The first wave of reactions to Paramount Pictures’ Street Fighter is in, and the verdict is a classic “it’s complicated.” According to The Hollywood Reporter, early social media posts from premiere and advance screening attendees are mixed: some are calling it a fun, nostalgic ’90s throwback packed with strong action, while others say it “falls flat” thanks to weak dialogue and humor. So does it deliver? Depends on which corner of the ring you ask.
What happened at the premiere
Street Fighter held its Los Angeles premiere on Monday, October 12, 2026, The Hollywood Reporter reported. Paramount also ran a series of advance screenings, and attendees were cleared to post brief social media reactions, which the outlet rounded up and published on October 14, 2026.
The takeaways broke neatly into two camps. On one side, people who left the theater grinning about the fight choreography and the retro vibe. The film is set in 1993, and plenty of viewers apparently found that period setting a cozy fit for a franchise that defined so many arcade afternoons. On the other side, people who felt the movie stumbled whenever characters stopped punching and started talking. Weak dialogue and humor were the recurring complaints, per The Hollywood Reporter.
That’s a pretty familiar shape for a video game adaptation. The action is the easy part to get right when you have a cast built like this one. The banter is harder. We’ll find out soon which side of the ledger wins, because full critics’ reviews were scheduled to drop on October 14, 2026, the same day the first reactions went live, with the film hitting theaters on October 16, 2026.
The cast, the crew and how it came together
Let’s talk about this lineup, because it is genuinely stacked. Andrew Koji plays Ryu and Noah Centineo plays Ken Masters, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Callina Liang is Chun-Li. Roman Reigns is Akuma. Cody Rhodes is Guile. Jason Momoa is Blanka. David Dastmalchian is M. Bison. 50 Cent is Balrog. Andrew Schulz is Dan Hibiki. And Orville Peck, yes, the masked country singer, is Vega. Two WWE superstars, a rapper, a comedian and a cowboy crooner in one fighting roster. Somebody at the casting office was having a very good time.
Kitao Sakurai directs, and he’s known for Beef and Bad Trip, which tells you the humor was clearly meant to be a feature, not an afterthought. The screenplay comes from Dalan Musson, whose credits include Captain America: Brave New World, and Gary Dauberman, the writer behind Annabelle, It and The Nun. Horror and superhero pedigrees combining for a 1993 street brawl is an unusual recipe, which makes the split on the dialogue all the more interesting to watch play out in the full reviews.
The movie is adapted from Capcom’s iconic video game franchise, produced by Legendary Entertainment as a co-production with Capcom, and distributed by Paramount Pictures.
The project has been on fans’ radar for a while. Deadline first reported in May 2025 that Jason Momoa, Andrew Koji, Noah Centineo and Roman Reigns were in early talks to star in Street Fighter for Legendary Entertainment, a story The Hollywood Reporter later confirmed. The first official trailer then debuted at The Game Awards 2025, which gave the gaming crowd its first real look at the Ryu and Ken dynamic on the big screen.
Centineo’s early review was, unsurprisingly, glowing
Before anyone outside the studio had seen a frame, Noah Centineo was already doing his part to set expectations. Screen Rant reported that Centineo offered a glowing early review of the film during an appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast ahead of the release.
His favorite endorsement didn’t come from a critic, though. It came from a Paramount security guard who got to see the movie. “He grew up breathing this game, and he was over the moon,” Centineo said, via Screen Rant.
Is a security guard a reliable critic? Not officially. But a lifelong Street Fighter fan being thrilled is exactly the reaction a movie like this wants to generate, and it tracks with the half of the early reactions praising the nostalgia and the action. The other half, the folks wincing at the dialogue, are the ones the full reviews will need to answer.
What’s next
The timeline here is tight. Premiere on Monday, first reactions and full reviews on Tuesday, theaters on Friday, October 16, 2026. That’s a fast sprint from “nobody has seen it” to “everybody can see it.”
The split early buzz leaves the door open in both directions. If the action really is as strong as the fans at the premiere say, Street Fighter could ride that goodwill and its enormous cast to a loud opening weekend. If the dialogue complaints hold up once professional critics weigh in, the conversation may shift to whether the fights alone are enough.
Either way, the early returns suggest this is a movie that knows exactly what the arcade crowd came for: Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, a few wrestlers and a very large green man, all throwing hands in 1993. Whether the words in between the hadoukens land is the question the rest of the week will answer.
