Street Fighter (2026)
Street Fighter Review: A Faithful, Frenzied Reboot That Fans Adore and Critics Can’t Stand
Street Fighter is a film at war with itself. On one side stands a director, Kitao Sakurai, with obvious affection for Capcom’s arcade legacy and a taste for gleefully chaotic set pieces. On the other stands a screenplay that buckles under the weight of too many fighters, too many subplots, and a climax that arrives before the story has properly ended. The result is a reboot that delivers exactly what its built-in audience wants—colorful costumes, thunderous fight choreography, and iconic special moves—while leaving everyone else wondering what happened to the movie around them.
Those numbers capture one of the widest critic-audience divides of the year. On Rotten Tomatoes, Street Fighter sits at 41% from 125 critics with an average rating of 4.9/10, while audiences have pushed the Popcornmeter to roughly 80%. Metacritic logged a 44 out of 100 across 26 reviews, and CinemaScore audiences handed it a B−. Commercially, the film opened at number one domestically with $31 million—Paramount’s strongest debut of the season—and reached $51.1 million worldwide in its first weekend. Against an $82 million production budget, however, its $55.6 million global total leaves it far short of profitability.
The critical consensus is blunt: “The latest iteration of Street Fighter has plenty of affection for its source material and doesn’t lack for dizzying style, but its incoherent storytelling and juvenile humor make for a disappointing regression in video game adaptation.” Variety‘s Siddhant Adlakha called it “consistently funny” yet “disastrously scattered,” citing mismatched setups and payoffs and “a total lack of any actual conclusion.” Polygon‘s Jake Kleinman went further, labelling it “one of the sloppiest, cringiest, and most incoherent films of the year,” though he reserved praise for David Dastmalchian and Cody Rhodes. The Hollywood Reporter‘s Frank Scheck found it “only sporadically entertaining,” faulting the plot and an “ensemble of varying effectiveness.”
Not everyone was dismissive. The New York Times‘s Brandon Yu argued that the film “has a sturdy enough script to bear the load, even if it buckles a bit by the end,” crediting the cast and the “punchy pyrotechnics of its fight sequences.” And that, ultimately, is the case for Street Fighter: it is a movie made for the people who grew up hammering arcade buttons, and those people have responded with genuine enthusiasm. Whether that trade-off—spectacle over coherence, fan service over structure—is worth it depends entirely on which side of the coin you land.
Street Fighter Cast: Andrew Koji and Noah Centineo Head a Sprawling Roster
The film assembles an enormous ensemble drawn from martial arts cinema, professional wrestling, comedy, and music:
Andrew Koji anchors the film as Ryu, the wandering ansatsuken fighter haunted by the Dark Hadou and the murder of his mentor Gouken. Koji brings a stoic, wounded gravity to the role that gives the film what little emotional spine it has. Noah Centineo plays Ken Masters, Ryu’s adoptive brother whose privileged swagger masks a genuine need to prove himself; their fractured brotherhood is the narrative’s strongest thread. Callina Liang is Chun-Li, the undercover Interpol agent driving the plot forward. Liang trained daily in taekwondo, Muay Thai, and wushu for the part, and her physical commitment shows in every fight.
Jason Momoa is nearly unrecognizable as Blanka, the feral captive whose prison break becomes a pivotal turn in the third act. David Dastmalchian delivers one of the film’s most praised performances as M. Bison, the Shadaloo dictator staging the tournament to lure Ryu out of hiding. Roman Reigns brings imposing physicality to Akuma, the demon whose murder of Gouken sets the entire story in motion, while Cody Rhodes is Guile, the American military man drawn into Bison’s trap. Vidyut Jammwal plays Dhalsim, 50 Cent appears as Balrog, Andrew Schulz provides comic relief as Dan Hibiki, and Hirooki Goto is E. Honda. Eric André, Orville Peck, and Don Lee—the latter voicing Gouken in animated flashback sequences—round out an ensemble that is, if nothing else, wildly eclectic.
Street Fighter Plot: A Tournament, A Dictator, and a Brother’s Debt
The story begins in 1987, when Japanese-born Ryu defeats Sagat in the first World Warrior tournament by tapping into the Satsui no Hadou—the Dark Hadou—a corrupting killing intent that immediately draws the attention of the demon Akuma. Shortly afterward, Akuma murders his older brother and Ryu’s mentor, Gouken, specifically to provoke Ryu into unleashing that darkness. The killing shatters Ryu and his adoptive brother Ken Masters, driving them apart and sending Ryu into exile from the martial arts world.
Six years later, M. Bison, dictator of Shadaloo, organizes the second World Warrior tournament in Metrolao City with one goal: to draw Ryu out of hiding. Chun-Li, an undercover Interpol agent seeking revenge for her father’s murder at Bison’s hands, recruits Ryu, Ken, and a roster of fighters from across the globe. Ryu initially refuses, but Akuma threatens to destroy the tournament’s victor unless Ryu enters. Fearing Ken will win—and die—Ryu travels to Metrolao to talk his brother out of competing, only for Ken to refuse to listen. Ryu defeats E. Honda to claim a place in the bracket.
The night before the competition, the fighters brawl in a bar until Bison’s soldiers incapacitate them and drag Ryu to Bison’s spire. During the tournament, Vega defeats Guile while Ken beats Balrog. At the spire, Bison offers Ryu a place in his empire; when Ryu refuses, Bison forces him to fight Blanka in a prison cell while a device drains his fighting power. Backed into a corner, Ryu unleashes a Hadouken that obliterates the prison walls and overloads the extraction device, allowing Blanka to escape. Before his next match, Ken learns from Chun-Li what Bison is really doing to Ryu. After defeating Dhalsim in the semifinals, Ken abandons the tournament to rescue his brother—but both are captured, and Ken wakes to find Ryu strapped to the extraction device.
Blanka breaks in and frees Ryu as Bison activates the machine, while Chun-Li confronts Bison in his office and is forced to fight Vega and his bodyguard. Akuma arrives, kills Joe with contemptuous ease, and turns on Ryu. Overwhelmed, Ryu transforms into Dark Ryu and defeats Akuma—but the victory comes at a terrible cost, and Ken, Chun-Li, and Dan Hibiki must try to stop him. Ken finally incapacitates his brother with a Flaming Hadouken, a technique he unleashes for the first time, restoring Ryu to himself. Bison orders Cammy and his troops to recover Akuma’s body, and Cammy destroys Chun-Li’s van with a rocket launcher to cover their retreat. The next day, Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, and Dan leave Shadaloo with Guile and Dhalsim providing transport, united in their resolve to bring Bison down—while a scarred Sagat receives a visit from Bison and his remaining lieutenants.
“The world warrior tournament begins.”
