Street Fighter has released another round of footage, and this time the movie is finally showing the conflict hiding underneath all those Hadoukens.
Paramount Pictures and Legendary Entertainment have unveiled a brand-new trailer for the 2026 live-action adaptation of Capcom’s legendary fighting-game franchise, offering the clearest look yet at the relationship between Ryu and Ken Masters.
And apparently, being best friends does not prevent them from trying to punch each other through walls.
Andrew Koji stars as Ryu alongside Noah Centineo as Ken, with the new trailer immediately establishing that the two fighters share considerably more history than a friendly arcade rivalry.
They were once close.
Almost brothers.
Now something has gone wrong.
Ken openly admits that he has spent years living in Ryu’s shadow, while their reunion quickly escalates into a brutal fight.
Ryu eventually launches one of Street Fighter’s most iconic attacks.
Hadouken.
Ken goes flying.
So much for catching up over drinks.
Their fractured relationship becomes the emotional centre of the new footage.
Ryu appears to have walked away from competitive fighting entirely, attempting to follow a different path after reaching the top of the martial arts world.
Ken has done almost the opposite.
He wants to prove himself.
And the World Warrior Tournament offers exactly the opportunity he has been waiting for.
Then Chun-Li arrives.
Callina Liang plays the legendary Interpol officer and fighter, who recruits Ryu and Ken into the international tournament while warning that something much more dangerous is happening behind the competition.
Ryu initially refuses.
He does not want to return to the life he has left behind.
That changes when Chun-Li tells him Ken is in trouble.
Whatever resentment exists between them, Ryu is clearly not prepared to abandon his former friend.
That sends him into the World Warrior Tournament.
And from there, the trailer essentially becomes a live-action Street Fighter II cabinet brought to life.
Hirooki Goto’s E. Honda gets one of the biggest showcase moments.
Ryu enters a traditional bathhouse arena and suddenly finds himself opposite the enormous sumo wrestler.
Honda launches his signature Sumo Headbutt before unleashing the Hundred Hand Slap, recreating one of the most recognisable attacks from the games.
Ryu responds with his own familiar arsenal, including a spinning Tatsumaki attack.
The sequence is important because it demonstrates how directly director Kitao Sakurai is willing to embrace the mechanics of the source material.
Street Fighter is not attempting to explain away impossible martial-arts techniques.
Characters throw energy projectiles.
They perform attacks named in video games decades ago.
Fight announcer-style callouts including “Round 1” and “You win!” appear throughout the footage.
The movie seems completely comfortable behaving like Street Fighter.
That confidence extends to Chun-Li.
The new trailer gives Callina Liang considerably more combat footage, showcasing the speed and powerful kicking style associated with the character.
Engadget described the footage as cinematic maximalism filled with colour, sweat and deliberately impossible moves — an approach that may ultimately prove much smarter than trying to transform Street Fighter into grounded realism.
Then there is Guile.
WWE star Cody Rhodes brings the American military fighter to the screen, complete with the impossible blond flat-top that has been part of the character’s identity for more than three decades.
The new footage gives Guile a much more visible personality than earlier marketing.
He appears alongside Andrew Schulz’s Dan Hibiki, adding another layer of knowingly ridiculous humour to a film that increasingly looks comfortable laughing with its source material rather than at it.
Jason Momoa’s Blanka also returns.
There was probably never going to be a subtle way to transform Momoa into a huge green electrically charged fighter from the Brazilian jungle, so Street Fighter wisely appears to have abandoned subtlety altogether.
Blanka looks enormous.
Wild.
And unmistakably like Blanka.
David Dastmalchian plays M. Bison, the central villain whose World Warrior Tournament appears to hide a much larger conspiracy.
The tournament therefore functions as more than an excuse to place every famous Street Fighter character inside one arena.
Bison is collecting some of the strongest fighters in the world.
Exactly what he intends to do with them remains unclear.
But Chun-Li is already suspicious.
And the trailer suggests Ryu may be particularly valuable.
Because something is happening inside him.
The closing moments offer one of the biggest new reveals in the entire campaign.
Ryu talks about a darkness growing within him.
His eyes turn red.
A strange purple energy begins forming in his hands.
For longtime Street Fighter fans, the implication is immediate.
The movie appears to be introducing the Satsui no Hado — the destructive power associated with Ryu’s darker potential and with Akuma.
In the games, surrendering completely to that murderous energy can transform Ryu into the character commonly known as Evil Ryu.
The trailer stops short of formally naming that transformation.
But it is clearly teasing something extremely close to it.
That becomes even more significant because Roman Reigns is playing Akuma.
Akuma does not resist the Satsui no Hado.
He embraces it.
That creates an obvious potential connection between the two characters as Ryu begins struggling with the same destructive force.
The trailer briefly shows Akuma fighting Joe, played by former UFC featherweight champion Alexander Volkanovski, providing another glimpse of the increasingly enormous combat roster.
And enormous may be the only reasonable description.
Street Fighter also features Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson as Balrog, Orville Peck as Vega, Olivier Richters as Zangief, Vidyut Jammwal as Dhalsim, Mel Jarnson as Cammy, Rayna Vallandingham as Juli and Eric André as tournament announcer Don Sauvage.
Andrew Schulz plays Dan Hibiki — complete with his pink gi.
Almost every frame appears designed to contain something recognisable from Capcom’s games.
That makes the film feel dramatically different from Hollywood’s first attempt to adapt Street Fighter.
The infamous 1994 movie starring Jean-Claude Van Damme as Guile and Raul Julia as M. Bison became a cult favourite, but it treated large portions of the source material very loosely.
The 2009 film Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li tried another approach and failed to establish a lasting franchise.
The 2026 version appears to have learned a very simple lesson.
If you are making Street Fighter, make Street Fighter.
Hadoukens should look like Hadoukens.
Honda should perform the Hundred Hand Slap.
Ken should throw a Shoryuken.
Guile should have absurd hair.
Blanka should be green.
And somebody should eventually shout something that sounds like it belongs inside an arcade machine.
Director Kitao Sakurai seems more interested in translating the energy of the games than apologising for it.
That philosophy also fits the film’s setting.
Street Fighter takes place in 1993, right in the middle of the era when Street Fighter II had transformed arcades around the world.
That period allows the movie to embrace the colours, music, fashion and competitive atmosphere surrounding fighting-game culture without pretending the franchise appeared in the modern world yesterday.
The marketing campaign is doing the same thing.
The new trailer was launched as part of the global World Warrior Tour, which kicked off in Tokyo on September 1.
Paramount also released a separate playable trailer experience through YouTube Playables, transforming footage from the film into a miniature arcade-style game where viewers can perform attacks and combos themselves.
But while that experiment focuses on interactivity, this new conventional trailer focuses on story.
Ryu and Ken are not simply two famous characters placed beside one another.
They have history.
Ken resents living in Ryu’s shadow.
Ryu is attempting to escape the fighter he used to be.
Chun-Li needs both of them.
M. Bison is manipulating the tournament.
And something inside Ryu may be more dangerous than any opponent standing across the arena.
Street Fighter arrives exclusively in theaters on October 16, 2026.
Round one is getting very close.
Watch the new trailer below.
