“Dear feature film, it’s your turn to let yourself talk about love…”
Whether it is an instant classic, an excellent production poorly received upon its release, or a failure now enjoying the status of cult film, the time has come for assessments, glasses of champagne, songs of overly sweet cake and the good memories of all those images that we may have forgotten over the years.
Today, we blow out the thirty candles of the film…
DOUBLE DRAGON
Action movie | United States | 91 minutes
Director: James Yukich
Performers: Mark Dacascos, Scott Wolf, Robert Patrick and Alyssa Milano.
Released in North American theaters: November 4, 1994.
In 1994, video games did not occupy the same place as today in popular culture, which were aimed at a younger and much more niche audience.
Some producers still believed they had sniffed out a good deal by clinging to the adaptation rights of certain intellectual properties such as the misery on the poor world.
Double Dragon by James Yuick is one of Hollywood’s earliest attempts to bring the essence of video game entertainment to the screen, arriving one after the catastrophic Super Mario Bros.and a few weeks before Street Fighter featuring a Jean-Claude Van Damme who, at the time, clearly wasn’t putting a lot of money into his RRSPs (let’s put it that way).
What could we possibly get out of a game whose very thin narrative essentially follows two brothers busting their heads from level to level to find the woman they both have a crush on?
Answer: not much.
But is there still something to have fun with?
Answer: If you’re willing to show a LOT, A LOT, of indulgence…
A scene from the film Double Dragon – Lions Gate Films
Barely three years after playing one of the most memorable antagonists in the history of the seventh art in Terminator 2: Judgement DayRobert Patrick was back as another larger-than-life villain, but also a pure product of early 1990s cinema.
Between his essential smoked glasses, his haircut betraying his adoration for Vanilla Ice, and his ability to transform into the film’s shadow creature My ghost of love to then take possession of the body of others, his Koga Shuko undoubtedly remains the best element of the film, even if, in the end, the latter speaks much more than he acts.
There is already a problem…
At the beginning of the 1990s, the story of Double Dragon takes root in the Los Postapocalyptic New Angeles from… 2007. You know, that famous earthquake that completely wiped out California? Well, he’s still acting up here.
To prevent our dear industrialist from getting his hands on the other part of a magic medallion that would make him invincible (but ultimately not so much), brothers Jimmy and Billy Lee (played respectively by Mark Dacascos and Scott Wolf) will proudly wear the artifact in plain sight, while facing hordes of street gang members ranging from traditional punks to clowns, including these nice hippies who love neon colors and graffiti.
A scene from the film Double Dragon – Lions Gate Films
But beyond this intellectually limited premise, Yukich and his accomplices never really seek to have fun at the expense of all the barriers and constraints with which they undoubtedly had to deal.
We must, of course, give points to the choice of dressing up one of the gangs of thugs in the colors of the postmen of America, as well as to the explosive sequence (to say the least) of pursuit on personal watercraft.
Otherwise, Double Dragon is constantly bogged down by a plethora of narrative shortcuts and high-sounding explanatory dialogue, in addition to its inability to follow its own rules and generate the slightest effect of tension, the presence of some of the worst extras that cinema has ever known, bursts of an atrocious soundtrack, and equally approximate visual effects.
All this without taking into account the extreme laxity with which all the fight scenes are executed.
In addition to its equally poorly directed – or simply disinterested – performers Double Dragon just never manages to fall into the much more respectable side of “so bad it’s good”.
A scene from the film Double Dragon – Lions Gate Films
THIRTY YEARS LATER…
Double Dragon was only Hollywood’s second attempt at a live-action adaptation of a video game.
The feature film completely failed at the box office, only collecting a little over four million dollars worldwide.
And things weren’t going to get much better after that, as productions inspired by video games continued to carry this bad reputation for decades.
It is only recently that the Sonic the Hedgehog et The Super Mario Bros. Movie were able to meet the expectations of their target audience, just like the TV series The Last of Us.
For his part, director James Yukich would only direct one other feature film afterward, he who turned more towards directing music videos, comedy shows and concerts.
Alyssa Milano would obviously experience much more success four years later thanks to the series Charmedwhile Scott Wolf would do the same with Party of Fiveand that Mark Dacascos would become a recurring figure in B-movie action cinema.
If you saw Double Dragon By the time it’s released, you may still have nightmares about steroid enthusiast Bo Abobo’s grotesque makeup.
For the rest, you can pass your turn. There is absolutely nothing to see or review here that is worthy of interest, other than a few vain attempts at sociopolitical and environmentalist satire following in the footsteps of the Robocop by Paul Verhoeven, minus the genius and foresight.
But if you are still a bit masochistic, Double Dragon is currently available on AMAZON PRIME VIDEO, as well as in BLU-RAY format.
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