Street Fighter (2026) Review - The Best of Three Bad Adaptations
The nicest thing I can say about Kitao Sakurai’s Street Fighter is that it is by far the best of what are now three decidedly bad theatrically-released live-action adaptations of the iconic video game. It’s a low bar, and it has been low for a long time. The 1994 film inexplicably made Guile its hero and seemed to have little idea who anyone else was. The second attempt in 2009 turned its focus to Chun-Li and similarly failed on just about every level. Neither seemed to grasp what people loved about the game in the first place. This new version at least understands the assignment. It embraces the source material wholeheartedly, down to the theme songs, the costumes, the ridiculous anime-inspired martial arts, and the simple matter of whom the story should be about.
That last point matters more than it sounds. The film’s focus is the bond between Ryu, played by Andrew Koji, and Ken, played by Noah Centineo. They are adoptive brothers who drifted apart after the death of their master. That death turns out to hinge on a dark power inside Ryu, one that M. Bison, played by David Dastmalchian, who organizes the World Warrior tournament, secretly hopes to harness. This is the right spine for the story. The games have always been about their disciplined protagonist Ryu, as well as Ken, his brash and somewhat lost brother, and a movie that puts the two of them at the center is a movie that has bothered to read the manual.
Sakurai, who made the comedy Bad Trip, also has the right instinct about tone. The arcade sensibility is juvenile, loud, and unembarrassed, and the film honors it. Some of the backstory is delivered in animated form, a neat structural trick that lets the movie sketch its lore and slip in easter eggs without stopping the action to explain itself. It is a clever way to flesh out a universe, and it is the most inventive thing the film does.
The cast, to its credit, knows what kind of movie it is in. They lean into the caricature and the theatrics, and I admire the discipline of that choice. Koji and Centineo offer solid performances as the film’s leads, and Dastmalchian expertly gives the film some of its menace. Bison has to be a presence more than a person, and he plays him with the right amount of operatic malice. When the film lets him loom, it comes closest to the camp grandeur the franchise’s main antagonist deserves.
But of course, the fights themselves are the centerpiece, and the film knows it. They are punchy, loud, and built to show off the particular personalities of each fighter, which is exactly what the intended audience for this film is likely hoping for. When one is staged well, the movie offers the genuine pleasure of watching a favorite move arrive on a giant screen exactly as you remember it.
And yet, that same virtue is also a weakness. The film tries to give every fighter a showdown, and by the end it is flitting from one bout to the next so quickly that it becomes exhausting and the movie’s priorities blur. I never lost my way in the fighting, but all sense of character motivation was quickly becoming lost from one moment to the next as a script that began with a sturdy emotional premise buckled under the weight of its own roster. The business with Ryu’s dark power and Ken’s estrangement, which should be the engine, gets crowded out by characters who have to be introduced, serviced, and moved along, and by the closing stretch, I had essentially given up on even trying to understand what their emotional arcs had been.
That is the central problem with this film. A viewer who knows the games will happily check off their list of favorite characters and catchphrases and call out the moves. Even one of the most memorable scenes from 1994’s Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie gets a tongue-in-cheek reference. But a viewer who isn’t already familiar with this franchise may feel as though they have wandered into the middle of someone else’s inside joke as the story quickly becomes incoherent.
The people who made this film obviously love the game. They love the colors and the swagger and the silly names. That affection comes through the clutter, and it counts for something. It is the difference between this film and the two that came before it, which seemed to have been made by people who had read a summary.
So I find myself in the unusual position of recommending a movie that I cannot quite call good. If you grew up with the games, and you can forgive a plot that never fully coheres, you may have a perfectly fine time. It will not be a great movie, and probably not even a good one, but it will be fun in the way a rowdy night at the arcade used to be fun, loud and frantic and not especially thoughtful. But if you’ve never played the games, then this one probably isn’t for you. For what it’s worth, I do hope that Sakurai gets the chance to finish the story he has started here, as it’s clearly intended as the first film in a series, because if nothing else, this misfire has style.
There is a lesson in that. The best of three bad adaptations is the one that at least seems to have cared. At this rate, the next one might even be good.