Street Fighter: How to explain an ending when there isn't one?

Street Fighter is in theaters right now, so that's our ending explained... or should we say, endlessly unexplained. Also, are there any post-production scenes in the new movie?

Let's make it simple: you want to know if there are any mid-credits or post-credits scenes in Street Fighter. The answer is yes, because the film has an animated scene with average credit.

Street Fighter returns to the big screen this week with the third live-action incarnation of the popular video game series after attempts in 1994 and 2009. Was the third time the charm? Well, as Tom Jorgensen points out in his Street Fighter review for IGN, not exactly, though it's certainly superior to The Legend of Chun-Li.

So how did things go in this tour? The story this time focuses on old friends Ken (Noah Centineo) and Rio (Andrew Koji) who, after years apart, are both recruited by Chun-Li (Kalina Liang) for the second round of the World Warrior Tournament, presented by the shadowy dictator M. Beason (David Dastmalchian).

Soon, the world's best fighters gather in Shadalo, even though Bison has ulterior motives for holding the tournament at all, as his main goal is to get Ryu—the winner of a previous World Warrior—to discharge his "Hado Power" (which gives Ryu the rare ability to create a Hadoken).

So how was the competition held? And who was holding Hado until the end? And why is Street Fighter so flawed as a movie? Let's dive into the spoiler zone!

To be fair, it's a deliberate plot point that the tournament is all a ruse for Bison's larger plan, something Ken himself doesn't want to admit at first because it's so important to him. But still, the way the matches are handled in Street Fighter also feels odd, as it often feels like an afterthought on the screen rather than a simple but effective way to deliver more engaging one-on-one combat in a Street Fighter movie.

Ken gets at least two big matches in the tournament, as he first faces Balrog (Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson) and then Dahlsim (Vidyut Jammwal), emerging victorious both times, sending him to the finals. But then there are fights that are completely insanely off-screen, as Guile (Cody Rhodes) gets defeated by Vega (Orville Peck), but we don't see a second of that, just the aftermath, as we're told Vega won and we see big triple cuts on Guile's face. And yet, it's somewhat better than the Zangief (Olivier Richter) vs. Dahlsim matchup, which isn't even mentioned verbally, but is only available as information via quick flashes on the World Warrior board screen. Dhalsim at least gets to do a bit more in the movie, but poor Zangif is strangely out of sight for the entire tournament, never to be seen again after a gang fight that all attends a club the night before the tournament begins. We never see him in a formal fight, we never see him lose, and we never see him leave. He just ghosts the movie.

Ken never shows up for the final fight...that means Joe never has a fight but is still the official winner of the World Warrior Championship!

Come on, Street Fighter filmmakers, if you don't want to give these other fights their entire scene, this is where the power of the fight montage can come in handy!

Then there are the numerous obvious wastes that occur during the matches, which again are intentional thanks to Bison, even if you wonder how frustrating this seems to those who are watching such a huge and internationally popular event. First, because Bison has Ryu captured, he officially lists Ryu as a withdrawal, meaning his opponent, Joe (Alexander Volkanovsky), wins by forfeit. Then Joe's next opponent, Vega, is also out, presumably because he's one of Bison's main henchmen and his boss has something for him closer to home that he can't wait.

So Joe loses all the way to the finals against Ken... except then, Ken never shows up for the final fight because he goes to help save Ryu. Meaning Joe never has a fight, but is still the official World Warrior Championship winner! Which would have been a bit of fun, but Joe is barely shown before his "win", so it doesn't seem to have much resonance, beyond the humor of old Street Fighter fans bringing up Joe's terrible, unplayable original game character like this (albeit briefly).

Going back to the tournament viewership in the world, it's also clear that Ken and Ryu are both well known. The fighters in the film, and indeed on TV, it's hinted at how important it is that they'll both be in the tournament after years apart, with the tantalizing promise of seeing them battle each other. But as we moviegoers watch Ken and Ryu square off in a street brawl, settling their old issues the only way they know how, you have to assume people were pissed off when Ryu wasn't aired in that much-watched tournament. I know Bison is a full-fledged dictator with bigger, more sinister goals, but still, there are going to be some very angry comments and tweets about the whole "No Ryu" debacle.

Interestingly, aside from seeing Ken and Ryu's master Goken (Don Lee) die in the film's animated flashbacks, there's only one named character who meets his end in Street Fighter – and that's Joe.

Yes, poor Joe experiences major ups and downs within minutes as he's declared the winner of the tournament by announcer Don Savage (Eric Andre), only for Akuma (Joe "Roman Reigns" Anoi) to appear out of nowhere to confront the winner. Akuma is unimpressed when he sees Joe, noting that he walks in and assumes he's going to face Ryu, when Joe tries to challenge him, he quickly responds by using his evil power to literally blow Joe up.

Street Fighter seems too busy on the villain front heading into its finale. There is a palpable menace throughout Beeston, who has a cadre of powerful fighters working for him, including Vega, Cami (Mel Jarnson) and Julie (Rayna Wallingham). But then there's Akuma's otherworldly power, which Ryu especially fears, and due to the fact that he himself communicates with the darkness within, he seemed to summon Akuma when Ryu won the last tournament, only for Akuma to kill Goken. But this also means that Ryu is also afraid of himself, as he worries that fighting again will lead to him succumbing to the dark urges that Goken warned him about, and used when he soundly defeated Sagat in the first tournament.

So how does Street Fighter deal with these three different potential big bads in the form of Akuma, Evil Ryu, and Bison? It's weird, as you might expect when a movie re-releases all of this in the first film in a franchise. After Akuma kills Joe, Ryu arrives to confront him, and Akuma goes Palpatine/Darth Vader by actively encouraging Ryu to use his dark side to let loose in their battle – which is exactly what Ryu ends up doing. Watching this Bison encounter from the empty stands, Ryu's white gay magically turns black as Evil Ryu battles Akuma and is eventually able to overpower him, knocking him out in the process.

That's when Ken, Chun Lee, and Dan Hibiki (Andrew Schulz, a more prominent role than you'd expect from Dan's history) arrive and think it's time to celebrate their friend's victory, but Evil Ryube attacks them as well. Let him at least be more angry than Dan, insulted! But when Evil Ryu is ready to kill them, he suddenly collides with Hadoken! Yes, Ken is finally able to unlock this most special of special moves as well, something we've seen him try and fail to do throughout the film. And Ken's Hadouken is so special that apparently just one was enough to instantly turn Evil Ryu back to good, because Ryu strangely never really had to deal with suppressing the darkness within himself - he just needed his best brother to blast him with blue energy! Hi, if it works, it works, right?

Ken sings "What's Up" when it briefly appears that Ryu has indeed received a fatal blow from Ken. - his and Ryu's favorite song - to his old friend, who eventually gets Ryu to slowly come over and start singing, soon joined by a crying Chun-Li, Don, and even Don Savage, who wakes up from the rubble that was previously knocked over by the Akuma. And hey, kudos to the 4 non-blondes, because "what's up?" It's still a great song 33 years after its release, and between its prominent use in Street Fighter and Masters of the Universe, they're killing it with licensing this year.

Since the whole Evil Ryu deal is easier than you think, that means it's finally time to take on Bison! Except that doesn't happen at all, because the bison and his minions sneak away and take Akuma with them.

Realizing what Bison has now achieved and how he can give him the power he was trying to get from Ryu, Dan asks "Did we make it worse?" Our heroes try to follow, but are stopped by Cami pulling a damn rocket launcher out of Bison's getaway vehicle, which he uses to blow up Wan Chun-Li. So now our heroes have to figure out how to pursue in a different way, structurally a weird move for a movie that already felt like it was nearing its climax, but now there's clearly still a lot left in the game!

... except when the movie just ends. Well, there's one more scene, but it's still weird how Street Fighter doesn't actually deliver. There's a fine line between having a fun sequel after wrapping up your movie's storyline and just not ending and leaving no sense of closure, and Street Fighter definitely crosses that line.

The six Street Fighters get into a very small car and turn up the radio to sing along to "It's Raining Men" and drive off into the distance to the end credits.

The final scene of the film sees Ken, Ryu, Chun Lee, and Dan on the side of the road trying to hitch a ride. And lo and behold, a car pulls up to them with Gileh and Dahlsim inside, who we already learned were both on a mission to stop Beeston at the races... even though we never saw them interfere at all after that. But now they're out to track down the real bison, so they take the rest of the six.

And again, I have to stress, this all feels very strange, as the film seems to stall rather than end properly, completely postponing any kind of confrontation with Beeston—even one that could have been "we'll meet again."

Hell, we never get a fight between Chun-Li and Kami, despite several scenes being used to introduce them as arch-rivals and prepare the audience for an impending showdown. But as it turns out, this is also something that is provided for the future. It's all a rather annoying way to go about things.

After the film's main credits roll at the end, we arrive at a mid-credits scene with fun visuals for the actors that use art and graphics similar to the movie's character posters.

This non-dialogue sequence harkens back to the animated segments that opened Street Fighter and was used for flashbacks throughout the film. The opening sequence showed Ryu defeating Sagat in the first World Warrior Tournament - a prominent character from the game who was noticeably absent from the live-action portions of the film, but only after he tapped into his Evil Ryu powers and ripped open Sagat's chest with a mystically powered punch.

The mid-credits scene shows Sagat again, years later, now bearing the familiar large scar from the games on his upper body, the result of Ryu's actions. Sagat is seen using his martial arts skills to knock down a palm tree, as one of them does, only for him to turn around to find a bison floating in front of him, with Vega, Julie, and Cami flanking him.

This is obviously a set-up for Sagat to join Team Bison in a potential Street Fighter sequel, while Sagat only being seen as an animation with no dialogue also means that they still have the flexibility to cast whoever they want as the character next time, and don't have to conform to anything specific here on the live-action front. And probably Sagat will now seek revenge on Rio…