Jason Momoa looks like he had an absolute blast playing Blanka, based on the newest Street Fighter trailer. The footage puts Momoa’s Blanka up against Andrew Koji’s Ryu, with the tagline “The beast is unleashed” attached, which is about as understated as this movie has been so far. Street Fighter hits theaters on October 16.
Momoa’s voice work is a good fit for the character, which wasn’t a given for a role that could have gone in plenty of wrong directions. There also appears to be a Maximilian Dood cameo in the footage, which makes a lot of sense given how much he’s contributed to the fighting game community over the years.
When Paramount Pictures and Legendary Entertainment dropped the first full trailer back in April, I said it looked absolutely ridiculous and silly, and that this might be exactly what a new-age Street Fighter adaptation needs. Nothing in this trailer changes that. The film is set in 1993 and follows estranged Street Fighters Ryu and Ken Masters (Noah Centineo) after Chun-Li (Callina Liang) pulls them into the next World Warrior Tournament. Kitao Sakurai directs from a screenplay he co-wrote with T. J. Fixman, and the cast runs deep well past Momoa, with David Dastmalchian as M. Bison, Cody Rhodes as Guile, 50 Cent as Balrog, Roman Reigns as Akuma, and Orville Peck as Vega.
It’ll be interesting to see how Street Fighter actually performs once it arrives in October. I thought Mortal Kombat II was a fun enough watch, but it appears to have underperformed in theaters.
