Street Fighter (2026): A Cautionary Tale

Written by: Kitao Sakurai, T.J. Fixman, Dalan Musson
Directed by: Kitao Sakurai
Starring: Noah Centineo, Andrew Koji, Callina Liang, David Dastmalchian, Andrew Schultz, Roman Reigns, Cody Rhodes, Jason Mimosa, Eric André, 50 Cent

This is what happens when you hew too close to the source material.

I've never been a big Street Fighter player, nor much of a Mortal Kombat fan for that matter. I've played through a handful of the games and while I appreciate them, I've never been super passionate about them. When I first saw the costumes for Street Fighter (2026) I chuckled and said "no fucking way am I wasting my time with that." Then I saw a trailer with the over-the-top fight moves and ridiculous outfits of the original games and thought "Hell, it's just one Thursday evening, I didn't have plans anyway."

Seeing Callina Liang as Chun-li didn't hurt either.

Truth be told, I never really liked the over-the-top moves of Street Fighter. The (relative) realism of Tekken was more appealing to me; once a guy shoots a fireball out of his palms, I'm kinda out. On the other hand, it was fairly interesting to see a movie that tries to capture the look and feel of the source game as much as possible. There were so many video game movies in the 90s—including Street Fighter (1994)—where kids walked in and went "huh? This looks nothing like the game I played." Finally, we get a director who says "You want it? You're going to get it—good and hard."

It's important to remember fighting games of the 90s had the barest veneer of a storyline, almost always centered around a tournament of some kind. That makes sense, we're here for the combat, but Street Fighter (2026) eschews most of the tournament to focus on the backstory of the characters and the main bad guy's desire to acquire..."psycho power". I know that's a thing that's mentioned in the instruction manual for Street Fighter II but every time a character says it it's the silliest thing I've ever heard. That wouldn't be such a problem if all the villains in this movie weren't taking themselves so deadly seriously. M. Bison (David Dastmalchian, who's never played a good guy in his life and probably never will) says stuff like "weak sauce" and quotes the "for me, it was Tuesday" line from Street Fighter (1994), but he doesn't have anywhere near the charisma of Raul Julia (to be fair, few do). It's such a bizarre contrast with his farcical dictator costume and his henchwomen all dressed up like Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS. When he introduces Blanka (Jason Momoa, as depicted by the most hideous CGI I've seen in years) the movie becomes a borderline horror flick. Juli (from Street Fighter Alpha, I assume) does nothing but ineffectually grimace and menace people with her stick throughout the movie. Juni has no lines and just walks around in the world's most impractically short business skirt. Cammy (who apparently just walks around outside in that thong leotard all the time) just yells a whole lot. She throws out an awkward line about Chun-li's thighs, which isn't even a joke, more like a reference to Something The Audience Knows. Great. Thanks for that.

The heroes fare slightly better in comparison. E. Honda, Vega, Balrog, and Dhalsim are barely in it, so we get to focus on Ryu, Ken, and Chun-li. This is where the movie is at its best. There's a surprisingly solid animated sequence at the beginning of the movie depicting the climactic fight of the first Street Fighter game (perhaps the worse game I've ever played); I actually thought I got rugpulled and was going to end up watching something good instead as a fun little surprise. Still, Ken (Noah Centineo) has a ton of personality in a way that's never abrasive and Ryu (Andrew Koji) seems to fit his beleaguered character. Liang's also great as Chun-li, despite having one moment where she either flubbed a line and they left it in or there was some awkward direction and they neglected to edit it to look normal. You know what I'm talking about if you've seen the movie: she yells, "Drive!" There's a three second pause. "...The car!" Not her fault the people behind the cameras were asleep at the wheel.

The weak direction, unfortunately, spills over to other characters. If you always wanted to know just how stupid Guile's hair would look in real life, here's Cody Rhodes for you. His first scene is so devoid of comedy, so completely flat, that I was shocked it made it to the final release. You have to edit that out, it's so bad dude. Every time he's on screen he won't shut the fuck up, it's astonishing. And nothing he has to say is of any use! If he were a quarterback this would be a 4 INT, 76 yards, 10 sack game. Meanwhile Eric André (some announcer guy) has never been worse; I'm sure his TV show was funny back in its heyday but everything he says here is an unmitigated disaster. Just like Cammy, he's another one who's yelling all the time instead of saying or doing something interesting. But the most baffling choice by far is Andrew Schultz as Dan Hibiki, who I think somehow has the fourth most screen time in the movie.

You read that right! It's everyone's favorite guy!

Street Fighter fans will recognize the name Dan Hibiki as the classic joke character of the series, a guy who does everything worse than everyone else, a guy you only play as if you're experienced and want to take it easy on your little brother. Internet denizens will recognize Andrew Schultz as a "comedian"/podcaster who asked "what's bad about voting for Trump?" then, after the election, said "I had no idea all this bad shit was gonna happen if we elected Trump!" (Normal people will not recognize either name.) He's constantly in this movie, already stuffed to overflowing with jokes, as the comedy relief guy. His jokes have like a 5% hit rate; it's astonishing to watch a guy have that many misses, you'd think he'd accidentally tell a good quip every once in awhile. On the other hand, I did like that he bucked the trope of a sleazy manager who's only in it for a quick buck and actually seemed like he liked Ken. Never expected that depth of character from Andrew Schultz. Didn't feel great typing that, I gotta tell ya.

A quick detour before getting back to the characters: the movie takes place in 1993, which is about when the game came out and when the story canonically takes place (as if that matters). Some effort was made to make the movie look and feel like an early 90s film. There are CRT screens, shameless era-accurate advertisements, and a handful of needle drops from the early-ish 90s. Sure, "Black Hole Sun" came out in 1994, but I'll allow a bit of leeway. What I will not allow is enough leeway to justify "Who Let the Dogs Out" as Ken's walk out music. What the fuck are you doing? Why is that here? What are you trying to do to your audience? I'm not saying you have to stick strictly to 90s songs—I certainly didn't need that 4 Non Blondes song to play three (3) times—but if the song is going to be diegetic it ought to be from the era. Also it should never be "Who Let the Dogs Out."

As for the advertisements, I usually don't mind product placement in movies too much, but there's a Bugles ad that's so embarrassing I cringed so hard I gave myself a headache. There's some nameless government agent eating a bag of Bugles with it turned directly to face the camera; I had to look up to see if they even still made those or if that was a 1993 joke. Oh lord, I just remembered that's the scene where Chun-li kicks a bunch of dudes' asses, including a guy who's been drooling over her the whole time and worships her feet. There's also a handful of gay panic jokes that stop just short of characters saying "no homo!" I feel that headache coming back, feels like he brought reinforcements.

Just remembered all the foot fetish jokes in this movie

Let's get back to the characters. The three heroes and also Dan Hibiki are mostly pretty fun to watch interact with each other and the villains/side characters, but by the third act everything's become far too serious again. Ryu turns into Dark Ryu (a shockingly accurate reference to a secret character even most Street Fighter fans don't know about), he has to battle Akuma (Roman Reigns, who growls through each one of his lines), and Ken's mad at him for something that happened six years ago. This is the problem with abject fealty to the source story: when lives and souls are on the line, things suddenly aren't quite as much fun. By shifting the narrative from the tournament to the evil Shadaloo empire, the movie is nowhere near as lighthearted as it ought to be.

A word about the tournament: you will never guess who wins it. It's nearly a trick question; there is a winner, but it's someone you've never heard of. It's Joe. You don't know Joe? He's apparently one of the guys from the first Street Fighter game (again, worst game I've ever played). I saw this with two avid fans of the Street Fighter series and neither one of them had ever heard of this guy. He somehow lucks into first place by getting a bunch of forfeits, just the way you love to see a tournament play out in a martial arts movie. Less fighting the better, I always say. He's played by some guy with a name no one will ever remember and looks like Jamie Kennedy in the Son of the Mask makeup if it was flesh colored.

He might have early onset Robert Z'Daritis.

It's a distinct and likely possibility that people saw the over-the-top "fighting" "moves" in the trailer and thought "oh this is schlock" and wisely decided to avoid this movie as a result. I can understand that, but frankly I didn't mind it so much. We've played these games, we know what they're supposed to look like, and they do a decent job of that. They make more sense than Guile's hair, I'll tell you that much. The first time you see a guy do that jumping spin kick looks a bit awkward (especially because he announces his move by yelling "tatsumaki senpukyaku," a peculiarly Japanese custom of letting the opponent know what you're doing) but by the second time it feels fairly natural. We don't see Dhalsim spitting fire, which I think would've been more realistic than Zangief's jumping spinning piledriver, but we get to see Chun-li doing the spinning bird kick, which is one of my favorite parts. I don't even mind that she uses her hands to support herself; she did that in Street Fighter: The Animated Movie too.

Don't ever let anyone tell you there aren't any good movies based on video games.

That's ultimately the problem with Street Fighter (2026). Forget Set aside the animated movie, this isn't even as good as the Jean-Claude Van Damme movie. At least that one had some perso-fuckin-nality. I'm not sure who was responsible for the decision to go for this look and this style, whether it was the producers, the director, the writers, or Capcom, but by the end of the movie everything—the visuals, the dialogue, the tonal inconsistency—just becomes too cluttered. The dialogue takes itself too seriously, except for all the times it doesn't take itself seriously enough. Every once in awhile there'll be a funny joke, but you can bet your life it'll be drowned out by three bad ones. 

There's a sense that this is meant for kids with the PG-13 rating, but kids these days don't remember Street Fighter II. Also the characters drop the word "shit" every other sentence, which some parents might not like. The "ending," which I won't spoil here, was such a bizarre choice it elicited laughter in the theater. Don't get me wrong, there are elements here that kick ass (like much of the fighting), but there's just as much stuff that'll make you embarrassed to watch it with anyone you know. Just goes to show: should've made a Third Strike movie instead.

Finally, a game worth playing