My hopes weren’t high when I first heard Paramount Pictures had plans to attempt another film adaptation of the Street Fighter game franchise. That changed when I saw the first trailer, which suggested the movie would be as gloriously over the top as the games. The finished film lived up to the hype, while still making a lot of the same mistakes as the earlier Street Fighter movies.

For those who haven’t played the Street Fighter games, there isn’t much in the way of story. There is lore, centered around the backstories and relationships of the many characters. The characters themselves are some of the most eclectic to be found in any fictional work, mashing-up, honoring, and parodying various martial arts cliches. And yet the actual gameplay – until Street Fighter 6 added in world exploration and role-playing elements – largely consisted of two characters attempting to beat each other senseless. This also sums up most of the film’s action sequences, as the aforementioned lore goes largely unexplained.

However, the movie sticks firmly to the history of the games, with the opening flashback to 1987 (rendered in an appropriate anime style) detailing the events of the first game and the first World Warrior tournament. It was here that the Japanese Ryu (Andrew Koji) and American Ken (Noah Centineo) fought to prove themselves. Ultimately, Ryu won the championship, but only by tapping into the a negative energy – the Dark Hadou. This, in turn, attracted the attention of the twisted deity Akuma (Joe “Roman Reigns” Anoa’i) who killed Ryu and Ken’s master in an attempt to further lure Ryu down the path of darkness. This drove a wedge between the two friends and brothers in arms.

Six years later, Ryu has retreated into himself and lives a humble life running a soup stand. Ken, by contrast, has fallen into a decadent life as a celebrity fighter who has become viewed as a joke by the martial arts orthodoxy. Both are sought out by a woman named Chun Li (Callina Liang) who is gathering warriors to fight in a second World Warrior tournament. This is being organized by Lord M. Bison (David Dastmalchian) master of the Shadaloo crime syndicate. Bison seeks to tap the energy of the world’s greatest fighters – what he calls “psycho-power” to trigger his own superhuman abilities. However, unbeknownst to him, his servant Chun Li is plotting revenge against him for the murder of her father. This sets up multiple conflicts, as two brothers reunite and reconcile to take on twin threats, with the help of their friends.

There is some irony that the 2026 Street Fighter is deeply focused on Ken and Ryu to the detriment of the rest of the ensemble. The first Street Fighter movie in 1994 infamously reduced the role of the flagship characters to comic relief, reworking them into con men forced to become spies. Their roles here are true to the comics and Koji and Centineo play them well. There is honest ethos in both their conflicts, with Ryu fearing the monster he might become and Ken fearing he’ll never match his brother or be able to save him from himself. Unfortunately, most of the rest of the classic Street Fighter Heroes are reduced to supporting roles at best and glorified cameos at worst.

Chun Li suffers the most in this regard. Callina Liang does a fantastic job with what she is given, but despite the film’s advertising placing Chul Li alongside Ken and Ryu her story gets much less screen time. She is also the subject of the same fetishization that has always plagued the character, exemplified through a creepy coworker based on every incel cliche Hollywood has to offer. Yet she is still treated better than Mel Jarnson as Cammy. Most of Cammy’s scenes were featured in the trailers, with the exception of a scene in which Eric Andre (who plays news commentator Don Sauvage) tries to kiss and lick her boots after being threatened with torture.

This sort of thing might have worked if the movie leaned into the absurdity of its premise. Unfortunately, it doesn’t do this consistently and often does it with the wrong characters. Cammy is not the serious driven character she is in the games, and Cody Rhodes plays Guile as a comic figure. Perhaps the strangest choice is the script treating M. Bison as more of a tech bro than a crime boss or dictator. This may be because they had concerns about David Dastmalchian being able to play the role with a menacing edge. Instead, he comes off as aloof and dismissive as if thinking that dealing with this nonsense is beneath him. (Bison, that is. Not Dastmalchain)

There is also Jason Momoa’s appearance as Blanka, which seems sure to inspire a new Razzie’s category for Most Pointless Guest Appearance, just so they can nominate Momoa for his performance here and his role as Lobo in Supergirl. Momoa does alright in the action scenes, but it just gets cringe-inducingly weird when he tries to bond with Ryu while talking about his missing mother.

Sadly, Street Fighter probably will not get the sequel that so many of its final scenes are devoted to setting-up. It is true to the spirit of the games and captures the aesthetic well. Unfortunately, the substance is not explored well enough to justify the abundant style.