Hadouken!

Street Fighter (2026) – 3.5/5

I saw a trailer, thought it was fun, and wanted to go watch the movie before reviews came in to tell me otherwise. Since the most recent Spider-Man, I've been entranced by the idea that the newest metric to judge movies is 'does it surprise me?' With information and opinions and critiques and criticisms so easily and eagerly arrived at, the possibility of just going into something blind and being amazed by the bright lights, to determine in real time what it is or is not, is my new luxury. This was fun!! I find this out mere hours before a cascading series of reviews tells me this movie is bad. Sigh. For me, this movie is the heir apparent to 1995's 'Mortal Kombat'; silly and serious, characters summed up by a name and cool costume, a mix of tortured backgrounds and just living for fun, and a not-quite-a-tournament where most of the cool fighting actually happens to the left and right of it. A childhood id relishing in its toys. I think we'll look back many years from now and see 'Kung Fu Hustle' as the ferryman of a new world of creators. Born on Looney Tunes, now anime, using the tricks of those forms and then just applying it to the real world because why the fuck not. If it exists within the realm of possible, bring it on. I see AI videos these days that delight in the fact that they could not exist in the real world, and I think "this is the new world of entertainment to come." Silly ideas, taken to their extremes, based in the world we know but absolutely not the world we know. Pushing against the walls of familiarity. The point is to see how far you can take it before it breaks. The movie does break; David Dastmalchian is wildly miscast, there's I swear like 5 to 10 minutes that are just straight up missing from the movie, and there's about three or four too many things than it can handle, but it treats the world of play as a serious endeavor, and I can do nothing but appreciate that.