Put on your gis and gloves, fighting fans, because Street Fighter is now in theaters. The latest attempt to adapt the venerated fighting game franchise for the big screen may not be getting off to the best start with critics, but fans of the series will likely go check it out for themselves. The film does have its positive aspects, such as the gorgeous 2D animation used for flashback sequences as well as plenty of easter eggs and fighting moves ripped right from the classic games. But as a whole, Street Fighter is too slapdash to be a fully satisfying cinematic experience, and one of the biggest reasons why is that the film doesn’t use the seemingly obvious way to structure itself.

Street Fighter is a game about a fighting tournament, and while there is technically a tournament in the film, it isn’t the main focus. In fact, the movie goes out of its way to make the tournament feel like a largely incidental part of the plot, and this hurts the movie in more ways than one. What makes this even more bizarre is that this is a mistake that Mortal Kombat already made in the 2021 reboot, but the filmmakers behind Street Fighter didn’t learn the lesson from their fellow fighting franchise. How did this happen? Let’s take a look.

Street Fighter may be the first movie in this new continuity, but it takes its cast and premise from the second game, Street Fighter II. This is a smart move, since not only is Street Fighter II the most famous game in the franchise, but the first entry is commonly considered to be a well-meaning prototype for a series that didn’t fully come together until the sequel.

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