The New Street Fighter Movie Now Looks Worse

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]The new Street Fighter movie is looking worse than ever. Recently, the second trailer dropped for the 2026 upcoming Street Fighter film. And somehow, against all odds, it managed to make the first one look like a restrained, thoughtful piece of cinema. In my opinion, what we've been given isn't just a bad trailer. It's a complete misunderstanding of what Street Fighter actually is. The tone is all over the place. Some of the characters feel like they've been pulled out of a completely different franchise. And the action, which should be one thing they absolutely got right, already looks weightless, cheap, tacky, and overproduced. And look, we've been here before. The 1994 Street Fighter film was ridiculous, completely, and unapologetically so. But it never felt like it was trying to game you. It wasn't dangling nostalgia in front of your face like Keys in front of a toddler just to spike engagement. It wasn't engineered around algorithm friendly moments or remember this call backs designed to farm reactions. It was trying in its own bizarre way to be something fresh. This new film on the other hand feels like a boardroom interpretation of Street Fighter where everything iconic has been stripped for parts, repackaged into neat little nostalgia beats, and then stitched back together by committee. And the end result doesn't feel bold or new. It just feels calculated and frankly slightly insulting to intelligence. This doesn't feel like a film with a clear vision. It just feels like more well content. The sort of safe, focus, tested, driven slop that corporations keep turnurning out because it's easier to mine a legacy franchise than it is to come up with something genuinely creative. And Street Fighter is currently caught in that Hollywood machine. So, with that said, let's talk about this upcoming disaster piece more because if this trailer is anything to go by, we are looking at yet another Street Fighter adaptation that completely misses the point. Hello ladies and gentlemen, Big Daddy Top Hat here. If you love overanalytical discussions about Street Fighter, subscribe. This is my detailed discussion piece on the latest Street Fighter movie trailer. Yeah, Street Fighter 6 is a video game that many people believe to be the greatest fighting game of this generation. But what's even cooler is that by using my links, I can get you 85% off the game.

[00:02:19]But that's not all. I can also save you money on a year three character pass, giving you access to Ingrid, Alex, and the latest wave of DLC characters. I can also get you huge discounts on Resident Evil Recreum, Pragmata, Crimson Desert, and as much as 90% off on all of the biggest releases around. So, happy shopping and I hope you enjoy the rest of this video.

[00:02:40]Street Fighter 2: The Animated Movie released in 1994. It is one of the finest pieces of animation to ever come from a video game property, and it captures the essence of this franchise perfectly. It's brutal, it's sincere, it takes its characters seriously, and it is genuinely thrilling to watch. It understands something very simple and very important about Street Fighter.

[00:03:02]These are the best fighters in the world. And the world they inhabit is a dangerous, highstakes place. Now, look at the footage of the latest trailer rolling. Does this even look like it's meant to be the same franchise to you? I think not. This is typical Hollywood video game adaptation slop. In my opinion, at least, the situation has officially moved from concerning to what on earth are they doing? But to fully understand where we are right now, I need to take you back to where this whole thing started because the warning signs were there from the very beginning. and some of us were sounding the alarm early on. The new Street Fighter film has been in development since 2023 when Legendary Entertainment acquired the adaptation rights from Capcom. The initial directors attached were Danny and Michael Filipio, the Australian filmmakers behind the genuinely excellent horror film Talk to Me. And honestly, that was an intriguing choice. unexpected, sure, but it suggested somebody was at least trying to approach this property with a fresh creative eye rather than just pointing the camera at the familiar faces and hoping for the best. And then the brothers dropped out due to scheduling conflicts with their next film, Bring Her Back. And the project was instead handed to Kato Sakarai. Now, Sakarai is a talented person. I want to be clear about that. He is skilled at what he does, but what he does, however, is comedy. specifically hidden camera prank comedy. He directed 26 episodes of The Eric Andre Show. His only feature film prior to this is Bad Trip, a 2021 hidden camera comedy starring Eric Andre. And here is the punch line that should tell you everything you need to know. Eric Andre is in this Street Fighter movie playing a major role as the tournament announcer. So, the director of a show where the entire premise is that nothing is serious, where chaos and absurdism are the entire point, where the host destroys his own set every single episode, has been handed one of the most iconic and beloved fighting game franchises in history. Right, that is not a promising sign that Street Fighter is going to be treated with any respect whatsoever. And it pretty much instantly cancels out the possibility that we were ever going to get something with a more grounded, character-driven tone. And that's the frustrating part because we already know what does work. The 1994 Street Fighter 2 animated movie understood this. It didn't treat the material like a joke. It didn't try to chase trends, and it certainly didn't feel like it had been overengineered to maximize engagement. It took the characters seriously, leaned into their rivalries, gave the fights weight, and actually respective the tone of the world it was adaptting. So, when you compare that to what we're seeing here, it's not just a different direction.

[00:05:39]It's a complete abandonment of what already proved successful. Instead of building on something that worked, they've gone in the opposite direction entirely, chasing noise, spectacle, and algorithm friendly bollocks and hoping that the Street Fighter name is enough to carry their BS. And then the casting started coming together. And oh boy, Andrew Cooji is on a purely practical level a strong casting choice. He is a legitimate martial artist, a trained stunt performer, and someone who has already proven he can carry long, physically demanding fight sequences without relying on frantic editing or digital trickery. He starred in Warrior, the Bruce Lee inspired period martial arts drama. He is clearly a serious actor who takes physical roles with the commitment they deserve, and he genuinely looks the part. Noah Centidio as Ken though is much more debatable, but fine, I can see it. He has got the all-American golden boy look. He has been working to establish himself in more serious fair. We will see what he brings. And then we get the rest of the roster. And this is where it starts to feel like somebody lost a very important spreadsheet and just started making decisions at random. Roman Reigns is playing Akuma, the WWE superstar. Akuma, who in the games is perhaps the most terrifyingly portrayed character in the entire franchise. A man who has killed his own master, who exists in a state of perpetual violent transcendence, who literally murdered M. Bison in a secret ending. That Akuma is going to be played by a professional wrestler whose last major role was in the Fast and Furious franchise. Fine though, we will see.

[00:07:13]Cody Rhodess is playing Guile, another WWE wrestler. Two WWE stars in the same film. And at that point, you start to get the sense that this isn't really a Street Fighter adaptation anymore. It's a kind of corporate crossover event.

[00:07:27]Like someone at TKO Group Holdings looked at their portfolio and thought, "Right, how do we monetize this across as many verticals as possible?" Because this doesn't feel like casting based on what serves the characters. It feels like synergy. It feels like brand alignment. It feels like the same kind of thinking that gave us years of brutally sanitized, overproduced WWE programming where everything is technically impressive, heavily controlled, and somehow completely devoid of grit. So, what you end up with is something that looks less like Street Fighter and more like TKO era WWE in film form. Big names, big entrances, lots of noise, but underneath it all, absolutely worthless brain rot. And this is coming from someone who loved wrestling when it was watchable. I've made loads of jokes at the expense of the dreadful casting choices, mostly in the form of YouTube shorts, but the one who has caused the most controversy is Andrew Schultz playing Dan Habiki. And the issue isn't even that he's playing Dan, is that he doesn't appear to have made even the slightest attempt to become Dan. He's just turned up as Andrew Schultz. The mustache is still there. The look is still his. The energy is still very much podcaster who's wandered onto a film set by accident.

[00:08:42]Dan Habiki for all the jokes surrounding him is still a character. He has a very specific visual identity, a very deliberate parody of Shotto Fighter and a kind of exaggerated pathetic confidence that needs to be performed properly to land. What we seem to be getting instead is just Andrew Schultz doing Andrew Schultz, but occasionally shouting moves. And that's where it starts to feel less like casting and more like stunt booking. Not who is right for this role, but who can we drop into this film that people recognize from somewhere else. It doesn't feel like an adaptation of Street Fighter. It feels like engagement farming for social media clicks. The Modern World in a nutshell really, and I fully acknowledge the irony of such a statement. As for the latest trailer for the Street Fighter movie, it dropped on April the 16th, 2026, and it is worse than I feared. Before we engage with it more directly though, I want to read you the plot synopsis from the official materials because I think it is important to establish what this film is at least attempting to be before we talk about what the trailer actually shows us. Set in 1993, a strange street fighter Rio and Chem Masters are thrown back into combat when the mysterious Chun Lee recruits them for the next World Warrior Tournament. A brutal clash of fists, fate, and fury. But behind this battle royale lies a deadly conspiracy that forces them to face off against each other and the demons of their past. Right? That actually sounds fine on paper. That is in broadstrokes a Street Fighter story. There is a tournament. There is a conspiracy. There are protagonists with a complicated history. There are demons from the past.

[00:10:15]That is the skeleton or something that could work. And then you watch the trailer. The very first line of dialogue we hear after the countdown is an announcer saying, "I have good news, y'all." Not exactly the gravitus you might be hoping for. Then you have Chun Lee telling Ken, "You're not a warrior anymore. You're a sideshow." Which honestly feels like this film projecting onto itself. Then Ken Masters turns to the camera and says, "Some, >> what's up, MTV? I'm Ken Masters."

[00:10:41]>> He is meant to be an American martial artist trained under the same grand masters as Ryu. He is a wealthy heir who chose the Warriors path out of genuine dedication to his craft. And in this film, he is apparently doing a parody of a mid-2000s reality television host.

[00:10:55]Wonderful. There is a shot where Cammy bitchily comments on liveaction Chundley's thighs, and the whole trailer is very corny and way too jokey joke to reflect the actual source material. The trailer resembles an SNL sketch more than it does an earnest attempt at a martial arts movie featuring some of the most well-known video game characters of all time. There is a general energy to this trailer that communicates loudly and clearly that the people making this movie do not believe in it. They do not take Street Fighter seriously. They are putting ironic quotation marks around the whole Enterprise and inviting you to laugh with them at the very concept of a Street Fighter movie being a real thing that serious people are engaged with. I cannot express to you how much that attitude irritates me and I want to take some time to explain exactly why because I think it is very important to attempt to articulate that to you all. Street Fighter being described as camp is a descriptor that keeps coming up in coverage and commentary around this film and I need to address it directly because I think it represents a fundamental misunderstanding of what Street Fighter actually is as a franchise. Camp as a concept relies on deliberate theatrical exaggeration and self-parody. Camp knows it is absurd, winks at you about the absurdity and asks you to enjoy the performance of excess for its own sake. Think of the 1966 Batman television series or drag performance as an art form. I know most of you watching love to put on a bit of drag, so you should be aware that camp is a conscious aesthetic choice made with full awareness of what it is doing.

[00:12:33]Street Fighter as a video game at least does not do that. Street Fighter has never done that. Street Fighter is a sincere martial arts melodrama. It plays its world straight. It always has. Yes, that world contains a South American military dictator who has psychic powers. It contains a stretchy Indian yoga master who transforms into a fire breathing monster. It contains a green electricity conducting creature from the Amazon. None of this is treated as a joke by the games themselves though. It is the world and it is presented earnestly. The test for this is simple.

[00:13:07]When Ryu achieves the satsuino had when he wrestles with the dark side of his own fighting spirit, is that played for laughs? No, it is existential dread.

[00:13:16]When Chun Lee speaks about her father murdered by Shadowoo, is that a punchline? No, it is grief. When Embias declares his vision for a world under his control, do the games ask you to laugh at him? No. They present him as a genuine threat, a theatrical one certainly, but one the fiction takes entirely at face value. Now, are there comic elements of Street Fighter? Of course, there are. Panhabiki exists. El Fu exists. Certain characters of a likeness to them, but here is the critical distinction that people keep missing. Those characters work precisely because they exist within a framework that is otherwise serious. Banhabiki is funny because he does not belong. He is a man of mediocre ability who is full of unearned confidence and he is placed into the same tournament as men and women who have genuinely transcended human physical limits. The joke is the contrast. Remove the seriousness of the setting and Dan stops being funny because there is nothing to contrast him against. He works in exactly the same way that Deadpool works. Deadpool's humor depends entirely on the existence of a sincere superhero universe with its own rules and weight. If every character in those films were as self-aware and irreverent as Deadpool, the character would not be funny at all. He would just be more noise. The comedy requires the sincerity of everything around him.

[00:14:37]Comic relief sharpens drama by releasing tension, not by flattening everything into parody. and mistaking isolated humor for camp is exactly why adaptations keep missing the point. If the Marvel Cinematic Universe can ground Norse gods, talking raccoons, and multiversal nonsense by treating them seriously within a coherent world, then a Street Fighter film can absolutely work, too. Especially when X-Men versus Street Fighter already proved decades ago that fraternal fidelity between Western superheroes and Street Fighter characters align perfectly when neither is treated as a punchline. The real issue is Hollywood's lingering cultural snobbery towards video games, a medium they still sneer at despite it being more profitable and culturally dominant than film, leading them to fix what isn't broken with irony and mockery instead of respecting the sincerity that made the franchises endure in the first place. These people are clueless, stupid idiots. No matter what way you look at this situation, Street Fighter deserves treating with way more respect than this. Video gaming is not a niche hobby.

[00:15:42]It is not a childish pastime that adults should grow out of. It is the most popular entertainment medium on the planet. It has been so for decades. More people play video games than watch films. More people know who Rio and Ken are than know who most Hollywood stars are these days. Street Fighter 6, the latest entry in this franchise, is a critically acclaimed, globally popular, actively competitive game with a thriving professional esports scene and a passionate fan base that spans multiple generations. This is not a fringe property being dragged reluctantly into mainstream relevance.

[00:16:16]This is a mainstream property that Hollywood is in its typical fashion looking down its nose at. And when Hollywood looks down its nose at something, it does not engage with it honestly. It does not try to understand what made it beloved. It does not ask the question, why do people love this?

[00:16:33]It asks the question, how do we make this palatable for people who would never play a video game anyway? And the answer it keeps arriving at is irony.

[00:16:42]Mockery, self-awareness as a shield against being accused of taking something they see as very silly seriously. Because if the film itself is laughing at the source material, then nobody can accuse the filmmakers of being naive or credulous for making it.

[00:16:57]That is a coward's approach to film making. And it insults everyone involved. It insults the fans who care deeply about these characters. It insults the creative teams at Capcom who built something that has endured for 35 freaking years. And honestly, it insults the actors because there are people in this cast, Andrew Cooji, chief among them, who are plainly trying to do genuine work with this material, and they are being hung out to dry by a production that has decided in advance that the whole thing is just a bit of a laugh. The director of this film has spoken about this franchise with the energy of someone who was handed the keys and is excited to do something weird with them, which I understand as a creative impulse, but which is entirely the wrong impulse for this material.

[00:17:41]This is not an opportunity to do something deranged. It is not an opportunity to let your bad trip sensibility loots on a beloved fighting game property. It is an opportunity, a genuinely rare one, to give fans of this franchise something they have been waiting for for 35 years. a film that takes Street Fighter in live action seriously. The 1994 Vanam film did not take Street Fighter seriously. The 2009 Legend of Chun Lee one did not honor the source material either. In fact, Street Fighter Assassin's Fist, the independent web series from 2014, actually came remarkably close and it was made on a tiny budget by people who genuinely loved the source material. The lesson is right there. The answer has been demonstrated. And yet, here we are again watching a film treat one of gaming's most enduring properties like a costume party that happens to have a budget attached. These people are greedy, uncultured [ __ ] I am not someone asking for a dark and gritty deconstruction of Street Fighter. What I'm asking for is something that approaches these characters and this world with the same energy and tone which the games themselves approach them with. It's that simple. an earnest, exciting, well choreographed martial arts action film that treats its world warriors as extraordinary human beings rather than objects of gentle mockery.

[00:18:58]Look, I could be wrong. I've been wrong before. Trailers are not films and occasionally a film is better than its marketing. I genuinely hope this is one of those cases because I want a good Street Fighter film more than almost anyone. But what I saw in that trailer was a film being made by people who think Street Fighter is the kind of thing that needs to be gently condescended to in order to be commercially viable. And that attitude more than any individual casting choice or specific trailer moment is why I have very very little faith whatsoever. That is where I'm landing on this. But I would genuinely love to know what you think because I know the conversation around this film is divided and I am curious where the Street Fighter fans in this community are sitting. Drop it in the comments and let me know. If you enjoyed this video, please do subscribe because there is a lot more coming. And surely if you are still here by this point, you'd like to hear my final verdict on the film when it releases in October. Don't forget that Street Fighter 6 is a video game that many people believe to be the greatest fighting game of this generation. But what's even cooler is that by using my links, I can get you 85% off the game.

[00:20:08]But that's not all. I can also save you money on a year three character pass, giving you access to Ingrid, Alex, and the latest wave of DLC characters. I can also get you huge discounts on Resident Evil Recreum, Pragmata, Crimson Desert, and as much as 90% off on all of the biggest releases around. So, happy shopping, and I'll see you all again soon. Cheerio. What's up, MTV? I'm Ken Masters. Heat.

[00:20:44]Heat.