In the 1994 Street Fighter movie, Ryu and Ken aren’t mystical warrior-rivals so much as two semi-competent hustlers who took one wrong gig. They show up as small-time con men posing as arms dealers, trying to scam Sagat and immediately getting in way over their heads. Instead of wandering the earth seeking enlightenment, they’re wandering the plot looking for a way not to get murdered.Their failed scam lands them in prison, where Guile ropes them into an undercover plan, so they basically stumble into heroism because “help the good guys” is slightly better than “die in a warlord’s dungeon.”Throughout the movie, they function as the scruffy, human side of all the cartoon chaos. Ryu is the slightly more grounded one; Ken is all mouth and impulse, the guy who starts trouble and then looks at Ryu like, “Okay, your turn to fix this.” They bounce between Sagat, Vega, and eventually Bison, acting as a bridge between the military heroes and the criminal underworld, pushing the story forward mostly by messing up and then trying to fix it.By the end, though, they’ve drifted from selfish schemers into reluctant good guys, throwing punches on the right side of the final battle—two idiots who tried to make fast money and accidentally joined a revolution.
AI
