Street Fighter (2026) review: Male friendships are complicated

Raul Julia would be proud.

Street Fighter has never had much in the way of a story. Oodles of lore, yes, but that’s not the same thing as storytelling. By the time Capcom embraced story-based modes in the SF games, other fighting franchises, namely Tekken and Mortal Kombat, had established themselves as series where players could get as immersed in an ongoing saga as they could learning move lists and frame data.

Street Fighter movies have been a different beast. The 1994 live-action film was dumb fun (a so-bad-it’s-good classic), but the animated films took what sparse information Capcom had published about its characters and fleshed them out. In 2026, for the first time, a live-action Street Fighter movie does the franchise justice.

Here comes a new challenger

If you’ve seen any of the trailers for Street Fighter, you know that the base cast of SFII: World Warriors and its upgrades are well-represented here. It’s missing a few faces, notably Dee Jay, T. Hawk, and Fei Long, but if you’re a fan of SFII: Champion Edition’s characters, you won’t be disappointed, even if some don’t get as much screen time as others.

Most of the Street Fighter II-era lore makes the jump to the big screen, too. Ryu’s journey to be the best fighter on the planet, Ken’s rivalry with his brother-in-martial-arts Ryu, Chun-Li’s fixation on avenging her father’s death—it’s represented in some form, with a few exceptions such as Zangief wrestling bears.

Fun fact: Ken wrestles a polar bear! Not a real one, though. Anyway.

As fun as the live-action choreography is, I didn’t expect beautifully animated sequences to be part of the package; they weren’t teased in the trailers, so they made for a great surprise. These sequences share key pieces of backstory and are visually stunning to boot. Some characters only appear in these sequences, or for one or two live-action scenes. I thought that was a smart choice. These characters get their time to shine and then disappear without gumming up the works of the main stories—the brotherhood between Ken and Ryu, and Chun-Li’s quest for revenge.

Fight!

Although some characters have scene-stealing moments—pro wrestler Cody Rhodes excels at one-liners, and fellow WWE Superstar Roman Reigns absolutely terrifies as Akuma—the movie makes no bones about Ryu, Ken, and Chun-Li being its main characters. These are the world warriors you’re meant to root for, and I was impressed by how the first half of the movie reveled in all the silliness of Street Fighter, going so far as to include sound bytes from the games, only to segue into more serious storytelling in the second half, especially Ken’s redemption arc and Ryu learning to control his inner demon (literally).

The movie spends a good amount of time building up to the tournament, only for the contest to feel tertiary. Ken and Ryu’s story takes center stage, followed by Chun-Li. While seeing matchups from the game holds some novelty, most of the fights are too short and take place in a generic ring instead of in the streets, as you might expect.

On top of that, the movie meanders a bit once the tournament begins. Some scenes felt unnecessary, as if they were included purely to cater to fan service. That’s not a bad thing in a romp like this, but if you get as invested in the story as I did, prepare for some impatience while the filler plays out.

You win! (Almost) Perfect!

As near and dear to my heart as the Raul Julia live action movie has been for decades, Street Fighter (2026) tops it in every way possible. There’s even an “it was Tuesday” joke for good measure. It more than holds its own as a good video game adaptation, an honor still in short supply in 2026.

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Review for
Street Fighter (2026)
8
Pros

• Stories centered on Ken, Ryu, and Chun-Li
• Great use of lore
• Animated scenes
• Choreography
• Dan

Cons

• Meanders in the middle
• Tournament feels tertiary