(2026) Street Fighter - The Latest Live Adaptation of the Hugely Popular Video Game Series

After playing in the cinemas for two days, I finally got the chance to see this one today. As I was busy in the past few days, I was also playing catch up and decided for movie marathon with this being the first. In fact I began writing this while waiting for the next film though I only finished it afterwards. Without further ado, here's more on the movie.

Brief Story Line

Ken Masters (Noah Centineo - The Recruit TV series, To All the Boys movies etc) and Ryu (Andrew Koji - Steal mini series, Bullet Train etc) were two great fighters who were best friends since childhood and both learned martial arts from their master Gouken (Don Lee aka Ma Dong-seok - The Roundup: Punishment, Train to Busan etc). After the world tournament in 1987, Ryu had gone to seclusion while Ken became more known in various advertisements and managed by his friend Dan (Andrew Schulz - Upgraded, Benders TV series etc).

Meanwhile Lord Bison (David Dastmalchian - Ant-man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Reprisal TV series etc) decided to hold the second world tournament six years later and invited the most powerful street fighters as he had his own agenda. Chun-Li (Callina Liang - Bad Genius English remake, Tell Me Everything TV series etc) who wanted to become part of Bison organization, tried to convince Ryu to join despite his reluctance. There were also few other fighters including Guile (WWE wrestler Cody Rhodes), Balrog (Curtis Jones - Expendables 4, Power TV series etc), Dhalsim (Vidyut Jammwal - Commando movies etc) who were in the tournament.

So what would happen to Ken and Ryu and what was Bison's plan? You could find out in this movie.

End of Brief Story Line

As people who grew up in the 1980s, my wife and I obviously knew about the game Street Fighter which was hugely popular then. I believe most of people in our generation have either played this game in the Arcade center or at home using whatever media available. Anyway when I heard there would be a new film based on this, I was quite excited and wanted to see in the cinema with large screen and good sound effect. Which was why I was happy that my favorite theater with such attribute have the schedule in this afternoon. Sadly though it did not have the Dolby Atmos effect, just the standard Dolby Surround. Luckily it was enough to provide the impact especially during the fighting scenes.

Now for a martial arts movie, this one did not disappoint in the amount of fights shown. Since it has duration of 2 hours including closing credits, there were plenty of them to satisfy us. The fight choreography was quite excellent with some really cool fights which included those trade marks moves of the characters that got my wife teary-eyed seeing them as she quite frequently used the classic secret movies when playing the game years ago. One thing that I felt less satisfactory was the lack of fight scenes in the tournament itself as I thought there would be more of those, even if there were additional fightings outside the ring. 

Story wise was not too impressive. It was not wonderfully written and felt rather weak, but I guess it was sufficient for this kind of movie where the focus was to please fans of the game with the multiple fights. Frankly it did not surprise me that critics were mixed on it. For us though seeing Ken, Ryu, Chun-Li and others showing off their moves brought all the nostalgic feeling. I also thought that Andrew Koji (no doubt on him), Noah Centineo, Callina Liang and the rest were quite excellent in their fight scenes. Aside from them and the ones I mentioned above, there were also other characters from the game like Vega (musician Orville Peck), Zangief (Olivier Richters - Reacher season 3 etc), Honda (Wrestler Hirooki Goto), Cammy (Mel Jarnson - Killer Whale etc), Akuma (WWE wrestler Roman Reigns) and several others. In addition, there were few cast in support role such as Eric André (Little Brother, The MItchells Vs. The Machines etc) as tournament announcer Don Sauvage and the one who surprised my wife, Jason Momoa (A Minecraft Movie, Dune etc) as Blanka.

This movie was directed by Kitao Sakurai in his third feature film after Aardvark and Bad Trips. He was also known as the writer & director for The Eric Andre Show (no wonder he was cast in here). Sakurai was credited as writer of the movie together with T. J. Fixman based on story by Dalan Musson (Captain America: Brave New World etc) and Gary Dauberman (It and its sequel). Btw, this is the third live-action adaptation movie of the game after that 1994 movie of same title (starring Jean Claude Van Damme as Guile) and 2009 Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-li (starring Kristin Kreuk). There was actually a Hong Kong action comedy film in 1993 titled Future Cops which was loosely based on the game though the characters names were changed (probably not official adaptation so it was never considered)?

In the end this was an enjoyable movie adapted from the very popular game from 1980s which should please fans. It provided so many elements from the game especially the playable characters, their appearance, fighting moves (including special ones) and the announcements. It has some humorous elements, a good enough special effects, sound effects and some fun music from late 80s-90s. The ending was certainly written to set for a sequel which really depend on the Box Office performance (hopefully it gets done, otherwise it would not be satisfying). There was a mid end credit scene that was obviously to tease of what was to come. Oh there was one other thing that I got mixed feeling, i.e. the use of animation which was fun at times but felt insufficient in certain part (like an important character who only appeared in animated form). Overall it was still fun and entertaining for me and my wife. Those who like the game should be able to enjoy it, but not sure about people who are unfamiliar with it.

Mike's movie moments rating: 3.75 out of 5 stars