Spoilerriffic Thoughts on the new Street Fighter Movie

As a fair warning, this will contain spoilers on the Street Fighter movie as I will discuss elements of the film I enjoy.

I am a massive Street Fighter 2 fan. The game came out when I was 7 but it dominated the arcade when I was a kid. I was enthralled by the characters and the action and just ate up every bit of the franchise. I have an Evercade Alpha now and the Championship Edition is my most played game on it (you can read my thoughts of the Evercade here).

So when it was announced the Street Fighter was getting a reboot I was super excited. Even as a bit of a lapsed fan who doesn’t play much of the newer games it seemed from the trailer there was a lot of references to the older games, so I was excited to see it.

Last Friday, for the first time since The Matrix Revolutions, I got ticket for the opening night of Street Fighter. I didn’t get the Guile hair popcorn bucket, but what follows below are what I enjoyed and what I didn’t.

Good Things

There was a lot of fun little easter eggs. From the “Mike Haggar faces re-election” substory on the cover of a magazine that Ken appeared on, to the moves used by the fighters in the game, I enjoyed every little reference. Even spotting Maximilian Dood in the Ryu vs Blanka fight. I smiled at every move, every line that referenced the game (and even the previous movie) and every sound effect or music choice.

As far as the characters go they look like their game counterparts, and didn’t suffer from switching allegiances like the 1994 film did (hello Dee Jay being an evil computer expert!). I enjoyed it actually being structured like a fighting tournament. Joe being a character was a nice touch, though I wish they had Akuma kill Bison towards the end, in a nod to Super Street Fighter 2.

As far as the characters go, Guile was my favourite and stole the show with the best lines. Not sure how an overexposed wrestler managed to take my least favourite Street Fighter character and make them both a lot more likeable, but by god Cody Rhodes did it. I loved Blanka and looked exactly how I expected him to. Dan Hibiki also was a great addition – putting him as Ken’s manager was perfect as Street Fighter’s joke character.

And finally, I enjoyed the ending – giving it a clear direction for the next film as a silly dumb action flick. And I’m here for it.

Bad Things

Don’t go expecting Citizen Kane, as the story is terrible.

That may be unfair, but it feels incredibly rushed. I’d have liked to have had a bit more establishment of characters and the tournament – I’d have liked to have seen a non tournament fight for Ken that wasn’t the Balrog/Dhalsim fight. Zangief I felt could have been a bigger character. Given things a bit of a time to breathe (how did Ken break out Ryu when before it felt like Chun Li and Ken were fighting?) and a bit more explanation would have been nice.

It also at least two scenes that played into the tropes that the people who would watch this are sad lonely nerds who want to see Asian women in a state of undress, and the Bison character being a creep rather than an authoritative dictator (and – most importantly – not Raul Julia) gave me the ick. He wasn’t evil. He was a love child of Andrew Tate and Darth Vader.

With that said, I watched it with my partner, who has no interest in the franchise, who thought Bison was a better character, and she managed to follow the storyline, so whilst it wasn’t much to it, it wasn’t as confusing as I felt it was.

So all in all, don’t expect the greatest film you’ve ever seen. It is not. It’s dumb, campy and silly. If you go in expecting that, and can name the original twelve characters in Street Fighter II, you’d probably enjoy it.