The Street Fighter Trailer Is Just As Wild As You Think
Choose your fighter.
There’s a rule of thumb with video game adaptations in recent years: the TV shows (The Last of Us, Fallout) are serious, while the movies (The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Minecraft) are goofy. There are always exceptions (looking at you, Twisted Metal), but the video game adaptation subgenre seems to have settled into this divide.
While this means the loss of the gritty video game movie, the lighter tone is oftentimes for the better. The perfect example is Street Fighter, the upcoming adaptation of the Capcom fighting game that delivers all the martial arts action of the game but with a healthy dose of camp. Check out the trailer for the movie below:
Street Fighter (specifically Street Fighter 2) has been adapted before in 1994, but that was very much a ‘90s action thriller starring Jean Claude Van Damme. The world of Street Fighter was adapted again in 2009’s Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li. The newest film, on the other hand, delivers the core of Street Fighter’s appeal: a large roster of fighters, each with their own distinct personalities and fighting styles.
With that comes a huge cast, led by stars Andrew Koji as Ryu and Noah Centineo as Ken Masters, but also featuring Callina Liang as Chun-Li, Joe "Roman Reigns" Anoa'i as Akuma, David Dastmalchian as M. Bison, and Jason Momoa as Blanka. It shouldn’t be surprising that a good portion of the cast, like Roman Reigns, have history in wrestling and martial arts, involving Cody Rhodes, Hirooki Goto, Rayna Vallandingham, and Alexander Volkanovski.
Director Kitao Sakurai is best known as a director of The Eric Andre Show, so there are plenty of comedians in the trailer as well, like Andre himself, Kyle Mooney, and Andrew Schulz, plus singer Orville Peck and rapper 50 Cent (credited as Curtis Jackson).
The cast of Street Fighter onstage at the Game Awards.
You can’t tell much about the plot from the trailer, but let’s be honest: it doesn’t matter as much as the high-octane combat scenes that are featured. “Set in 1993, estranged Street Fighters Ryu (Andrew Koji) and Ken Masters (Noah Centineo) are thrown back into combat when the mysterious Chun-Li (Callina Liang) recruits them for the next World Warrior Tournament: a brutal clash of fists, fate, and fury,” the official plot description reads. “But behind this battle royale lies a deadly conspiracy that forces them to face off against each other and the demons of their past. And if they don’t, it’s GAME OVER!”
This may be a goofier take on Street Fighter than we’ve seen in the past, but that self-aware twist might lead to success. Street Fighter is a game about fighting in the street, and this trailer makes it very clear that this is also a movie very much about that.
