The ‘Street Fighter’ Trailer Won Me Over. This New Clip Didn’t.

I don’t care that this isn’t horror. Ever since the first trailer dropped, I’ve been all in on this new Street Fighter movie. It looked like the filmmakers finally understood what fans have wanted for decades—a live-action adaptation that embraces the games instead of running away from them. The colorful visuals, the faithful costumes, the signature moves—it all felt like a love letter to the franchise, and I walked away convinced they were finally getting Street Fighter right.

Now we’ve got our first actual clip from the film, and…I’m not feeling it.

The scene appears to take place in a prison run by the villainous M. Bison (David Dastmalchian), where Ryu (Andrew Koji) is forced to fight Blanka (Jason Momoa). Before the fight begins, Blanka drags another prisoner in by a chain and fries him with his Electric Thunder move, giving us our first real look at the character in action.

Unfortunately, this is where the clip loses me.

Jason Momoa’s Blanka just looks…bad. The CGI is surprisingly unconvincing, and instead of seeing Blanka, I mostly see Jason Momoa painted green and covered in digital effects. At this point, I’m also getting a little burned out on Momoa showing up in every major franchise. Whether he’s playing Lobo or Blanka, it still just feels like Jason Momoa underneath the makeup.

Ironically, I think they nailed Blanka’s personality. He’s loud, wild, and larger than life, exactly as he should be. But visually, the character comes across as overly cartoonish in a way that clashes with everything else happening in the scene.

That’s especially noticeable when he’s standing opposite Ryu. Ryu looks fantastic. His costume feels grounded, his effects have weight to them, and when he unleashes Hadouken, it actually looks impressive. The problem is that Ryu and Blanca don’t feel like they belong in the same movie. One looks like a grounded martial arts adaptation with stylized visual effects, while the other looks like a fully CGI cartoon character dropped into the middle of it.

It’s a strange clash of visual styles that completely took me out of the clip.