In retrospect, I don’t know what I was expecting Jason Momoa’s Blanka to look like in the upcoming live-action Street Fighter movie. In the games the green, electricity-wielding mutant has such an inhuman design that, whether you’re trying to recreate it using practical effects or with CGI, you’re probably gonna get something that looks a little off as long as you’re aiming for some semblance of realism. Now, we’ve gotten our best look at the guy yet in a new clip of him fighting Andrew Koji’s Ryu and er, he looks kinda cursed, I can’t lie.
The cast of the new Street Fighter is pretty weird, with folks like rapper 50 Cent and an anti-woke online personality playing some of the oddballs who populate the roster of Capcom’s fighting games. Momoa is definitely one of the bigger names in the cast, and even if the CG mashup of his likeness and Blanka’s green skin could give me nightmares, he’s committing to the bit here as he and Koji go at it in some honest-to-god street fighting.
The two are duking it out in what appears to be a shady prison cage match, so the scene itself isn’t exactly well-lit, which only contributes to this version of Blanka looking like a child’s sleep paralysis demon. Maybe we’ll see him elsewhere in the movie and it will look less uncanny.
Street Fighter is coming to theaters on October 16. Though the movie has a big ensemble cast, it seems Ryu and Ken will be the major players and the two rivals seem to be going through a rough patch.