If we’ve spent any amount of time talking about movies, you probably know that Joe Dante’s Gremlins 2: The New Batch is a favorite of mine. It’s not what most people would describe as a “good” movie: it’s weird, it’s all over the place, it openly makes fun of the original film and it’s probably a little too ambitious for its own good. But I love it for all those reasons, and your opinion of that movie tells me almost everything I need to know about you as a movie fan. If “New York, New York” makes you think of a floppy-eared monster in glasses singing his heart out instead of New Year’s Eve, you’re my kind of person.
Street Fighter is a similar goofball litmus test.
Now, in terms of live-action adaptations of Capcom’s iconic fighting game series, Kitao Sakurai’s Street Fighter is the best, no question. The bar is pretty low, if we’re being honest—the 1994 film starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and Raul Julia has been a textbook example of how not to adapt video games for more than three decades now, and 2009’s Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li was, well, technically a motion picture. This one is closer to the over-the-top action and outright bizarre storytelling of the video games, although I’m sure the campy tone will turn off the most die-hard fans of the source material.
Bizarre is the operative term in this movie. From Jason Momoa’s Blanka remarking that his armpits smell like hot dogs to David Dastmalchian’s M. Bison chowing down on snails – shells and all – this is a movie that will be memed into oblivion. Oh, and did I mention that virtually every character is flirting with every other character in nearly every scene of this thing? Cody Rhodes’ Guile does this perhaps most of all, and I nearly spit out my drink a few times as a result. Like I said, this is camp with the volume turned way up. This film beats subtext into the ground until only text remains, and it’s a lot funnier than you might expect.
Yes, there’s a story in here somewhere. In 1993, Ryu (Andrew Koji) is drawn back into the World Warrior Tournament six years after winning its previous edition. There, he encounters his old best friend Ken Masters (Noah Centineo) and Ken’s manager Dan Hibiki (Andrew Schulz), but the reunion is complicated by a dark force from Ryu’s past (Roman Reigns’ Akuma) and a plot by M. Bison to weaponize Ryu’s unique abilities. Meanwhile, Interpol agent Chun-Li (Callina Liang) is trying to infiltrate Bison’s organization, which includes the likes of Balrog (Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson), Vega (Orville Peck) and Cammy (Mel Jarnson), who regrettably never gets a one-on-one fight with Chun-Li despite the build-up to one, but I suppose that’s being saved for the sequel.
Indeed, this movie ends on a cliffhanger and the story doesn’t necessarily resolve in a satisfying way. But it would also be downright criminal if we didn’t get a Street Fighter II in cinemas – that’s the game that turned the franchise into a phenomenon, after all.
The fight scenes are fun and well-choreographed, even when the film pretty much abandons the tournament concept during the third act. Some encounters, like Guile vs. Vega in the first round of the bracket, occur offscreen, but I can’t say I didn’t enjoy all the battles we actually got to see.
The film surprisingly features some beautifully animated flashback sequences, harkening back to the anime aesthetic of this series and, of course, the fan-favorite Street Fighter II animated film from 1994. If, for whatever reason, a sequel ultimately isn’t in the cards, I would absolutely love to see the story continue in animated form. Heck, even if there is a sequel, I’m game for a slick, modern Street Fighter anime.
We’ve gotta talk about the needle drops, though. There are some great selections on this soundtrack, including The Offspring’s “Come Out and Play” during a big sequence toward the end, but I was surprisingly bummed that 4 Non Blondes’ “What’s Up?” played such a huge part in the film, namely because Ken and Ryu are shown singing it in flashbacks several years before its 1993 release. Ken also uses Baha Men’s “Who Let the Dogs Out” as his walkout music seven years too early. These are nitpicks, sure, but they’re distracting for those of us who were around at the time.
If you’ve never had an affinity for the video game series or if the trailer annoyed you, I probably wouldn’t recommend seeing Street Fighter – or I’d at least advise you to wait for streaming. For everyone else, grab a handful of quarters and step on up – here comes a new challenger.
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