‘Street Fighter’ Is Already an Improvement Over the Other Movies in the Series Because of This One Choice
The upcoming live-action Street Fighter reboot is not without its issues, specifically, with the casting of Andrew Schulz as the Japanese character Dan Hibiki. However, the newly released teaser trailer is already drawing significant buzz, and for good reason. The new trailer showcases how the new reboot is an improvement over the last two live-action Street Fighter movies, including the 1994 movie starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and the 2009 reboot, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li. It appears that we are finally getting a faithful Street Fighter movie that embraces the absurdity and ridiculousness of the concept. It’s time to unpack why the new Street Fighter movie displays strong potential.
The ‘Street Fighter’ Movie Is Faithfully Translating the Video Games’ Aesthetic
The Street Fighter trailer is surprising in its shockingly accurate depiction of the characters. It’s apparent that director Kitao Sakurai is taking significant care to faithfully translate the video game series’ unique aesthetic into the live-action format, and the movie is leaning into the game series’ sci-fi, comic book-like concepts. Street Fighter is a unique world filled with supernatural and crazy ideas, featuring villainous organizations, characters who can channel chi and energy into projectile attacks like fireballs, cyborgs, and super-powered mutants. Any movie adaptation should follow suit. The 1994 live-action Street Fighter movie still has some of these aspects. It was a cheesy 1990s action movie, but apparently, certain aspects of the Street Fighter mythology and the energy-based projectile attacks were a bridge too far for writer-director Steven E. de Souza. Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li came at a time before the MCU had truly taken off, and it was more en vogue to adapt video games and comic book source material to be more grounded and realistic, similar to Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies and the X-Men movies. The Legend of Chun-Li stood out as a bland and disappointing letdown, featuring Neal McDonough as an unintimidating plain-clothes M. Bison. The new movie appears to be a complete inversion of The Legend of Chun-Li, embracing the video games’ style and aesthetic even more than the 1994 movie ever did. It seems that Legendary Pictures is finally creating a live-action Street Fighter movie that faithfully adapts the narrative and looks authentic to the classic video games that have been capturing players’ imaginations for decades. The actors impressively embody and look like their characters, sporting their wild and colorful costumes and outrageous hairstyles. The fighting and martial arts moves do not look “grounded” and “realistic.” The action scenes look bombastic, crazy, outlandish, and over-the-top. Characters don’t get flipped onto the ground; they get Flash Kicked by Guile (Cody Rhodes) through brick walls.
The ‘Street Fighter’ Movie Looks Inspired by the 1990s Era
The other stark reveal from the new Street Fighter movie trailer is that the new movie seems to be inspired by the franchise’s golden age of the early 1990s, following the release of Street Fighter II. Street Fighter II and its multiple variations possessed a certain cartoonish charm. There was a campy sense of humor to 1990s Street Fighter. It never took itself too seriously, and when the game designers went bigger and crazier with the new character designs and models, it created a more entertaining video game experience. However, Street Fighter experienced a bit of an identity crisis in the late 2000s and early 2010s. At the time, it felt like Capcom was taking Street Fighter in a direction that was a bit too self-serious, specifically with Street Fighter IV and parts of the Tekken x Street Fighter crossover. The latest mainline Street Fighter installment, Street Fighter 6, plays closer in tone and style to the 1990s style, taking the franchise back to its roots. The new movie looks to be paying homage to the 1990s Street Fighter style, as well as Capcom’s current approach to the Street Fighter franchise. For example, a moment in the teaser trailer appears to pay homage to a classic bonus stage from Street Fighter II, where the player must control their fighter to smash a car into pieces. It was always an absurdly fun moment in the games, but the movie looks to embrace that admittedly goofy aspect.
‘Street Fighter’ Should Not Be Realistic
Raul Julia and Jean-Claude Van Damme in Street FighterImage via Universal Pictures
Some of the most important aspects of the classic video games are that they were fun to play and did not take themselves too seriously with their story and characters. Although the Street Fighter narrative has its serious elements and moments, it does not take place in a grounded, realistic world. A Street Fighter movie should not be grounded or “grim ‘n’ gritty,” rather, it should be big, outrageous, loud, exaggerated, and ostentatious, with goofy elements and cartoonish humor. Case in point, Eric Andre appears in the movie as the ring announcer character, Don Sauvage, and he’s briefly seen in the trailer dancing a jig, complete with the character’s trademark flashy outfit and American Flag-emblazoned megaphone.
The new live-action movie finally brings an authentic Street Fighter video game experience to the big screen, and it looks like it may finally succeed where previous adaptations failed. However, the movie better not skimp on Hadokens, Sonic Booms, M. Bison’s (David Dastmalchian) Psycho Power, and Akuma’s (Roman Reigns) Satsu no Hado in live action. The trailer does show Guile doing his Flash Kick on Vega (Orville Peck), so that’s a start. And based on Akuma’s glowing eyes, the trailer teases the character’s dark spiritual energy. Hopefully, Street Fighter features big special projectile attacks when it hits theaters in October; the crazier and the bigger, the better! Street Fighter comes to theaters on October 16 in the U.S.
Release Date
October 15, 2026
Director
Kitao Sakurai
Writers
Dalan Musson
Publicado: 2025-12-22 02:02:00
fonte: collider.com
