Double Dragon (1994)

Since the Super Mario Bros. movie in 1993 video games have been met with fiercely negative reviews from critics who savage almost every single one of them based purely on their origins. I understand now that we live in an age where video games are movies in their own right, if not even more poetic and innovative than most movies themselves, but in 1994 they were not considered to have any literary or theatrical merit, and even to this day (with a second attempt at a Hit-man movie only just being released as I type this review) they still cannot seem crack the code on how to make a coherent and worthy adaptation.

Double Dragon is not the exception, it's the rule. The classic arcade game featured two dudes, Billy and Jimmy Lee, who walk to the right in an apocalyptic cityscape and beat-up thugs who have kidnapped their (apparently shared) girlfriend Marian. She obviously enjoys double (CENSORED). This could not and was not going to make a good movie.

With a writing team consisting of Paul Dini and Peter Gould any additions or expansions on this thin premise was welcome and the resulting movie is a live-action cartoon with way too many ideas for its budget or its director's abilities.

Double Dragon is an ex-treme-ly 90s flick. Martial arts movies for the kids became a big thing (or at least attempted to) in the early 90s after the success of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Drivel like Surf Ninjas and 3 Ninjas never managed to capture the edge that made the 1990 TMNT so good. Double Dragon almost gets there, but chooses goofy humor instead of darkness and pathos.

The year is 2007. Instead of suffering a dismal summer of an awful Die Hard sequel and a Simpsons movie with no laughs in it the people of New Angeles long for clean air and safety in the streets. The old city has been destroyed by an earthquake (another popular 90s trope) and gang roam at night while smog smothers during the day.

Scott Wolf and Mark Dacascos play "twin" brothers Jimmy and Billy. They look nothing like each other. Tom Cruise could play Scott Wolf's twin easily, but the budget couldn't stretch to Cruise. They are also supposed to be 17-years-old despite being 25 and 29 at the time of filming. They are orphans looked after by Satori (Julia Nickson) who holds one half of a sacred amulet (yes, it's one of THOSE kind of plots) which can grant super powers to anyone with both halves.

A clean air industrialist (Robert Patrick) wants the amulet so he can take control of New Angeles, despite running a pretty tight monopoly already. And so the streets are raging as a final fight with a vendetta is unleashed upon the thugs of New Angeles. An overweight and blond Alyssa Milano plays a more dynamic version of Marian, wearing short shorts that barely cover her vagina. Robert Patrick manages to avoid embarrassment by being surprisingly game about the whole thing too.

By all rights the movie is terrible, but there's an infectious vibe to the eccentric production design and cinematography, and some of the matte paintings and establishing shots are quite impressive. James Yukich (his name creates an appropriate onomatopoeia) has no real vision of his own and lets the chaos take whatever shape it naturally wants to be. You either go along with the low-brow cheese that it is or you'll hate it. Personally I was never once bored by it nor did I really dislike it. The crudity of its assembly (half of the dialogue is ADR) and the tacky synth score helped turn it into a surreal, almost auteur experience. But why on Earth Yukich figured that "Altogether Now" by Scouse band The Farm made for a fitting end credits song is beyond me. It doesn't match the film at all!

Since the day of its release and the resulting internet notoriety over the years I have always been curious about the big screen bomb of Double Dragon, but honestly it's not that bad.