Dir. Kitao Sakurai · 2026 · 119 min · in cinemas
It is 1993. Ryu and Ken Masters, two fighters who trained together and then drifted apart, are recruited by Chun-Li for the next World Warrior Tournament. The tournament is not what it looks like: a conspiracy sits underneath it and pushes the pair to face each other and the past. That is as far as this review goes. Andrew Koji plays Ryu, Noah Centineo is Ken, Callina Liang is Chun-Li, and a crowd of game favourites fills out the card, with David Dastmalchian, Cody Rhodes, Roman Reigns, Jason Momoa and 50 Cent among them. Sakurai co-wrote the script with T. J. Fixman.
The reception is split, and the split is instructive. Aggregate scores sit in the mid-40s out of 100 at Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes, while audiences and long-time players have been kinder than reviewers. Even the harsh notices tend to praise the same things. The 2D animated flashbacks (reportedly animated by Titmouse) come up again and again as the best moments. So do a couple of set-piece fights, an early hotel-suite brawl and a sauna fight between Ryu and E. Honda. Liang's Chun-Li and Rhodes' Guile are singled out, and Centineo's comic take on Ken gets credit from Flickering Myth.
there's simply too much great style to ignore in Street Fighter.Screen Rant, via Metacritic
The complaints are just as consistent. Moviefone's Tessa Smith finds a film with promise that never delivers, and points to jokes that mostly miss and too few fights for a movie with this title. The Hollywood Reporter's Frank Scheck calls it a tonal jumble that swings between serious and parody, leaving newcomers lost and fans only partly satisfied. Roundups report that the roster is too big for the running time, so some famous names barely get to fight, and that the computer-generated Blanka is a sore point. Several reviewers also say it plays more like the first part of something than a finished story.
Scores reported in the Metacritic listing and the roundups run from warm to scathing. The table collects what those pages report; nothing in it is our own rating of another outlet's work.
| Outlet | Reported verdict |
|---|---|
| Screen Rant | 7/10, flawed story, too much style to ignore |
| IGN | 6/10, enthusiastic cast, thin story |
| The Hollywood Reporter | Mixed, fan service over new moves |
| The Guardian | 2/5 |
| Associated Press | 1/4 |
For the wider mood, Rotten Tomatoes' first-reviews roundup describes colourful, weird, noisy nonsense affectionately made for fans.
Tap what applies. The meter is a rough guide built from the points above, not a prediction.
Pick at least one to see a reading.
We have not watched the film. This is a critical reading of published reviews, the trailer and the film's production facts, and the score of 2.5 out of 5 reflects where those reviews land: a film with real ideas about how to look and move, and a script that most reviewers say lets it down. Where critics disagree, the disagreement is mostly about tone. Those who take it as a deliberate live-action cartoon forgive a lot, and those who wanted either a faithful adaptation or a proper comedy do not.
It opened in cinemas on 16 October, according to release listings for the UK and the US. Availability and dates vary by country, so check your local cinema listings. No streaming date has been confirmed in the sources we read.