Blog: Street Fightin Flicks

So with a new Street Fighter movie upon us is a good time to dip into the very large back catalogue of Street Fighter movies which stretches back over 30 years at this point. This is really all spawned from the megahit arcade game Street Fighter II: The World Warrior. It was one of the earliest, and best, fighting games which sucked up quarters and then ported over seamlessly to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. That game with 16 bit graphics and selection of multiple fighting characters spawned a very deep lore, mostly because they all looked distinct and unique. Unlike the gorier Mortal Kombat which had a sense of “realism” even with all the magic and demons (to make the gore more gory, you see), Street Fighter II looked like it was taken from the pages of a Japanese Manga Comic book. The characters all look really cool and different, and they all had different combo power movies which makes it feel deeper. There has been a lot of cracks at making Street Fighter movies which are all basically taking from Street Fighter II. They’re all kinda corny and weird. Even the ones that stuck close to the source have a bit of a cheesball vibe or there are ones that are way out there, and now there’s even a new one in 2026!

The first adaption is Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie in 1994. It didn’t have much to change from the source so the characters look pulled from the game, and very dynamic too. Villain M Bison has a great design so they don’t mess with it. The movie follows Ryu and Ken who have been trained by the same master and have identical fighting style which captures the attention of M Bison who sends like robots to watch over them. The movie is a lot like playing the game as each character is basically introduced into a fight with another outlandish looking character but it delivers Street Fighter classic bits like Dhalsim floating in the air and fighting sumo wrestler E. Honda. Doesn’t make much sense but feels ripped from the game. Even though it’s animation, they try to ape the style of late 80s and early 90s action thrillers.

Sometimes it seems to be trying a bit too hard to be “adult”. Like a full on gratuitous shower scene for Chun-Li while she is being stalked by the murderous Vega. The “in the shower while the killer is outside” is a thriller trope but usually it can be accomplished with like a shoulder shot, this is like a minute of pans along Chun-Li showering. It’s a lot. There used to be a lot more shower scenes in movies. Then she gets into a brutal fight with Vega that hospitalizes her and motivates Guile which just feels more exploitive. So overall this movie is true to the source but flawed with long stretches of people walking, or showering, or characters that show up for one scene and bail. But the end of the film there is a title card that promises, Street Fighter in 1995, starring Jean Claude Van Damme and Raul Julia. Now filming in Hollywood!

And what a movie it is! It even came out earlier than Spring 1995 and instead Christmas 1994. It is one of those films that sort of counts as so bad its good, but the movie isn’t very bad. It’s just corny and intentionally dopey that it becomes entertaining. Like when the bad guys see a truck is barreling towards them on a TV monitor the very stupid Zangief says “Change the channel!” Some characters look very close to the game versions like M. Bison or how at the end they’re posing and in their outfits from the games. But there’s a few misses like Blanka just looking like a worn out green guy instead of an Intimidating Beast Man. Van Damme’s Guile doesn’t look like the flattop video game character, and he’s wearing blue instead of green, but he’s kinda great. As he just delivers lines like an action hero, and his “who wants to go home and who wants to come with me!” speech is corny genius. Julia is full on awesome, hitting the perfect tone of a megalomaniacal despot who wants to take over the world. He even makes his own BisonBucks currency that he says will become the new standard. At one point he takes control of a weapon and its controls look exactly like the arcade game as he hollers “Game Over”! loudly when he wins. And his line to Chun-Li about “When M.Bison came to your village it was the greatest day of your life. For me, it was Tuesday” is an absolute classic.

2001 was the 10^th anniversary for Street Fighter II and there was the English dub of the anime movie Street Fighter Alpha. It is unfortunately kinda incompressible, even by Street Fighter standards. It is very noisy and a lot of stuff about magic and possession, no M. Bison. It feels like a different movie that has some Street Fighter characters slapped into it. Ryu gets an unknown little brother who is kind of annoying and at one point the little brother is absorbed into a big monster. There is a POV of the brother a part inside the monster that looks like something stolen from Akira or Neon Genesis Evangelion. They yell a lot, the bad guy looks like a smiling monster and none of it really resembles Street Fighter aside from the outfits. Definitely worth skipping.

In 2009 there was Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li. It is cheesy and has a bit of a tonal mish-mash problem. It is like trying to be a detective crime thriller and the characters are toned way down to be more “realistic”. It only really works when it’s unabashedly corny. It is great to see Michael Clarke Duncan in anything as Balrog as he could enliven even the smallest part, and Chris Klein had some awesome cheesy lines. Taboo from the freaking Black Eyed Peas is Vega and while he’s supposed to be handsome and vicious, Chun-Li remarks how ugly he is and beats him down easily. Kreuk as Chun-Li puts in some out of place intense acting like when she sobs uncontrollably when Bison kills her dad in front of her. Very heavy and doesn’t work well with the corniness. In the end, she starts shooting magic fireballs without any explanation and magic fireballs doesn’t fit with the detective thriller vibes. It’s a bit of a mess that gets good when it gets bad.

But after all that, there’s a new 2026 Street Fighter movie. Even if it doesn’t do great, there will probably eventually be another Street Fighter movie. At least the series keeps things lively by making each movie different than the other. Not great, but different.