Videogame Cinema: Double Dragon

So far in Videogame Cinema, I’ve looked at a darkly comic cyberpunk movie, a cheesy martial arts movie, and a boring, stupid, convoluted sci-fi movie. Three very different films, but they have one thing in common.

Well besides being bad, and having a slew of production problems, and being nothing like the source material, and having actors and crew with way too much talent for what they were working on. Ok so they have a lot of things in common, but there’s one particular thing I want to highlight. They all came out at or near the peak of their series popularity.

Street Fighter came out when Street Fighter 2 ruled arcades, Final Fantasy the Spirits Within released not long after the highly popular PlayStation 1 trilogy, and Mario, well that’s never stopped being popular, so it didn’t matter when the film came out. So today, I thought I would look at a videogame adaptation that released after its series declined in popularity.

In 1987, Technós Japan would release the game Double Dragon in arcades. The game was a massive hit and would prove to be incredibly influential in the burgeoning beat-em-up genre; mainly thanks to its added depth compared to early games in the genre.

Keep in mind that a lot of early beat-em-ups were extremely basic. Only having basic punches and kicks with maybe an extra jump attack if you were lucky. You couldn’t even move up and down in a lot of early beat-em-ups. They were purely side scrollers.

Double Dragon had a far more varied move list, ranging from basic punch and kick combos, grabs, pin attacks on grounded enemies, head butts and spin kicks. It was also the first beat-em-up to have a greater deal on interactivity in the levels, with various obstacles to avoid and a large selection of weapons and items to pick up, and a belt scrolling style that added more depth, strategy and complexity to the movement.

Granted a lot of the foundations of it were from a previous arcade game called Renegade, but Double Dragon expanded on these ideas greatly and helped make them popular. But its biggest innovation was the introduction of 2-player simultaneous co-op. Something which became synonymous with the genre going forward.

It was such a success for Technós that they would release several sequels and arcade ports to capitalise on it, many of which were very successful in their own right. The NES ports in particular are an important part of that console’s library.

The problem was Technós weren’t exactly the best when it came to franchising their IP’s. Unlike a lot of other companies, Technós were pretty lasses fare when it came to licensing out their games. Even when it came to major releases.

The most infamous example of this was Double Dragon 3. The arcade game wasn’t developed by Technós, it was developed by another company named East Technologies, and it’s considered one of the worst arcades of all time. How bad you ask? Well it was one of the earliest examples of microtransactions put in a videogame. So yeah, it’s pretty bad.

It was so bad that Technós had to do their own Double Dragon 3 on the NES, which was a completely different game. That game also wasn’t that good, but it was a thousand times better than the arcade.

That’s not even getting into all of the ports made by companies outside of Technós that were varying degrees of quality. The end result of all of this was Double Dragon going from one of the biggest arcade hits of the 80’s, to an incredibly mixed bag of a franchise.

The games seemed to peak with Double Dragon 2 and everything after that seemed to decline in quality. Not helped by the series being overshadowed by other beat-em-ups that further innovated on the genre.

By 1989, just two years after the first game, the beat-em-up genre was defined by Final Fight, not Double Dragon. It was never able to keep up and was slowly becoming irrelevant by the early 90’s.

But that didn’t stop Technos from trying to milk the series for all it was worth. From comics, to crossovers with the Battletoads, to a cartoon show that I’m still not convinced wasn’t a fever dream, to games based on said cartoon show, Technós were determined to squeeze as much as they could from this thing.

Which leads us to our subject for today. The 1994 Double Dragon feature film. I’m shocked Hollywood would even attempt to make a Double Dragon movie. Not just because of its lack of relevancy by then, but also because of the stigma attached to videogame movies after Super Mario Bros.

Though to be fair, Double Dragon was in production before that train wreck came out. The film was originally pitched in 1992 by producer Don Murphy. He’s probably best known these days for producing the Transformers film franchise, but at the time he was an up-and-coming producer looking to make a name for himself.

He thought that Double Dragon would make for a good movie. Which seems odd considering how little plot the games had, but they did have plenty of action that could make for a decent action flick. Which was the idea. Murphy and the other producers on the project wanted to make the movie a straightforward martial arts film.

The initial script was written by Paul Dini. Yes, the very same Paul Dini behind Batman the Animated Series and the creator of Harley Quinn. He’s only given a story credit because the script was rewritten multiple times, but the fact that he worked on this at all is weird. But he isn’t the only name attached to this you wouldn’t expect.

One of the people brought in rewrite the script was Peter Gould, who would go on to be the lead script writer of Breaking Bad, and the co-creator and showrunner of Better Call Saul. The guy who wrote Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul worked on the fucking Double Dragon movie. This is real, this is the universe we live in.

For director, Murphy hired James Yukich. Ever heard of him? Can’t say I blame you if you haven’t. He’s a director that mainly worked in advertisements and music videos. In fact, Double Dragon is the only film he ever worked on. That’s not a good sign.

Yukich is also where one of the big problems with the production started. See, while the producers wanted the film to be a martial arts movie made for a more general audience, Yukich wanted to make it a kid’s movie.

Because when I think Double Dragon, a series where you mercilessly beat thugs in the street with trashcans, whips and baseball bats, I think kids’ movie. It was a weird choice, but Yukich was adamant on it. Even hiring comedian Mark Brazill, the same guy who created That 70’s Show, to add more jokes and one liners to the script.

Both sides of the production had disparate visions of what the film should be, and no one voice was able to bring everything together with a cohesive vision. Even Yukich admitted years later that the main problem with the film was a lack of direction.

It also didn’t help that nobody on the films staff knew anything about the game. Nobody had played it, and the only things people knew about it was the basic premise. Technós weren’t even involved in the project, so they had no one on hand to help the movie match what was seen in the games.

Thankfully filming went smoothly, is what I would have said if the original principal photographer hadn’t broken his back in an accident, which cost them a full day of filming trying to get a tricky shot they couldn’t even get in the end. It really wouldn’t be a videogame movie if shit didn’t go wrong behind the scenes would it.

But aside from that, the shoot did go well. Much better than the other films we’ve looked at. Seriously, I only scratched the surface on how bad Street Fighter was. Double Dragon’s production was nothing compared to that shit show.

But the script problems, and lack of a singular vision resulted in a film that was panned by critics and fans alike. Fans hated it for being nothing like the game, and film critics hated it for just being a straight up bad movie.

And yeah, the movie is pretty bad, but it’s bad in the same way that Street Fighter was bad. In that it’s campy, goofy and over the top enough that you can still have fun laughing at it. It’s not on the same level as Street Fighter, not even close, but it is at least the fun kind of bad. Which at this point is all I ask for.

In the far-off future year of 2007, the city of Los Angeles has suffered a major earthquake. Now dubbed New Angeles, the city is suffering with crumbling infrastructure, political and corporate corruption, and an increasing crime rate as the local gangs are overwhelming the under-funded and under prepared police force. Well, it’s good to know the earthquake didn’t affect much.

In the middle of all this are the Lee Brothers, Billy and Jimmy. Two orphans who eke out a living by partaking in martial arts tournaments and live with their guardian Satori in an abandoned theatre.

Unbeknownst to the Lee’s, Satori has in her possession one half of an ancient medallion known as the Double Dragon. An artifact said to give great power to those who have both halves. Which naturally means there’s a big evil guy trying to get it for himself.

Said villain being Koga Shuko. Despite the name he’s not actually Japanese, he’s a white businessman whose real name is Victor Guisman who thinks he’s the reincarnation of a Japanese warlord. He’s basically like Geese Howard from Fatal Fury in that he’s a crime boss weeaboo, although in this case he’s a crime boss weeaboo who looks like Vanilla Ice.

Now the Lee Brothers need to take Shuko down and keep his hands off the medallion. Along the way they beat up a bunch of bad guys, learn a lesson about brotherhood or something, and team up with an underground vigilante group run by a young woman named Marian.

I think it goes without saying that Double Dragon is almost nothing like the games. It wouldn’t be a nineties videogame adaptation if it was. Although this is one of those times where I’m going to give the film a little slack for its inaccuracies. Mainly because the Double Dragon IP was/is a hot mess in terms of continuity.

Remember, Technós were licensing out Double Dragon to anyone who asked for it. Which meant that a lot of Double Dragon media could vary wildly in terms of the plot. Even the story of the individual games could be different depending on the port you were playing.

Basically, Double Dragon didn’t have a set continuity. It doesn’t feel fair to criticise the movie for not being like the games since the games themselves were all over the place. Even with more recent games it still isn’t all that consistent.

And to the film’s credit it does still have elements from the games. Bimmy, Jimmy and Marion are obviously here, but you also have recurring enemies Lash and Abobo from the games too.

Granted they look nothing like their in-game counterparts, with Abobo looking like the unholy love child of Fat Bastard and Jabba the Hut, but Lash uses a whip at least. Also, Abobo has the first name Bo, so his name is Bo Abobo. Makes me think he’s going to fight with his nose hairs.

And the setting of a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles is accurate to the games. Yeah, in Double Dragon lore the games take place after an apocalyptic event. Sometimes, again it’s not very consistent.

Even the Lee Brothers motivation here is somewhat based on the games. They’re after Shuko because he ends up killing Satori, which is similar to the plot of Double Dragon 2 where the Lee’s had to avenge Marion’s death, or near death in some versions. Why are you like this Double Dragon? Dark Souls’ lore is easier to understand than yours.

At least the movie has familiar elements from the game’s fans can recognise. Which is more than you can say for other adaptations we’ve looked at. But there’s more to being a good adaptation than having familiar elements. You also need to have the same spirit as what you’re adapting.

This is where Double Dragon drops the ball. The movie just doesn’t feel like the games. For all the things it kept it’s still missing a fair bit, and the story is nothing like what we’ve seen in the games. There was no mystical medallion, or any supernatural stuff in the games. Well except maybe 3, but it didn’t have much of that stuff.

Then there’s the issue of the films tone. Double Dragon is all over the place as a series, but the games always took themselves somewhat seriously. The second game opens with your girlfriend being gunned down on the streets in cold blood for god’s sake. That’s pretty hardcore for an old school arcade game.

It was a series that took a lot of inspiration from old kung-fu movies, Mad Max, and Fist of The North star, which itself was Mad Max if it was an old kung-fu movie. It could get a little silly at times, but more in an 80’s action movie sort of way.

Double Dragon the movie is silly in a different way. This a full-on cartoon, probably even more so than the actual Double Dragon cartoon. Everything is so much goofier, campier and cheesier than the games. I get this was made more for kids, but that’s also what annoys me most about this.

Double Dragon is the kind of kid’s movie that does not take its audience seriously at all. There’s no character depth or deep moral message, it’s just there for cheap entertainment. I hate these kinds of movies because they treat kids like idiots, and they’re not. Kids are way smarter than people give them credit for and deserve better with their entertainment.

But hey, kids are allowed their cheap entertainment just like adults have their cheap entertainment. So long as it isn’t all they consume I suppose there’s no harm in it. But if you are going to be cheap entertainment, you need to actually be entertaining.

Which Double Dragon isn’t, at least not intentionally. This movie gets so goofy at times that it does become entertaining in its sheer insanity. At one point in the movie the Lee’s are attacked by every gang in the city. It’s a bit like the game when they go through waves of enemies.

But instead of hardened thugs, muscle men, and kung fu masters like you see in the games, the goons here are a bit more… colourful. You’ve got mimes, mail men, guys in school clothes and beanie hats, and people who looked like they walked out of a disco.

These aren’t dangerous thugs, their cast members from the Mickey Mouse Club. It’s so ridiculous I can’t help but laugh at it. When the film is like this it’s great, but when it attempts to be legitimately funny, it fails miserably at it.

The one liners here are worse than a b-grade comic book, and the jokes aren’t much better. It’s some of the most basic shit you can imagine, cheap puns, mugging for the camera, bad slapstick, some mild gross out humour. It’s all very childish, like a bad Nickelodeon sitcom.

I know the movie was made for kids, but I’ve seen other kid’s movies that had far more wit than this. The best kid’s movies have jokes adults can enjoy too. This is purely for a younger audience, and even they would find this all that funny. And that’s a big issue because this is primarily a comedy.

There is action here, but most of the fights are comedic in tone. The closest thing I can compare it to is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 Secret of The Ooze. You know the one where the turtles didn’t use their weapons and had to fight with a bunch of toys. Yeah, this is very similar to that, only somehow dumber.

This movie is not funny enough to work as a comedy, but it’s also too silly to work as an action movie. I don’t mind an action movie not taking itself too seriously, a lot of action movies don’t, but you still need to at least make me care about what’s going on.

You can’t have exciting action if you don’t have tension, and you can’t have tension if the audience is apathetic about the characters or the journey they go on. Even action comedies need to make you care about what happens to the characters in order to work, and Double Dragon just doesn’t do that.

There’s no character depth or anything resembling an arc. None of the characters are too unlikable or anything, but there’s just not enough to them to make them all that likable or interesting either.

And the story is just a basic McGuffin hunt that doesn’t do anything new to spice things up. It’s all very stock, which makes the film a bore to watch. Outside of the more bizarre sequences anyway, which it thankfully has plenty of.

I’m not going to lie and say the story from the games was a great work of writing. It was just a basic rescue the girlfriend from gang story, not exactly Hemmingway or anything. But you could still make that work. Streets of Fire, which I’m pretty sure inspired every beat-em-up ever made, had the exact same plot and that films a cult classic.

Or look at Fist of The North Star’s first arc. Same premise of rescuing the girlfriend but it’s done in a very engaging way with memorable characters and moments. You can make a simple story engaging if you put effort into it.

So I’m not letting this movie off the hook for this. It could have made the story from the game interesting; it just decided not too and added all this unnecessary mystical stuff to the narrative. None of this makes the story more engaging, it makes it less.

It’s also very, very stupid. This is one of those movies where things only happen the way they do because the characters are idiots. Take Shuko for instance. Shuko’s half of the medallion lets him possess people. He can’t possess Billy because he’s holding the other half, but why not just possess Jimmy, lay low, and take the medallion at the right time?

He does do this at the end and attempts the same thing with Satori near the beginning, and he blows his cover both times for no reason. It’s hard to take the villain as a serious threat when he makes stupid moves like this.

I don’t even know why Shuko needs the Medallion. He says he wants it so he can rule the city, but he’s already super rich and powerful, why not just buy the city. I mean he’s rich enough to buy out Rice Krispies and remake them in his own image, so he’s clearly got cash to spare. I did not make that up, that is actually something in the movie.

Why would he even want the city when it’s already a wreck to begin with. What the hell is he going to do? Build a bigger city? Why does he need the medallion to do that? He already has all the resources to get what he wants, but he still wastes time getting a mystical artifact that really wouldn’t help him all that much.

His motivations make no sense. He just wants the medallion because he’s the bad guy and there wouldn’t be a plot if he didn’t. I compared him to Geese Howard earlier, but let’s go deeper into that.

Geese is also often after some mystical scroll or technique in the Fatal Fury games. Except with Geese, it actually makes sense. Because he’s not only a crime boss, but also a martial artist. He doesn’t just want power through his criminal dealings, he also wants to prove himself the superior warrior. Hence why he goes after the scrolls to learn more powerful techniques.

Shuko’s concept is that he believes that he’s the reincarnation of a Japanese warlord, but it doesn’t play into his character much. He doesn’t come across as a warrior, he’s just a corrupt businessman. So why does he care about any of this mystic stuff when he shows little interest in martial arts or even physical strength. It just don’t add up.

The medallion’s powers aren’t even fully explained. The only thing we know is that it lets you possess people with one half and the other half I think makes your body stronger, it’s not that clear. It’s supposed to be this artifact that can give you great power, but it doesn’t showcase how powerful it actually is.

This is just lazy writing. None of the character motivations and world building in the movie are all that well defined. I know this is just meant to be a dumb fun movie for kids, you know something you just turn your brain off to enjoy, but even those need some kind of substance to them. This has none.

It’s the movie equivalent of a bag of stale marshmallows. It goes down easy, but there’s no flavour and you don’t feel full afterwards. So even as cheap entertainment, this doesn’t work.

The acting doesn’t help matter either, but I’m not going to blame any of the actors for that. They aren’t given anything to work with, and a lot of them have shown they can be good in other works.

Scott Wolf and Mark Dacascos play Billy and Jimmy respectively and they’re decent enough in the roles. They have good chemistry together and I do at least buy them as brothers. Scott Wolf is mostly known for his tv work on shows like Party of Five, while Dacascos has appeared in a few other action movies, including John Wick 3 where he played one of the main villains.

Alyssa Milano plays Marian, and I don’t think I need to explain who she is. She’s done a lot of different things for both tv and film. I can’t cover everything she’s appeared in, although here’s something interesting, both she and Scott Wolf appeared together in Lady and the Tramp 2 of all movies. This movie has the strangest connections doesn’t it.

Milano is a good actress, but she is woefully miscast here. She doesn’t handle herself well in what few fights she’s in, and the pixie cut she’s given does not suit her at all. She isn’t awful in this, but there’s a reason she doesn’t do many action movies. It’s just not for her.

The big name in the cast is Robert Patrick as Shuko. Patrick is best known for playing the T-1000 from Terminator, which is one of the best villain performances in cinema. He’s a good actor, but he’s one of those performers who has a bad habit of picking really shitty productions. Hence his appearance here.

Patrick is easily the best part about the movie. Mainly because he’s clearly aware he’s in a bad movie and is just trying to have as much fun as possible. I’ve noticed this is a pattern in these movies. I guess the trick to being the best part of a bad movie is to play the villain. Patrick’s performance isn’t on the same level as Raul Julia’s M. Bison, but it’s still a fun performance.

The rest of the cast isn’t that well known, and their acting display here is about what you would expect from a bad kid’s film like this. Some are just hamming it up for the camera, and others are so bland you forget they exist. It’s obvious no one is putting this film on their resumé.

There is one last thing to cover with the cast and that’s the cameos. Because this movie has some strange ones. Al Leong, who pretty much made a living playing Asian henchmen in 80’s action flicks, appears as, well, one of the Asian henchmen. Not that strange I guess, but you’d be surprised how prolific this guy was.

Michael Berrymen who’s mainly known for horror movies like The Hills Have Eyes has a very brief appearance as one of the main gang leaders. He’s a b-movie icon appearing in a lot of horror films, and also some Star Trek productions, funny I just looked at that franchise. It is strange seeing him in a kid’s film like this. Especially if you’ve actually seen The Hills Have Eyes. Spoilers, it ain’t a pretty film.

But weirdest by far is the news team of George Hamilton, Vanna White and Andy Dick. Seeing Andy Dick act in Double Dragon is weird enough, but the strangest part of it is they aren’t playing characters, they’re playing themselves.

Meaning Andy Dick is literally a part of the Double Dragon franchise. Which is unfortunate considering he’s a registered sex offender. Yeah, his cameo in this did not age well.

This is one of the most bizarre productions I’ve ever seen just in terms of who is connected to it. It’s written by the guy behind Better Call Saul, stars the T-1000 dressed as Vanilla Ice, and features Vanna White and Andy Dick as Vanna White and Andy Dick. If I may steal an old joke from the Nostalgia Critic, this is like the film version of six degrees of Kevin Bacon.

Alright I’ve been hard on the movie, but truth be told it isn’t that bad. It’s certainly not the worst movie I’ve looked at so far. Final Fantasy the Spirits Within is a far worse movie simply due to how boring and non-sensical that film was. This movie is at least a fun kind of bad.

It’s not exactly the most interesting videogame movie either though. Super Mario Bros was fascinating in how strange an adaptation it was, while Street Fighter had the absolute clown show of a production history and was extremely fun with how bad it was.

Double Dragon doesn’t have either of those. It’s a bad adaptation, but not an interesting one. It had a rough production, but said production isn’t all that interesting a story. And while it is a fun bad movie, it’s not to a degree where I can see myself coming back to it again.

On a technical level it’s not the worst I’ve seen, but there’s not a lot here that’s too visually interesting. It’s a very flat looking movie, which can be attributed to the directors’ lack of feature film experience.

The special effects and make-up are also not very good. Shuko’s shadow effect is visually creative, but the cg on it looks cheap. And while some of the make-up is passable, it’s all overshadowed by the hot mess that is Abobo.

I will say that there are somethings about the movie that are legitimately good. The soundtrack is surprisingly awesome with some great licensed tracks, some of the action sequences are ok, and a lot the post-apocalyptic shots do look really nice. So, it’s not a complete failure, just mostly a failure.

Double Dragon didn’t exactly help the series declining popularity. If anything, it only hastened it. There’s even a scene in the movie where they destroy an actual Double Dragon arcade machine. Which is both a perfect metaphor for the movie, and of where the franchise was at the time.

What’s interesting is that the movie did actually link back to the games. A year after the film came out, Technós released a Double Dragon fighting game for the Neo Geo that was based on the movie.

I’ve heard it’s pretty decent and it has gained a cult following over the years, but it was a flop when it first came out. Which wasn’t great for Technós as they were struggling financially. Not long after the Neo Geo game, they would file for bankruptcy.

The Double Dragon IP would be passed around in the years after this. The rights were eventually picked up by Arc System Work, who still own it today, and they have produced some decent games with the IP, and Double Dragon 4.

But the movie remains a forgotten, maligned part of the franchise. It’s so forgotten that I found this thing on YouTube for free. Don’t know how legal that is, but it’s been up for three years now, and no one has taken it down yet. Which makes me believe that nobody cares enough about this thing to enforce the copyright on it.

And why would they. It’s not a very good movie. It’s just another bad early videogame adaption trying to capitalise on the growing popularity of the medium. It’s just in this instance, they picked a game to adapt that was well past it’s prime

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These early video game adaptations are a weird time capsule. They represent a time when the medium was still young, and nobody took it all that seriously. It’s interesting looking back at these and seeing how far we’ve come. I mean we have shows like The Last of Us Fallout that show that videogame adaptations can not only be good, but pretty damn great. It’s not perfect these days, but we’re far cry from where we were back then.

But speaking of good adaptations, I think I need a palette cleanser. After four movies that were different degrees of bad, we need something to shake things up. So next time I think I’ll look at a videogame movie that’s considered to be good. Legitimately good anyway.