Street Fighter 2026 Movie Review

 

I'm a big Street Fighter fan. Street Fighter II Champion Edition was the first fighting game I ever played. I have not played all of the Street Fighter games as in the 90s there were a ton, but I have put a lot of time in Street Fighter IV specifically. Street Fighter has had a lot of adaptations from the 94 movie to comics, manga, anime, and anime films. I in particular remember watching the live action movie from the 90s and  a little later the anime film. I was a child when both of those came out but the 94 movie was cheesy and represented the time it was in. Video game movies were corny, didn't care about being faithful to the source material and were often bad, but as a kid I didn't notice  those things and now we have a new official theatrical live action movie for Street Fighter.

When this was announced I was very skeptical. The casting announcement sounded much like a joke similar to the casting for the Super Mario movie, but I shifted my mindset to realizing that this was just going to be a straight up comedy. As I usually do I didn't watch any trailers beforehand and went in with low expectations. Unfortunately Street Fighter 2026 is not that good even with my lowered expectations.

 

The animated segments are the best part of this movie.

 

Street Fighter 2026 starts off strong however with an animated sequence detailing Ken and Ryu's backstory at the first World Warrior tournament. The animation is clean and anime-esque. The tone is appropriately serious and cool. When that ends we are introduced to Ken and what leads up to the plot of the film which is that M. Bison is looking to siphon enough energy from a powerful warrior because he actually we don't know what he plans to do with it once he gets it. Chun-Li mentions to her Interpol coworker that M. Bison plans on using a weapon but we don't see anything like that. His scenes just indicate he wants to steal energy to add to his own body but never says what he plans on doing. Is it world domination, does he just want to flex his power? We don't know. But M. Bison sets up a new World Warrior tournament to draw out Ryu so he can steal his power as he saw Ryu tap into the Satsui no Hado from the first tournament six years ago. Since the first tournament Ken has been living his life as an entertainer with Dan as his manager, but he doesn't feel like his life has totally been fulfilled as some people do mock him now and this tournament is way to reclaim himself.

 

Callina Liang does a great job as Chun-Li.

 

As a setup this works fine, it's just that there are a bunch of tonal shifts and performances that ruins the film. Most of the movie want to work like a comedy but the jokes don't land. The type of humor is particularly low brow and cliche. Eric Andre is just annoying, Dan is weirdly used here and not even a joke in the same way he is in the video games. I may have laughed at one joke the whole movie. But this movie isn't just a straight up comedy it's also serious as well. Everything with Chun-Li and M. Bison are played straight and serious. Chun-Li is played by Callina Liang and she does a good job. She outperforms everyone in this movie. You can feel the anguish in her voice when she's hurt and the rage in her face when she's livid. David Dastmalchain plays M. Bison in this film and I think he was horribly miscast. David is playing the powerful and threatening version that is from the video games but he is nowhere near threatening. He comes across weird and awkward. I'm familiar with this actor in other movies like The Suicide Squad where his weirdness and awkwardness works for those characters but here it does not. It feels like he was cast for fanservice. David Dastmalchain looks like Raul Julia who played the same role in the original 1994 movie but actual fanservice would've been casting someone who fit the role. While Raul Julia wasn't an accurate portrayal of Bison at least he had charisma in the role. M. Bison is supposed to be a vicious, manipulating, and powerful dictator but David's portrayal is none of that and bogs the movie down.

 

Ryu and Ken's relationship is also played serious mostly too but it also gets comedic in weird ways. I think the Ken actor is serviceable, it's just the material given here is subpar. The tonal shifts in the writing from being comedic where none of the jokes land to being dramatic is off-putting and hurts the film. Street Fighter 2026 is faithful to the source material at least. It is accurate in Ryu and Ken's dynamic and backstory but that's the bare minimum for a video game adaptation. I feel that gamers have been so used to video game adaptations being so far off from the source material that now we're finally getting movies that actually look like the games that's enough, but sorry that's not enough for me. It needs substance as well. Street Fighter 2026 also isn't even a complete movie. The plot that's set up at the beginning of the movie isn't resolved and makes the film feel like just setup for a sequel bait. 

Chun-Li versus one of Bison's dolls.

As a fighting game adaptation the fighting choreography was so so. I wasn't expecting anything on the level of an actual martial arts movie, but I found myself not caring much for most of them. I found the Ryu and Ken fight to be the best partially because it had an emotional build up for it but was underwhelmed with pretty much everything else especially with Chun-Li's since Chun-Li is my favorite of the original Street Fighter II cast. She had some moments though that were cut too short. I mentioned fanservice earlier and there are Easter Eggs for fans to look out for and there's a scene in the movie that has to be a reference to the first anime movie from the 90s. It feels out of place however. There's also a line referencing the original movie that's quoted a lot now and I saw it coming immediately as it was happening and it made me want to roll my eyes. 

The animated scenes were so good I think Street Fighter would've been better off as a full length animated film as the writing and choreography was better in those scenes. Street Fighter 2026 felt more concerned about referencing the source material than being a good movie. On the other hand I enjoyed the Super Mario Galaxy movie and it does have those same issues. I really felt that I shouldn't haven't liked the movie but the difference there is that the Super Mario Galaxy knew what it wanted to be throughout the whole movie. It was an adventurous comedy. The Street Fighter movie is three things at once and only one of those things works. After finding out that there were no press screenings it makes sense. It's a shame that there is still no great video game movie yet. Things are getting better but only slightly.

 5.5/10