Is 2026 a big year for gamers/cinephiles, or what? I’ve already talked about how this was probably the biggest year ever for video game movies…but also that I had some reservations. Case in point, one of those reservations was Mortal Kombat II, which I thought was just okay upon a first viewing. Now, I also had high hopes for The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, which I didn’t love at first. However, upon a rewatch, I liked it quite a bit. So, I was hoping the same would happen for Mortal Kombat II now that it’s streaming with an HBO Max subscription, but nope. Nothing doing. The rewatch didn’t help. In fact, it actually now makes me worry about the upcoming Street Fighter movie. Here’s why. (Image credit: Legendary Pictures)I Hope Street Fighter Doesn’t Have The Same “Pick A Damn Protagonist” Problem That Mortal Kombat II HasWhen I first saw the Street Fighter trailer, I was in love. Honestly, it was everything I could have ever wanted. It looked goofy, had moves from the game, and characters galore. However, after rewatching Mortal Kombat II, it kind of makes me rethink that last one about the characters, because maybe that’s not such a good thing after all. I’ll explain. Mortal Kombat II actually has a problem in that it doesn’t seem to know who the main protagonist is. This didn’t really bother me the first time watching it, but it bugged the hell out of me the second time. You could say that Kitana (Adeline Rudolph) is the definitive protagonist of the film, but it really does feel like Johnny Cage (Karl Urban) is who the film is actually leaning toward. In the end, it feels like neither of them really takes center stage. I now worry about this for the Street Fighter movie. The trailer makes it seem like Ken is the main character (Noah Centineo), but is he really? Ryu (Andrew Koji) also looks to have a “finding himself” journey going on here, as does Chun-Li (Callina Liang). I’ll be impressed if they somehow manage to focus on one character and give the other two actors suitable screen time (like the 1995 Mortal Kombat film did with Johnny Cage and Sonya Blade), but I don’t know. MKII has me kind of spooked on that front now. (Image credit: Legendary Pictures)At The Same Time, I Worry That Some Of The Best Characters Will Be Relegated To The SidelinesNow here’s a Catch-22 for you. On one hand, I’m worried that the upcoming Street Fighter movie isn’t going to focus on one particular character. On the other hand, I’m concerned that some of my favorite characters won’t really get their time to shine, like Cody Rhodes playing Guile. Guile has always been one of my mains (Dhalsim, too) when playing Street Fighter, but I have a feeling that he’ll be more of a background character in this film, sort of like how Jax and Raiden were like background characters in Mortal Kombat II. This is a problem for me, because when you have a lot of characters in one movie, you usually run into the “too many” characters issue. Like, what about E. Honda? Is he going to have much of a presence in this film? What about Roman Reigns as Akuma? I mean, this movie has Akuma AND M. Bison. So, who’s the big bad then? In Mortal Kombat II, we had both Shang Tsung (Chin Han) and Shao Khan (Martyn Ford), but the former gets completely lost in the story. I don’t want that to happen to Akuma OR M. Bison, but I fear one of them is going to get overshadowed.Really, what it all comes down to is that these two movies seem to have more in common than I initially thought, and that’s putting a bit of a pause (button) on my enthusiasm for Street Fighter. Well, I guess I’ll just have to wait until October 16th to see if my concerns were warranted or not.