Street Fighter review: great costumes and lots of fights, but a convoluted story

Street Fighter gets a lot right on the surface. The character designs look great, the cast is clearly having fun and there are a lot of fight scenes. But for both of us, the story kept piling on extra pieces until it felt convoluted, the tone shifted all over the place, and we never really cared about these characters. The film follows Ryu and Ken, who get thrown back together in combat when the mysterious Chun-Li recruits them for the next World Warrior Tournament. Behind the battle royale lies a deadly conspiracy that forces them to face off against each other and the demons of their past.

The Street Fighter trailers made us both excited to go in

When Dustin saw the trailer, he was actually getting pretty excited at some points, because the character design looks great, there are some pretty good actors in the film, and it looked like there was going to be a ton of fighting. He was a little nervous about how much campiness there would be, or which direction the filmmakers would take while trying to flesh out the story of these characters. Overall, though, the trailers and promotional materials had him excited to see it.

Wendy felt the same. The trailers looked very fun and very tongue in cheek in certain places, and it looked like a movie that understood the assignment and knew what it wanted to be. The cast seemed into it in the promotional interviews too, and she thinks each of them had so much fun playing their respective characters that the audience can really feel it. She went in expecting a really good time, some really cool fight scenes, and to see what kind of story we would get.

Ryu's darkness was a good start before the plot snowballed

Wendy's experience with Street Fighter, like she thinks most people's, is the arcade game. She knew nothing about the lore and wanted to keep it that way going in, so that if the movie created its own lore or took a detour, she wouldn't be sitting there thinking something was missing. As someone who just played the games, picking characters and button mashing, she wasn't expecting anything when it came to the lore.

With that said, she was liking where the story was going at first. Ryu and Ken are very close and trained together, and there's a sort of darkness inside Ryu tied to his abilities and to him being so strong, which is how the movie seemed to explain it. Then a character comes along who wants to harness that power and starts to conspire to see how they can, and she was fine with all of that. But then the film kept inserting more and more, and she went from enjoying a really cool storyline to watching it snowball into something that, for her at least, felt like a little bit too much.

A simpler M. Bison tournament story could have worked better

Dustin thinks that's where a lot of these movies have a hard time. They feel the need to throw in this and that, and it ends up a little convoluted and a little too complex. He feels that if the film had kept to the basic storyline of Bison holding another World Warrior Tournament and trying to recruit people into his syndicate, or brainwash and control them into it, and left it at that, it could have been a cool story. It would have shown the evolution of these characters and everyone's different motivations for joining the tournament, while staying a lot more closely related to the game.

Instead, as Wendy said, they expanded it with extra material that we didn't need, and Dustin feels it really lost track of what was so special about the game. The characters looked amazing, and the design and costumes fit the game very well, but he feels everyone was doing a caricature of what the game was. You could tell the actors had fun and knew the assignment, going in with big, over the top characters, but some of the jokes went a little too far. The jokes aren't bad, and there are some pretty funny moments worth appreciating, but at times the film went off the rails, raising the questions of how we got here and what was going on, and there were many parts that were confusing.

Street Fighter shows off its roster but wastes a lot of it

The movie definitely wanted to highlight as many characters as it could. This film is made for fans of the game, and it would have been a letdown to be told this is the Street Fighter movie but certain characters aren't in it. So there's an understandable decision to give every character anybody could play a little bit of screen time. The issue was that some of them got built up as if they were about to do something, and then they don't do anything. These characters look so cool, and it felt like a lot of them got wasted.

Even Guile, who is on screen plenty, could have been used more. The actor playing him was so much fun to watch and really dedicated himself to the role. There are some super cheesy parts, but there are also characters you can really buy into, where you feel that connection a little bit and want to see more. Then the film just dropped the ball on it.

There are a lot of Street Fighter fights, but none of them wowed us

Part of the excitement going in was all the different fight scenes, because the trailer seemed to show one fight after another. And there were a lot of fights, which is what we wanted. But none of them really wowed us, and nothing in there made us go, "Oh, that's so cool." It's cool to see the special moves, but we kind of saw all of them in the trailer already. It's like a comedy that gives away all of its funny parts in the trailer.

There were some moments that were kind of cool, but none of the fights really had good master shots. Andrew Koji had a bunch, though even there it may not be fair to call it a bunch, because there are still a lot of moments where the filmmakers had to cover for an opponent who wasn't as able. M. Bison, the big bad, also doesn't really have very many fight scenes. There are some action parts, but he's supposed to be big and menacing.

We didn't fully agree on how to describe what happened to Bison. One view was that he was turned into a little bit of a goofball. The counterpoint was that goofball wasn't the right descriptor, and that he's more of a mustache twirling villain than an imposing force to be reckoned with. That's not to say the actor playing Bison didn't do a good job; he was still really liked in the role. But compared with the game, the film took a different direction with that character.

Street Fighter's problems may lie in the script and editing

There are a lot of fun moments in this movie. The characters looked great, the fights were enjoyable, and there are a lot of fight scenes. The feeling was that the problem isn't the fight choreography, the costumes, the character design or the acting, and that it lies in the script and also the editing. It feels like either some material got cut out and stitched back together weirdly, or something else happened, but tonally it was shifting all over the place. A good chaotic crew can be great, but this was chaotic, and not in a good way.

That was really unfortunate, because we really wanted to like and connect with these characters. You play them as a child in a game, and now in 2026 there's a major production with all these great actors playing them. Yet there wasn't that feeling of caring for these characters, the way we did when we played the game. That's what was missing.

A lot of the fights also didn't really have any stakes. There should have been something to make the fights themselves feel a little more important, instead of feeling like they were thrown in because it would be cool at that moment. There were some cool parts in the fights, but nothing that made us care about them. A lot of the story, a lot of the fights and a lot of the characterizations kind of fell flat.

The 2D animated scenes were really enjoyable

One last thing worth mentioning: the movie also uses 2D animation in a kind of anime or manga style for some flashbacks and exposition scenes, and it was actually really enjoyable. If they ever decide to do a Street Fighter animated series or film in that style, that would be a 100% watch.

There actually are multiple Street Fighter anime projects already, going back to the late '90s, and they're definitely worth a look.

Our verdicts: a pass, and wait to watch at home for fans

On one side, the trailers were a lot of fun, and the hope was just to have fun with the movie, watch the fights and enjoy these characters, with nothing super dramatic needed. But the storyline kept being added to until it was really convoluted, and the tone was all over the place. Whether that's a script problem or an editing problem is hard to say; it could be both. The actors still look like they had a good time, and every single person in this movie is so buff and so in shape, with abs on top of abs. The work they put into this was remarkable. There was fun to be had in some parts, but overall this movie just didn't land on this side.

On the other side, there's love for these characters, and memories of playing the game a ton in the arcades and waiting for it to come out on the Super Nintendo. Getting it the day it came out was a hassle, with brothers having to wait outside to get the game, and then playing it until it melted. Even so, there was no feeling for these characters on screen and no real connection to the fights, though some were fun, and the whole thing was way too convoluted.

That gave two ratings. If you're not a game fan and not into playing fighting games like Street Fighter, it's not for you. If you are into them, wait for it to come out on home subscription services, because it doesn't seem worth the money to see in theaters.

Would you see Street Fighter in a theater, or wait to catch it at home?