STREET FIGHTER (2026) is the new film based on the Street Fighter video game franchise. I have less of an affinity for Street Fighter than Mortal Kombat since it’s not one of the few games I’ve played, but come on. Larger-than-life characters who live to engage in martial arts competitions, sometimes with cartoonish powers? Obviously it piques my interest. Maybe I’m even the prime audience for this movie since I’m Interested In This Sort of Shit (IiTSoS) but with no preconceived notions of how these characters or concepts need to be adapted. And I have evidence to support this theory.

1. I thought STREET FIGHTER: THE LEGEND OF CHUN-LI was kind of fun. It has a 3% on Rotten Tomatoes.

2. I went to see this with a friend who’s a games journalist and he had all kinds of complaints afterwards that I didn’t relate to.

3. When the first trailer came out that showed this version’s cartoonish approach, the buzz on the internet seemed to be “that looks like the absolute worst shit ever shat from a butt,” but when I saw it I thought, “Oh wow, I gotta see that!”

I was also intrigued to read that director/co-writer Kitao Sakurai was one of the main people behind The Eric André Show and also directed André’s very funny movie BAD TRIP. That’s just not who you would expect to do a video game movie, suggesting it could be something interesting. Had I known that Sakurai had, as a child actor, made his debut in BEST OF THE BEST 3: NO TURNING BACK, that would’ve also been a selling point too.

Anyway, we were all kind of right: it’s not a great movie, it is something interesting though, I did have fun. It’s a stylized, special effects driven action comedy, much more visually playful and irreverent than most video game movies. For what it’s worth the score by Leo Birenberg and Zach Robinson (WEIRD: THE AL YANKOVIC STORY) is more exciting than the recent MORTAL KOMBAT movies, the visuals are more colorful, and I enjoyed the gimmick that the prologue and flashbacks are depicted in hand drawn animation, paying homage to the game’s history of popular anime adaptations.

We open in an alternate 1987 where everything is animated and the song “What’s Up” by 4 Non Blondes has already been released. (The needle drops of ‘90s hits with complete disregard for their release dates is a point of contention for many people.) Here we see the first World Warrior tournament, when Ryu (Andrew Koji, SNAKE EYES, BULLET TRAIN, BOY KILLS WORLD) defeated Sagat using a dark power that caused his eyes to glow evil red. His master Gouken (Don Lee, TRAIN TO BUSAN) made Ryu’s best white friend and training partner Ken Masters (Noah Centineo, CHARLIE’S ANGELS 2019) vow to protect him. From who? Himself.

Six years later things are very different, and in live action. The evil warlord or whatever M. Bison (David Dastmalchian, THE SUICIDE SQUAD) has captured various muscle men and hooked them up to a machine that drains their “Psycho Power,” but he doesn’t have enough. He decides to hold a second World Warrior tournament in order to lure the most powerful man in the world, Ryu, out of hiding.

See, there were many different feelings and interpretations about what went down back in the cartoon days, which will be explored throughout the movie. But basically Ryu ghosted everyone and sells soup from a little cart while Ken became a huge celebrity, sold out many times over, is now a rich dipshit and subject of mockery. (Sakurai is the right director to give us a news montage with clips from his Duracell commercials and his fight against a car and shit.) He lives a lavish lifestyle but only his ass-kissing sidekick Dan (Andrew Schulz, THE THICKET) seems to respect him and stick around at his parties to hit the DJ horn when he needs a boost.

Bison’s henchpeople include Cammy (Mel Jarnson, Nitara in MORTAL KOMBAT 2021) and Chun-Li (Callina Liang, PRESENCE), the latter of whom is sent around the world to recruit fighters for the tournament. She’s actually undercover for Interpol trying to avenge the murder of her father. Kyle Mooney (Y2K) has a small Kyle Mooney part as her desk jockey partner who pathetically pines for her.

Ryu turns down the tournament until he hears that the demon Akuma (wrestler Roman Reigns, HOBBS & SHAW), brother and murderer of Master Gouken, plans to fight the winner. He worries that will be Ken and he’ll die. So he goes to begin the slow process of making up with his old friend.

I always enjoy Koji and he seems like he could blow up if given the right movie role. This character seems like a step closer to that. I think the best scene in the movie is when he shows up in Ken’s hotel room and casually dodges his attacks, really only trying to avoid a fight but also exposing the undisciplined state of Ken’s skills as he falls all over the place. It’s full of little touches like Ken slipping on the hard floor, taking off his socks and throwing them, and Ryu catching them and nicely folding them. There’s just so much comedy and personality in his physicality; he’s a top notch martial arts actor for more reasons than just knowing the moves. (Fight coordinator: Anthony Rinna, THE WRECKING CREW.)

The downside is that none of the other fights match that one, he’s not as cool after he cuts his hair into the traditional appearance of the character, and he does get sidelined a little bit. But it still ends up being a good showcase for Koji’s charisma, and a later rematch in one of the movie’s beautifully sound-stagey urban settings (production designer: Kevin Kavanaugh, WHIP IT, THE DARK KNIGHT RISES, NIGHTCRAWLER, JOHN WICK 2–4) is a highlight.

Of course they have many other game characters showing up briefly as opponents. JCVD’s character Guile is played by wrestler Cody Rhodes with a comically large flat top wig and an admirably straight face. 50 Cent (ESCAPE PLAN 2: HADES, ESCAPE PLAN: THE EXTRACTORS) as Mike Tyson lookalike Balrog also gets to have funny hair. And they have masked ninja Vega (singer Orville Peck), sumo wrestler E. Honda (wrestler Hirooki Goto), giant brute Zangief (Olivier Richters, Reacher season 3), some guy called Joe (MMA fighter Alexander Volkanovski). I think the coolest supporting player is Dhalsim, who in the game has stretchy limbs but here it just seemed like actor Vidyut Jammwal (JUNGLEE) can move really weird? Maybe it’s an effect, but whatever it is it looks cool. The least successful unfortunately is Blanka, the big green guy voiced and probly mocapped by Jason Momoa (WOLVES). He’s an animated monster, like a Hulk, which I don’t mind. But he doesn’t look quite real enough and (more importantly) his jokes are mostly not funny, so it’s kind of a wash. Maybe they’ll do him better if there’s a sequel.

Sakurai’s longtime collaborator Eric André plays Don Sauvage, a sports broadcaster who was locked in a dungeon for making fun of Bison’s outfits, so now he wildly kisses his ass in exchange for freedom. I can imagine a version where that character eventually gets his opening to turn on Bison and it’s supposed to be a stick-it-to-the-man thrill – these guys know it’s funnier (and truer to 2026) if he just stays a pathetic toadie the whole time.

Bison, unfortunately, doesn’t work as well as I’d hope. Dastmalchian is into it but I don’t think his take is either different enough from or as fun as Raul Julia’s version from the first live action STREET FIGHTER movie. They also make the poor choice to reference Julia’s classic “for me it’s Tuesday” line. Didn’t get even a recognition laugh in my theater.

But I did find myself chuckling at a decent percentage of the jokes here, which brought up the biggest question for me. Why didn’t this humor piss me off like the humor in MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE? They even both have the 4 Non Blondes song! Part of it, undeniably, is my aforementioned lack of connection to Street Fighter and opinions about what a movie version should be. But I do think there are subtle but significant differences in the approach. To me it doesn’t feel like it’s embarrassed of Street Fighter. I think the jokes are more about celebrating the absurdity of video games than about undercutting what people love about them. Crucially, the two coolest characters, Ryu and Chun-Li, are always allowed to be cool. I believe they even cut a funny line from the trailer where Guile says “I’m positive that a fireball came out of Ryu.” Of the main trio only Ken is treated as a comedic character, so there’s a good balance there.

I’d say this is the best of the STREET FIGHTER films, but I make no claims of greatness. To me it’s much more exciting to watch a real martial arts movie that really lets the choreography and stuntwork be the main event. This has plenty of fights, but they’re never very long, because it’s more about plussing them with visual effects and camera moves and mimicking the energy of computer graphics. And it’s about laughs and creating a certain world and tone and energy that might make you smile. A movie that smells like thin, slightly burnt cheese pizza. I can get with that.

P.S. I didn’t notice it but apparently TALK TO ME/BRING HER BACK directors Danny and Michael Philippou have a cameo as themselves because they were previously attached to direct it. (All previously attached directors should have the option to cameo in the movies they don’t end up making.)