RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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See the full story · 2 sourcesListen Thread Add Us Link copied to clipboard By Elijah Gonzalez Published Jul 30, 2026, 11:25 AM EDT News Momoa's is going full goofball
The Street Fighter movie trailer oozes style in an impressively faithful recreation of the games There's still hope that Tom Holland's Spider-Man and Tom Hardy's Venom will finally meet, movie producers say 8 years later, Spider-Man: Brand New Day brings back an abandoned Avenger Street Fighter movie's latest trailer shows Jason Momoa's very strange take on Blanka Street Fighter Sign in to your Polygon.com account Paramount Pictures and Legendary just released a new trailer for the upcoming Street Fighter movie , and it is something else. The teaser gives us our first real look at Jason Momoa’s Blanka, and it seems the movie is leaning into a more murderous and somewhat unsettling version of the character.
After Ryu (Andrew Koji) is trapped in a cage fight orchestrated by M. Bison (David Dastmalchian), the world-traveling martial artist is forced to battle Blanka, who comes across like a completely feral monster who murders people for fun. Blanka drags a prisoner into his chamber, electrocuting them with his signature lightning abilities. The sequence uses Street Fighter 2 's cartoonish X-ray effect as the victim is zapped to a crisp. Then, this green monster man does the character's much-despised Blanka Ball attack.
While Ryu tries to reason with the creature by saying he doesn’t want to fight, Jason Momoa delivers an outright bizarre delivery of the line: “Then you die. OK?” It kind of sounds like a heightened take on the character’s voice in Street Fighter 6 . If it wasn’t clear before, the trailer makes it seem like director Kitao Sakurai’s film will be very campy, which is probably the right call instead of a self-serious take. This series features a giant Russian man who attacks with bear hugs and a Tarzan-type with inexplicable lightning powers, so silliness is built into the premise.
In the original Street Fighter 2 lore, Blanka was originally a boy named Jimmy whose plane crashed in the Amazon rainforest. There he was mutated by electric eels (the specifics aren't really explained because this is a fighting game, not Shakespeare), and became a green monster man with lightning powers. While earlier versions of the character make him come across as a bit malicious, more recent takes have leaned into a more goofy vibe. In Street Fighter 5 and 6 , Blanka sells plushies themed after himself and attempts to bring tourism to his village to help his mom.
At worst, it seems like the Street Fighter movie may end up being an interesting sort of mess. It’s certainly going for it, including fairly one-to-one versions of these characters’ cartoonish moves and heaps of homages. Fourteen seconds into the Blanka trailer, there’s a cameo by prominent fighting game player and YouTuber Maximilian Dood, showing those helming the film have a bit of ball knowledge. We’ll see if that expertise fully pans out when the film hits theaters on Oct. 16.
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