The Street Fighter movie is coming next month, and Legendary Pictures and Paramount are leaning into its camp retro vibe with what's being billed as a world first. The new Street Fighter trailer is also a playable game.
The trailer bombards us with combat scenes from the movie and enough of Chun-Li to appease fans. But as well as being able to sit back and watch the silliness (below), we can also play along and try to keep up with the action by performing famous special attacks like hadoukens and shoryukens (also see our pick of the best retro game consoles).
As well as the traditional trailer above, Legendary has posted a YouTube Playable. You can't influence the action, but you can imagine you're performing the combos that appear on screen by following the instructions to complete the corresponding combinations of joystick swivels and button presses on a virtual arcade machine. Retro on-screen graphics tell you whether you scored a hit or failed to execute the combo in time.
The playable trailer reflects a shift in digital advertising, with brands seeking interaction rather than exposure alone. Movie trailers have remained largely unchanged for decades. Whether in cinemas, on television, or on YouTube, the audience's role has been passive, but this is a clear example of how advertising is evolving from something audiences watch into something they do and share.
By inviting viewers to perform Street Fighter combos while the trailer unfolds, the campaign makes engagement part of the marketing. Instead of views, participation becomes the most valuable metric. Someone who spends three or four minutes actively playing a trailer is far more engaged than someone who watches 30 seconds and scrolls away.
By giving players a final score, the trailer also creates reasons to replay and to share the experience with others. It's a win for YouTube too since the YouTube Playable format keeps users on the platform rather than sending them elsewhere.
For reaching the gen Z and alpha audiences, advertising has become not just about telling a story but inviting the viewer to be part of it. Street Fighter's a perfect movie to test the idea given that it was inspired by an interactive experience. It's very silly, but itf it's deemed a success, we may look back at it as one of the first widely visible examples of the playable trailer as a mainstream marketing format.
It's interesting to imagine how other trailers could become experiences. Imagine campaigns where horror movies challenge viewers to survive a short interactive scenario, detective films hide clues across trailers and social media and sci-fi films offer short interactive worlds to explore, building on the idea of Pixar's clever Hoppers live stream.
The Street Fighter movie will be released on 16 October.
