Video game movies usually try hard to look like “real” films. The new Street Fighter is doing something braver: in the middle of a live-action action movie, it cuts to hand-drawn animation. A short behind-the-scenes featurette released last week shows how, and fans are already asking for more of it.
The film, directed by Kitao Sakurai and opening in cinemas on October 16, is set in 1993. Estranged fighters Ryu and Ken Masters are pulled back into combat when Chun-Li recruits them for the World Warrior Tournament, and a conspiracy forces the old friends to face each other and their past.
The past is where the animation comes in. Several flashback scenes of Ryu and Ken were animated in 2D by Titmouse, the studio behind a long run of adult animated series, and Sakurai has said he chose the style to pay homage to the era when the franchise took shape.
Why hand-drawn makes sense
For many fans, Street Fighter’s defining screen moment is not either of its earlier live-action films. The 1994 movie with Jean-Claude Van Damme is remembered fondly mostly as camp, and 2009’s The Legend of Chun-Li is barely remembered at all. What people return to is the 1994 Japanese animated film Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie, with its fluid, brutal fight scenes.
Putting hand-drawn flashbacks into the new film is a way of borrowing that credibility, and of telling longtime players that the people making it know their history. It also solves a real storytelling problem: showing young Ryu and Ken without de-ageing effects or recasting.
Our take on the clip
At just over two minutes, the featurette is a teaser rather than a deep dive, and it does its job. The animation looks warm and deliberately retro, closer to a 1990s cel look than to modern anime, and the contrast with the live-action footage is striking.
The risk is tonal whiplash. Switching styles can feel like two films stitched together if the transitions are clumsy, and a trailer cannot tell us how well it plays across a full running time. The comments underneath capture the mood neatly: plenty of excitement, and a running joke that viewers would happily pay to see the entire film animated.
The cast, meanwhile, is unusually eclectic, mixing actors with wrestlers and musicians: Andrew Koji and Noah Centineo lead, with Callina Liang, Jason Momoa, David Dastmalchian, Roman Reigns, Cody Rhodes, Orville Peck and 50 Cent among the ensemble.
Whether this is the Street Fighter film that finally works will be clear from October 16. The animated sequences, at least, suggest the filmmakers understand what fans loved in the first place.
Further reading
- Street Fighter (2026 film) — Wikipedia
- Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie — Wikipedia
- Titmouse, Inc. — Wikipedia
- Street Fighter — Wikipedia
Image: 空練, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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