Street Fighter (2026) Review

 

We got a brand new live-action Street Fighter movie. Will this be the first ever good one or is it gonna be a stinker?

Street Fighter (2026) is a martial arts film based on the iconic Capcom video game series of the same name, and the third live-action adaptation. It's produced by Legendary Pictures with Paramount Pictures acting as thr distributor. Kitao Sakurai directed and wrote the screenplay with T.J. Fixman, while the story was written by Dalan Musson and Gary Dauberman.

The story is, Chun-Li has searched and found both Ryu & Ken and recruits them to the second World Warrior tournament. But what the two don't know is the tournament is a set up by the evil dictator M. Bison so he can steal Ryu's powers.

Initial Reaction

Originally I was skeptical about this movie. The last two Street Fighter movies weren't exactly something to write home about. Then I saw the trailers for this and it seemed like it could be some fun popcorn entertainment. So I decided to give this one its fighting chance.

Cons

The only thing I didn't like about the movie was the humor. I laughed like once throughout the entire movie, everything else was either meh or just plain bad. It doesn't help that at one point the filmmakers want this to be serious then a couple scenes later wants to be funny. I mean it'll give the humor some credit, it didn't go for meta jokes. I think the closest we got was Cammy talking about people loving Chun-Li's thighs and not seeing the big deal. But that was more smack talk than a joke.

Middle Ground

The biggest mix bag is the story. Characters such as Ryu, Ken, and Chun-Li all have stories that's about regret, not feeling good enough, and revenge. So they got some sort of development going on. The rest of the characters not so much. M. Bison is just doing standard villain stuff, which can be kinda fun but nothing that's really gonna blow you away. But all of the other characters such as Guile, Vega, Cammy, etc. are barely used or might as well have been cameos. Now don't get the wrong idea I wasn't expecting every single character to have a deeper story, but if you're gonna use some fan favorites at least give them bigger supporting roles instead of they're here one moment, gone the next, and pop up later. But the biggest letdown was the tournament. Despite being the main reason why a majority of our characters are here it's not used very much. We get maybe two or three tournament fights while the others happen off-screen or a character forfeits with no dramatic tension whatsoever.

Pros

The biggest praise I can give this is, it actually looks and feels like a Street Fighter! The movie doesn't shy away from more fantastical elements of the source material. We get their fighting styles, their special attacks, and the actors and actresses actually look like the characters. This isn't the '94 movie, where the fantastical elements are barely there. And it isn't like Legend of Chun-Li, where the filmmakers are trying to make everything grounded. The movie fully embraces what makes Street Fighter, Street Fighter.

This is deeply flawed video game movie, but at the same time it wasn't terrible or boring.

My final rating is, a low Okay.

That'll wrap things up. Come back on Monday, Oct 19th, for a more spooky edition of Fan Films Mondays. Until then, enjoy the rest of your day.