Street Fighter Opens to Rotten Reviews. Can the Fans Save It?
Street Fighter opens in theaters today, and the first thing it did was lose the critics. The review embargo lifted Thursday morning, and Rotten Tomatoes has the film sitting in the 30s to 40s, depending on when you look and who you ask. Fans who saw it early told a different story.
Two audiences, two verdicts
The early social reactions, posted before the embargo, were mostly warm. Reactors praised the fight scenes, the 2D animated flashbacks, and the leads: Andrew Koji as Ryu and Noah Centineo as Ken. Cody Rhodes' Guile got a lot of laughs. The complaints were just as consistent: juvenile humor, a muddled third act, and an ending several people called "sequel bait."
The scores don't agree with each other yet. One outlet had it at 38% on Rotten Tomatoes and 45 on Metacritic; another tracked it from a 28% debut up to 41%, then 47%. Early scores move as more reviews land, so treat any single number with suspicion for a few days.
The money question
Thursday previews came in around $4 million, per Deadline. That's behind Mortal Kombat II, which made $5.2 million in previews in May and opened to $38.5 million, but ahead of the first Sonic the Hedgehog, which started with $3 million in 2020. Projections for this weekend are all over the place, from about $22 million to $43 million, with $30 million the figure Variety was using.
The budget is the pressure point. One report puts the net cost at $82 million, split between Legendary and Capcom. That's a very different bet from a mid-budget genre film. It needs the fans to show up twice, or to bring friends.
Why it still matters
Video game movies used to be judged on a curve: was it better than the 1994 Street Fighter? That bar has moved. Director Kitao Sakurai, who took the job after Danny and Michael Philippou left the project, is being measured against Mortal Kombat II's numbers, not Van Damme's. I haven't seen it yet, so I'm reading the room rather than reviewing it, and the room says campy, referential and light on story.
My read: this sounds like a movie for people who already love the roster, and a week of audience scores will tell us more than the critics did. If the Sunday number lands near $30 million, a sequel conversation is plausible. If it lands near $22 million, the "sequel bait" ending starts to look like wishful thinking.
Noah Centineo, who plays Ken. Photo: MC2 Ace Foster / U.S. Navy, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Featured image (Cody Rhodes, who plays Guile): diegofernandophotography / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.