Doube Dragon (1994) – A Movie A Day 2021 #47
Doube Dragon (1994) – A Movie A Day 2021 #47
As a life-long video game nerd, you’d think I would’ve seen Double Dragon before now. I was just barely a teenager when the movie came out, so you would think an action movie based on a game series I was a fairly big fan of would be something I’d jump at the chance to see. Thinking back, I’m really not sure why I didn’t see Double Dragon back then. It could be because I did see Super Mario Brothers: The Movie, and even my young brain didn’t like it very much. Plus, I probably saw the images of how Abobo looks in the movie (he’s one of the bad guys in the game) and said “no thank you.” Whatever the reason, I didn’t see it until now. Was it worth the wait? No, but it is an okay comedy action movie even if it has little to do with what I know about the Double Dragon game series.
Double Dragon is a bout two brothers, Billy (Scott Wolf) and Jimmy Lee (Mar Dacascos), who end up on a mission to protect one-half on a magical double-dragon talisman from getting into the evil hands of Koga Shuko (Robert Patrick). The talisman bestows great power of mind and body to whoever possesses both halves, and he already has the “mind” half. Shuko’s ultimate goal is to rule the city of New Angeles, formerly Los Angeles before the “Big Quake” that wrecked the city and put half of it underwater. For some reason Double Dragon takes place 13 years in the future (which is 2007 for those who don’t want to math), and that allows the filmmakers to do whatever they want with regards to roaming street gangs and big silly fight scenes. So, Billy and Jimmy attempt to fight their way to taking Shoku’s half of the amulet while not losing the half they posses.
One thing I didn’t like about this movie was Abobo. In the games, Abobo is a big muscle man that is almost always a serious threat to the player. In the movie, he starts out as a slightly menacing gang leader, but then he turns into some sort of goofy special effect that has no real bearing on the story and is just there for comic relief. The muscle suit built for him is utterly ridiculous, and not in a good way. It doesn’t fit in with anything else in the movie, and it just looks bad. Abobo is easily my least favorite thing about Double Dragon.
It gets better from there. The cast is quite good with Robert Patrick as the main villain, Alyssa Milano as a nice gang leader and friend to the Lee brothers, and Julia Nickson as Billy and Jimmy’s guardian. They all give varying degrees of silly performances based on the material they’re given, but they’re all very fun to watch. There are also a few cameos from people I guess the director though might still be famous in 13 years. Vanna White, George Hamilton, and Andy Dick all show up in the movie, so that was pretty fun too. Oh yeah, and Al Leong is one of Shoku’s henchmen. Al Leong has a reputation for being a henchman in tons of movies in the 80s and 90s, and I always love seeing him pop up unexpectedly.
I also thought the fight scenes were fun overall. There were big sets and locations for the actors to play around in, so that helped keep the fights fun and varied throughout the movie. It’s not the hard-hitting martial arts action you might expect if you’re a fan of the game series, but I think the director achieved what he wanted to with the action.
The director, Jim Yukich, made a movie directed at kids. He wanted to keep the characters fun and funny, and he wanted the action to be light on overt violence. I think he achieved that, though whether that was the best approach is certainly up for debate. In 1994, I think a lot of adults still saw video games as kids toys despite the demographic being much larger (and older) than that. Also, there was a Double Dragon cartoon going on as the movie was released, so it’s understandable that the people in charge of the movie might want to make something that would appeal to the same demographic as the cartoon. But games like Mortal Kombat were already out there, and the Mortal Kombat movie would read its audience better about a year after Double Dragon had been released. I think the core audience for Double Dragon was misread, and the movie suffered or it.
I mean, it’s not a great movie, and I’m not really trying to debate the awful reviews it’s gotten over the years. But it is kind of fun. Double Dragon is a silly action movie about magic and kicking. If you just cut out the scenes with Abobo, I think it’s fine. Robert Patrick’s performance is definitely a big draw, and although he doesn’t quite reach the levels of exquisite absurdity that Raul Julia did in his own turn as a video game villain in Street Fighter (also released in 1994), Robert Patrick looks like he’s having fun hamming it up on screen.
I do think Double Dragon would have been so much better if it hadn’t tried to complicate things with a post-apocalyptical ancient-Chinese-magic sci-fi-tinged story. The plot of the original game is fight through a bunch of gangs to save her. Simple. Sometimes simple is all you need, and you can let the fights speak for themselves. Instead, they went the Super Mario Brothers route and changed everything which alienated the fans of the games. Like me. It only took me over 25 years to come around and finally give it a watch.