Now Showing: Street Fighter (2026)
GeorgieBoysAXE
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.
