, I was on board with this movie… right up until it lost me.
I know I’m late to the party on this and there’s already been a lot of talk about this point, but there’s no denying that the ending flat fucking sucks. I’ve seen some bad sequel-baiting in my day, but this is something else. It’s like the filmmakers didn’t have the time or the budget to film a proper denouement, so they cut it from the film entirely without any attempts at writing or shooting or editing around it. This isn’t just a few dangling loose ends, the entire plot is left straight-up unresolved. Not even Mortal Kombat (2021) was this blatant, and that movie didn’t even show us the actual tournament!
Street Fighter (2026) is a frustrating one to judge. It’s shameless cinematic junk food, and that won’t be for all appetites. But let’s be real, cinematic junk food is exactly what we all wanted and needed this movie to be. And there are some times when cinematic junk food is exactly what you need and there’s nothing else to quite hit that spot. Moreover, given how this movie knows exactly what it wants to be and accomplishes that mission perfectly, I have a difficult time calling this a bad movie.
However, that ending is a dealbreaker for me. Without a sequel already set for production and guaranteed for release within the next couple of years, cutting it off in the middle of the climax like that is not acceptable. As I’ve already said multiple times with so many other franchise movies, I’m not inclined to pass judgment on half a movie, and there’s no way I can give my blessing to half a movie without a second half anywhere on the horizon.
If and when we ever get a sequel, we can circle back and reassess. In the meantime, what we’re left with is a movie that goes a million miles an hour right off a cliff. There are too many other and better movies out right now for anyone to bother with this.
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