The Street Fighter Movie Makes a Mistake Mortal Kombat Already Learned From

Spoilers follow for Street Fighter. 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. Given how important the Mortal Kombat tournament is to the series mythology, the film couldn’t help but make me and many others feel like Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park: “You do plan on having Mortal Kombat in your Mortal Kombat movie, right?” It didn’t work, and much of the fan backlash to the reboot had to do with the movie excising the tournament and making unwelcome changes to MK lore, like the infamous “Arcana” tattoos that provided champions with special powers.