‘Street Fighter’ movie is cheesy nostalgia for franchise fans and 80s kids

‘Street Fighter’ is full of Easter eggs and nostalgia bait for true fans. — Picture via Legendary Pictures

By Erna Mahyuni

First Published: Thursday, 15 Oct 2026 3:03 PM MYT

KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 15 — The Street Fighter movie opens today in Malaysia — will it do better than its other 80s franchise counterpart Masters of the Universe (which I did enjoy)?

I grew up with two younger brothers who loved the arcade.

That meant watching over them as they would mash buttons playing Street Fighter, though the male friends I hung out with were also big fighting game fans.

Ryu, Ken, Chun Li — even if you didn’t play the games they were such recognisable characters to most kids who grew up in the 80s (though my ex would argue that Tekken is the superior fighting game franchise).

There are movies that pay homage to the 80s; Street Fighter sets the whole film in the era, going for a less polished, grittier look and CRT TV vibe.

It’s high camp all around, with scenes played for laughs and dialogue that has more cheese than a Kraft warehouse.

If you’ve played the games, you might appreciate the effort put into ensuring that the characters’ signature moves are used in the movie, instead of just generic fight choreography.

There is a fair amount of animation used in the film that will remind you of the age when we’d spend either 5.30pm or Saturday mornings watching cartoons.

Perhaps Capcom/Legendary Pictures decided animating sequences instead of doing full flashback scenes was both thematically and financially suitable.

Production decisions aside, how did Street Fighter hold up as a movie?

If you’re expecting deep characterisation and a compelling script, this isn’t it.

What it is — a movie for those wishing they could go back to the days of 80s childhood, when everything was hyper-optimistic, all things seemed possible, all rendered in bright colours and embracing all things that youngsters now would find “cringe.”

For newer, younger audiences, a lot of the references would probably go over their heads and with some grisly deaths, blood and of course, heavy beat-em-up sessions, maybe don’t bring the under-10s to the movie.

There’s also a fair bit of sexual innuendo in the jokes but they’re the kind that always existed in kid shows, meant for only adults to understand or kids, decades later upon rewatching.

As for the cast, I think they did a good job — working well as an ensemble without any one single actor standing out above the rest.

Though I do have to give Noah Centineo his props as Ken, perhaps the one character that gets a full emotional arc in the film.

Also to all the people complaining that Callina Liang as Chun Li didn’t show enough skin, this is Street Fighter not Flesh Displayer.

Liang’s dialogue throughout the movie is generally terrible but she deserves kudos for being able to say it all with a straight face while displaying the athleticism required of a character often described as the “strongest woman in the world.”

I did not expect to like Jason Momoa’s performance as much as I did; am not spoiling who he’s playing but he brings a fitting physicality to the role and perfect comedic timing.

Is Street Fighter worth spending two hours of your day for?

If you need a film that will cerebrally take you out of the present moment, letting you forget that outside there’s a Middle East conflict, a shouting orange is leading the biggest Western superpower and everything looks like a Silent Hill game outside, there are far worse things to do with your time.

Colourful, full of nostalgia bait and embracing the silliest parts of Street Fighter, the film knows exactly who it’s made for.