We wanted to take a different approach and have multiple people review the October 16, 2026 release of the film Street Fighter directed by Kitao Sakurai.
We all independently scored this film without anyone knowing how the other people scored it, as we all watched it at different times and at different locations, so far.
Review by Justin AdaptiveTrigger Gordon
I’m not going to mince words here — the Street Fighter movie was terrible.
For the most part, it follows Ryu and Ken as the main characters, but Ken is treated like a complete joke for some reason. Most of the other characters are… just there.
Even knowing the lore of Street Fighter from the games, I honestly had a pretty difficult time keeping up with what was happening a lot of the time because the movie kept cutting to different scenes. I can’t imagine what watching this movie as someone who doesn’t even know Street Fighter would be like.
To be fair, there were a few parts that I liked. The flashback animations were cool and felt very “Street Fighter.”
Some of the choreography was good, and it felt like they did a good job of capturing how a lot of the fighters fight one another (example: Balrog hits hard and fights dirty).
Also got a good kick out of some of the cameos that were in the movie. I won’t spoil who appears in the movie, but if you know the fighting game community, you might recognize a few faces.
However, everything else about the movie just felt so nonsensical, and it felt like some characters were portrayed entirely differently from how they are in the games, though I’ll avoid spoiling specifics.
It also just seemed like the producers were trying to do too many different things at once. At one point, I found myself wondering if I was watching Street Fighter or an episode of Dragon Ball Z.
I was debating between giving the movie a 4.0 or 5.0 out of 10.0, so I’ll just go in between and give it a 4.5 out of 10.0. Yeah, it was that bad to me.
I can’t recommend this one, and I’m actually surprised to say that I enjoyed the most recent Mortal Kombat movie over it (which I also thought was bad, but it was at least easier to keep up with than this film).
Score: 4.5 / 10
Review by Jon Catalyst Grey
This is a mostly bad film, but has some fun highlights and a strong performance by Noah Centineo’s Ken. It lacks the precision and polish that would otherwise make its pieces come together to make a stronger film, and the ending freaking sucks.
Too much of the CGI sucks as well, partly because you hired great performers like Roman Reigns, and you hid their movements in a bunch of CGI, and one the main reasons we want to see him in that role is to see the actions and movements he brings to Akuma, not just what your computers can render. It is far too difficult to see anything meaningful in fight scenes, because they’re either too dark or too much CGI, and not super well executed.
In a film called ‘Street Fighter’, you better nail the fight scenes.
M. Bison is terrible in this film, as he was never even remotely close to believable as Bison, nor did he offer up things that truly made him feel intimidating as a villain. This an extremely poor choice for an actor for a live action Street Fighter film, especially when we’ve had someone like Raul Julia in this role before. I dropped my score of this movie several points because of Dastmalchian’s performance. The writing for Bison is fine, but the performance leaves much to be desired and the film wanting in a main villain which is something you do not want to have happen.
However, other people turning in wonderful performances include Eric Andre as Don Sauvage, Andrew Schulz as Dan, Cody Rhodes as Guile, and Mel Jarnson as Cammy. They bring to life some genuinely funny dialogue that’s creatively written, plus some actual chemistry between the actors to boot. There’s some fun stuff here.
Also, the hand-drawn 90s style animation during flashback sequences are stellar, and I would definitely watch a full length movie animated by Titmouse and fully written by Capcom.
Capcom somehow made the 1994 film a big time profit for them, and it sure would have been nice to have an extra 30 minutes of this movie to have a real ending, but there’s talk of a sequel.
The audience I saw this with filled up about half of the theater by the time the credits rolled. We watched it at prime time on the evening of its release date. Genuine laughter came at points from most of the crowd, but several people said that this wasn’t a very good film.
Score: 4.9 / 10
Review by Olivia y05h1eggz Richman
Being in the FGC bubble has been sorta tricky to navigate when it comes to the Street Fighter movie. On my end, it seemed like everyone on earth was anticipating this movie. But when I went to buy tickets a week in advance, only two other seats were taken. When moviegoers in Los Angeles want to see a movie, they book tickets months in advance. Huh. Maybe the Street Fighter movie wasn’t actually a big deal after all.
I went to the Street Fighter movie opening night, Thursday, October 15. It ended up being packed for my Screen X viewing, which was a huge relief. The opening night crowd at Burbank 16 is way more animated. They’ll laugh at things that aren’t funny, scream at things that aren’t scary, and apparently whistle like a horny construction worker every time Chun-Li appears. I figured it would make the movie feel a lot more engaging, even if it ended up sucking.
And it did.
Again, it was tough being from the FGC. Seeing familiar characters and inside jokes can really cloud your judgment of a film. Going from seeing MenaRD using Blanka on the main stage at Evo to seeing Blanka appear on the big screen definitely gave me some feels. But I quickly remembered the “hey, I know that guy” clapping during those terrible Marvel films and snapped out of it.
Street Fighter tried to feel like a cheesy 90s B-list film, but it lacked the authenticity and charm to pull it off. I mean, this is a film with an $82 million budget, so it was quite manufactured. Instead, we were left with extremely corny jokes that were almost pain-inducing if you get second-hand embarrassment like me, over-the-top fetishization of Chun-Li that felt extremely outdated and disappointing, and goofy tricks instead of straight-up fighting action scenes.
There were glimmers of hope with the hand-drawn animation and callbacks to the game’s stages, moves, and lore. But it just didn’t feel like the film truly cared about these characters or their world. They felt like caricatures of Street Fighter’s iconic roster, stuffing in as many punchlines and easter eggs as they could rather than really building anyone up. The main backstory, shown through animation, was the only part that really had me feeling anything other than bored.
Having Chun-Li and Cammy exist just to suck up to male characters, cry a lot, and get zoomed-in ass shots felt so disappointing. The Chun-Li actress worked her ass off to get mega-thighs just to have a shower scene, not to be in any of the impactful fights. It felt so outdated to have female characters be this useless and sidelined, especially ones as powerful as Chun-Li. She got a few redeeming moments, but it was hard to take her feminist lines seriously when the audience was supposed to sexualize her along with all the other creepy men in the movie.
The fight scenes were the true travesty, so maybe Chun-Li is lucky she wasn’t in them. When a movie is focused on fighting, you want to see still shots of played-out stunt and fight choreography. Instead, we got the usual Hollywood shakiness and zoominess, making it impossible to really see any fights play out. Rather than any back-and-forth action as we’d get in a real Street Fighter match, we’d get one silly moment, like a nut punch or bare bottom smack, or one dramatic character-inspired move. After that, the characters would just argue, disperse, or reset to pull one more goofy stunt. In a movie meant to be about a fighting game, we didn’t get any exciting, meaningful, or choreographed fights.
That had me thinking: Why am I even sitting through these bad jokes, outdated gimmicks, and cringy butt shots? I’m not even getting any Street Fighter moments.
If you want dumb, you got it. But it’s manufactured to be dumb, not genuine silliness. And, of course, the end is a cliffhanger for a second one. This isn’t a passion project. It’s another money grab as Hollywood keeps insisting on making horrible game adaptations, remakes, sequels, and spin-offs rather than anything with soul, heart, or talent.
I don’t think we will be getting any new players after all.
Score: 4 / 10
