Y’all, I know this is a weird way to start my thoughts on the new Street Fighter movie, but hear me out: there’s a connecting thread here—I did not like The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, like, at all.
That sentiment only got stronger on a rewatch, especially when I compare it to Illumination’s first pedestrian take on Nintendo’s flagship Plumber. I’m not so deluded as to discount that I may have just been a dweeby curmudgeon about DreamWorks’ production because hey, I’m not really the target audience for the movie—kids are the demographic here. So, through that lens, yeah, 2023’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie was, at its worst, a harmless romp with a flimsy origin story, paraded with a huge production budget, and propped up by a bunch of talented voice actors and Chris Pratt.
The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is a whole different stool of shit, though, for what I have affectionately coined to be Super Mario Brainrot ™; the movie moves at an erratic pace to mask its lack of a compelling story with nonstop spectacle of back-to-back action sequences or glamor shots that are more concerned with Easter eggs and references—and none of it is endearing—it’s just hollow and corporate.
Street Fighter (2026) brought up a lot of those same feelings, only somehow worse. Some of the references are deep-cut footnotes buried inside another Easter egg, like some weird Inception-ass nonsense where you need Joseph Gordon-Levitt to give you the kick back to reality, where things are organic and not so forced that it hurts. Street Fighter (2026) isn’t just bad fan service that’s also hollow and corporate like The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is—it’s way more cringe than I had bargained for, and unlike the second Nintendo and Illumination joint, this film IS aimed at me—I AM the demographic. As such, I’m way more comfortable talking about how my overall experience with the film turned out to be a few kernels of fun sandwiched between a whole lot of poop from a butt.
I guess I should be more specific: there were definitely parts of this movie where I was entertained, and I want to give credit where it's due, so I'll start there and then gradually unravel where it all went wrong for me.
In terms of style, specifically the frenetic neon color-grading, visually loud transitions, and smooth cinematography, the production efforts behind Street Fighter (2026)’s presentation are on point, at least most of the time. The setting changes do bring about a weird whiplash between scenes where lighting tones are suddenly more natural, and the world is far less surreal than the other environments. While I totally get that not every backdrop should be some bombastic stage like the iconic fighting game, the pacing between these shifts could’ve used some more polish in the cutting room. One aspect that I did find surprisingly enjoyable is the animated sequences that were peppered throughout the movie anytime there was exposition on a Character’s backstory or summary of a significant incident of the past, and not only did it utilize fundamentals from drawn media in the Street Fighter franchise like the Udon Comics and 1994 animated movie from Group TAC Co., Ltd., it also did so while still capturing the likenesses of the actors playing their 
respective characters, and really worked to harmonize with the already slick style of Street Fighter (2026) even more. The only instances where I think the special effects were bad in this film were what they did with Jason Momoa’s Blanka, because boy howdy, that CG was ROUGH to take in anytime he wasn’t performing a fast maneuver. Like, imagine all of the oof you whispered under your breath from those particularly infamous moments from Superhero flicks like Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and The Flash, and kick it up a half-notch when poor "Jimmy" Blanka starts dialoguing—it's such an assy display of effects for a movie with an $82,000,000 production budget, and his poor character, ack, I'll get to that in a bit.
But just as these elements of the film impressed me, the lack of substance behind the bells and whistles is what really made the whole thing fall apart; I feel like the experience was getting hyped up for a sizzle reel of this exciting new Angus-beef burger that sadly ends up being one of the most disappointing slabs of damp meat between two soggy buns that most decent fast-food burger joints would be mortified to have served to someone. I can’t tell you how crazy accurate that analogy is for describing the feelings I had from watching the Street Fighter (2026) trailer to reaching the credits on the actual film. For as good as everything looked, it didn’t take long to show that production had little more going on beyond the visuals.
So, the fight sequences, you know, the MAIN meat of the show—there were just SO many weird decisions here that I think hurt the appeal of the movie that’s based on a game centered around a Martial Arts tournament. Granted, that same Martial Arts tournament features a green beast who fights in gravity-defying capoeira and can electrocute you at a moment’s notice; I get that shit’s weird and larger-than-life, so the special effect use of CG or wires was expected when it comes to the more physics-defying techniques of Bison’s Psycho Crusher or Ryu’s Tatsumaki SenPUGH-KANG (sorry, I couldn’t help myself.) Despite that, I was kind of expecting there to be real exchanges, like, actual trades between the fighters where they’re throwing hands; like, the actor who plays Ryu, Andrew Koji, the man legitimately knows how to fight, and has an incredible resume of fight choreography under his belt (see Boy Kills World or Warrior), and yet it doesn’t feel like it gets to show it off for very long. A few exchanges here and there, some sharp moves there, and our mans’ are already spin-kicking through the help of Hollywood’s magic floaty wire, or charging up a Hadoken in a 30-second blue screen sequence. I know this may seem like nitpicking, but the film is starved of the real martial arts the franchise still emphasizes beneath all the embellished spectacle. The best fight scene honestly belongs to Callina Liang's take on Chun-Li, who shows off an incredible bout that’s easily one of the slickest displays of martial arts in the movie, and thank goodness that she’s the one to have that moment because this production has totally done the character dirty in ways I didn’t think were possible in 2026, and what leads me to my next point—the characterization of these iconic characters feels so diluted in Street Fighter (2026).
Despite the mostly stellar casting choices, everyone is either written and directed with a superficial understanding of the character or given barely any screen time at all. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I think it’s safe to say a chunk of everyone’s lines are literal win quotes or catchphrases taken from the games themselves, not much more in between. There are a lot of weird personality choices made for Ryu to justify the uneasy dynamic between him and Ken that doesn’t play out as well as the film would have you think it does; Cammy's main personality trait is yelling, Guile is a weird reply guy, Vega spends most of the time aura-farming without much else, and Chun Li is uncomfortably fetishized by nearly everyone she comes into contact with—I could go on and on. In fact, maybe I will—Zangief is there for a hotdog and handshake, and then he’s gone before you know it; Dan has one fight scene because I think Andrew Schulz likely has a clause in his agreement where if he takes more than one bump than he's contractually allowed to ad-lib a slur into the script, and, ugh, ok—I’ll definitely stop there. For every moment I enjoyed, like E. Honda’s scene or Ken’s fights in the World Warrior Tournament, I got face-blasted with some of the lamest Spike TV-grade humor the movie could napalm in my direction, and like—it kinda sucked. Just to be clear, I definitely came into the movie expecting some cornball goofing; the trailer adequately prepared me for that, but I honestly wasn’t expecting some sleaze ball shit as often as I got it, complete with multiple foot fetish scenes and everything (yeah, you read that right.) The story doesn’t even trust itself to make good on the angles it cast out, as the lines are seemingly hooked with sequel bait, with many of the conflicts seemingly steering toward red-herring conclusions that cut the film’s third act off at the knees and zoom right into a cliffhanger ending.
I’m sure we’ll get the sequel, and I’m sure it’ll make up for a lot of the issues I had with the movie, but I don’t know it’ll be enough to give a potential future Street Fighter II movie the chance to annoy me again. Say what you will about Street Fighter (1994), but at least it had a personality beyond surface-level references. Yeah, it’s still not amazing, but there’s something about it that has a little more character than the modern movie we have now 32 years later. Raul Julia’s Bison is definitely better than David Dastmalchian’s cringey-ass take on the Dictator, and that’s because we got moments where that movie Bison attempted to negotiate an arms deal with Sagat by leveraging fake currency with his face on it, complete with a fake exchange rate he planned to extort from England—that moment stuck with me. After all, the guy behind the Running Man and Die Hard knew how to build a character! Street Fighter (2026) hardly has any of these moments because the movie never stops to breathe long enough to show me where it’s going or why—it just opts to move at the pace of a TikTok feed instead, delivering clippable sequences like it’s predetermined to be shot for a short or a reel online. It’s all composed of base-level simulacra that doesn’t dig far beneath the surface of the subject matter it's slopping out. I wish I could go into more detail, but I’m keeping it vague in case you still want to throw away $25 at the silver screen for this mess.
Just wait for it to hit streaming, and even then, don’t do it with bated breath—because Street Fighter has thankfully gotten a bunch of cool media adaptations that you can watch that are way cooler than this. Hell, did you know there’s this insane Jackie Chan movie called City Hunter where, in part of the movie, he somehow gets warped into a Street Fighter II Arcade cabinet and has to face off with Ken while being dressed like Chun Li? Yeah, that shit is over 100 times better than Street Fighter (2026), and I can absolutely promise you that.