Street Fighter’s Non-Ending Explained

Going back to the in-universe viewership of the tournament, it also stands out that Ken and Ryu are both well known fighters in the film, and it’s actually mentioned on TV what a big deal it is that they’ll both be in the tournament after years of separation, complete with the tantalizing promise of getting to see them battle one another. But while we moviegoers do get to see Ken and Ryu fight in an alley brawl at one point, working their old issues out the only way they know how, you gotta assume folks were pissed when Ryu was a no show at that heavily publicized tournament. I know Bison is a full-on dictator with bigger, more ominous goals, but still, there’s gonna be some super pissed-off comments and tweets about the whole “No Ryu” debacle.

Pour One Out for Joe

Amusingly, outside of seeing the death of Ken and Ryu’s master, Gouken (Don Lee), in the film’s animated flashbacks, there’s only one named character who meets their end in Street Fighter – and it’s the one and only Joe.

Yes, poor Joe gets to experience some major highs and lows in a matter of minutes, as he’s declared the winner of the tournament by announcer Don Sauvage (Eric André), only for Akuma (Joe “Roman Reigns” Anoa’i) to appear out of nowhere and demand to face the winner. Unimpressed when he sees Joe, given he arrived assuming he’d be facing Ryu, Akuma is also quick to respond when Joe tries to challenge him, using his demonic powers to literally blow Joe up.

RIP, Joe.

A Triple Threat of Big Bads

Street Fighter seems overly busy on the villain front as it heads towards its conclusion. There’s the obvious threat throughout the film of Bison, who’s got a cadre of formidable fighters working for him, including Vega, Cammy (Mel Jarnson), and Juli (Rayna Vallandingham). But then there’s the otherworldly power of Akuma, who Ryu is particularly fearful of, haunted by the fact that it was his own dabbling with an inner darkness that seemed to call to Akuma when Ryu won the last tournament, only for Akuma to kill Gouken. But that means Ryu is also fearful of himself, since he is worried that fighting again will lead to him succumbing to the dark urges Gouken warned him about, and which he tapped into when he violently defeated Sagat in the first tournament.

So how does Street Fighter juggle these three different potential big bads in the form of Akuma, Evil Ryu and Bison? Awkwardly, as you might expect when a movie is packing all of this into the very first film in a relaunched franchise. After Akuma kills Joe, Ryu arrives to confront him, and Akuma goes very Palpatine/Darth Vader by actively encouraging Ryu to use his dark side to unleash in their battle – which is exactly what Ryu eventually does. With Bison watching this confrontation from the arena’s otherwise empty stands, Ryu’s white gi magically turns black, as Evil Ryu battles Akuma and is eventually able to overpower him, knocking him out in the process.

That’s when Ken, Chun-Li and Dan Hibiki (Andrew Schulz, in a role way more prominent than Dan’s game history would ever have you expect) arrive, thinking it’s time to celebrate their friend’s victory, only for Evil Ryu to attack them too. He completely incapacitates both Dan and Chun-Li with one hit each, which is pretty insulting to Chun-Li; let her at least get in more offense than freaking Dan! But when Evil Ryu seems ready to outright kill them, he’s suddenly hit with a Hadouken! Yes, Ken has finally been able to unlock this most special of special moves too, something we’d seen him try and fail to do throughout the movie. And Ken’s Hadouken is so special that just the one apparently was enough to turn Evil Ryu good again right away, as Ryu oddly never really has to deal with quelling the darkness in himself – he just needed his best bro to blast him with blue energy! Hey, if it works, it works, right?

When it briefly seems Ryu might have actually taken a fatal hit from Ken, Ken sings “What’s Up?” – he and Ryu’s favorite song – to his old buddy, which finally leads Ryu to slowly come to and begin to sing along, soon joined by a tearful Chun-Li, Dan, and even Don Sauvage, who awakens from the rubble he was knocked into earlier by Akuma. And hey, kudos to 4 Non Blonds, because “What’s Up?” remains a great song 33 years after it came out, and between its prominent use in both Street Fighter and Masters of the Universe, they are killing it on licensing this year.

With the whole Evil Ryu deal dealt with easier than one might think, that means it’s finally time to take on Bison! …Except that doesn’t happen at all, because Bison and his goons sneak away, taking the knocked out Akuma with them.

Realizing what Bison now has gotten ahold of, and how it could give him the power he was trying to gain from Ryu, Dan asks “Did we make things worse?” Our heroes try to follow, but are stopped by Cammy pulling out a goddamn rocket launcher from Bison’s fleeing vehicle, which she uses to blow up Chun-Li’s van. So now our heroes have to figure out how to give chase a different way, in what feels like a bit of an odd move structure-wise for a movie that earlier felt like it was nearing its climax, but now clearly still has so much left in play!

The Ending That Isn’t

…Except then the movie just ends. Okay, there’s one more scene, but it’s still bizarre how Street Fighter doesn’t actually offer a conclusion. There’s a line between having a fun sequel tease after you wrap up your film’s main storyline and simply not wrapping up and leaving any sense of closure, and Street Fighter definitely crosses that line.

The film’s final scene finds Ken, Ryu, Chun-Li and Dan on the side of the road, trying to hitchhike. And lo and behold, a car does pull over for them with Guile and Dhalsim inside, who we learned earlier were also both at the tournament on a mission to stop Bison… even though we then never saw them intervene at all after that. But now they’re for real tracking Bison, so they give the others a ride, with the six Street Fighters packing into the too-small car and turning up the radio to sing along to “It’s Raining Men” (sure, why not?) as they drive off into the distance and into the closing credits.

And again, I gotta stress, this all feels super weird, because it just seems like the movie stops rather than properly ends, completely putting off any sort of showdown with Bison – even one that could have ended with “We’ll meet again.”

Hell, we never even get any sort of fight between Chun-Li and Cammy, despite several scenes used to set them up as major rivals, priming the audience for an impending showdown. But as it turns out, that too is something that is tabled for the future. All of which is a rather vexing way to have things play out.

The Mid-Credits Scene

After the film’s main credits play at the end, with fun visuals for the cast that use the same art and graphics as the individual character posters for the film, we cut to a mid-credits scene.

This dialogue-free sequence returns to the animated segments that opened Street Fighter and were used throughout the film for flashbacks. The opening sequence showed Ryu defeating Sagat – a high-profile game character who was notably absent from the live-action portions of the film – in the first World Warrior tournament, but only after he tapped into his Evil Ryu powers, slicing Sagat’s chest open with a mystically-powered punch up his body.

The mid-credit scene shows Sagat again, years later, and now bearing the familiar large scar from the games up his torso, the result of Ryu’s actions. Sagat is seen using his martial arts prowess to knock down a palm tree, as one does, only for him to turn to find a floating Bison before him, with Vega, Juli and Cammy at his side.

Obviously, this is a set-up for Sagat to join Bison’s team in a potential Street Fighter sequel, while Sagat only being seen as a dialogue-free animated figure also means they still have the flexibility to cast whoever they wish as the character next time out, not having to match anything specifically established here on the live-action front. And presumably, Sagat would now be seeking revenge against Ryu…

…but also, can they remember they forgot to have Chun-Li and Cammy fight next time and remedy that, please?