30 years ago, this movie gave video game adaptations a bad name

Long before director Uwe Boll stunk up the video game movie genre with House of the Dead, BloodRayne, Postal, Far Cry, and more, Hollywood’s earliest attempts to bring gaming franchises to the big screen were dismal failures. For the worst offender, movie historians might point to 1993’s Super Mario Bros., the live-action cinematic bomb that drove Nintendo out of Hollywood for three decades until The Super Mario Bros. Movie brought the company back in 2023. That was definitely a terrible film, but it wasn’t until 1994’s Double Dragon movie that video game adaptations found a new low.

1994 was also the year that the Street Fighter movie hit theaters with a bravura performance by the late Raul Julia as well as a hilariously awful turn by Jean-Claude Van Damme. That film is at least fun to watch, which is more than we can say for Double Dragon. The source material for Double Dragon was a 1987 arcade game — and its sequels — that allowed up to two players to take control of Billy and Jimmy Lee as they went up against a gang called the Black Warriors to rescue Billy’s kidnapped girlfriend, Marian. It wasn’t exactly On the Waterfront, but most of the games from that era weren’t big on story.

Yet somehow, the Double Dragon movie managed to bungle that simple setup. And we’re going to show you how.

All of the main characters are miscast

Gramercy Pictures

In the games, Billy and Jimmy are hardened warriors who are clearly grown adult men. So of course director James Yukich depicted them as teenagers. Although somewhat ironically, Mark Dacascos was 30 when he played Jimmy Lee, while Scott Wolf was 26 when he portrayed Jimmy’s younger brother, Billy. Wolf’s breakout role as Bailey Salinger on Fox’s Party of Five debuted a few months before Double Dragon, which probably saved him from going to movie jail over this turkey.

Wolf and Dacascos largely play the brothers like goofballs, and there’s never really any believable jeopardy for either of them. It’s like someone dropped Bill and Ted into a bad martial arts movie. The movie also attempts to beef up the role of the game’s only “good” female character, Marian (Alyssa Milano), by re-envisioning her as heroine who leads a group called the Power Corps. Milano has had some fun turns, including her long run on Charmed, but Marian was not her finest hour.

As ridiculous as Milano looks with that short bleached hair, at least she came off better than Terminator 2‘s Robert Patrick, who was stuck with a look that was anything but intimidating. Patrick plays the film’s villain, Koga Shuko, and it’s just impossible to take him seriously. The sheer menace that Patrick brought to the T-1000 is completely missing, and his performance comes off as unintentionally comedic.

The script’s attempt to flesh out the world doesn’t work

Gramercy Pictures

Batman: The Animated Series co-creator Paul Dini was credited on this film for the story he co-wrote with Neal Shusterman, which was written for the screen by Michael Davis and Peter Gould, who went on to write and produce Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. So there was some real talent behind Double Dragon‘s script — it’s just not reflected on the screen.

Double Dragon fell into the same trap that the live-action Super Mario Bros. movie did by trying too hard to explain the conflict of the game and flesh out the world. Instead of a simple setup that pits the Lee brothers against the gangs under Koga Shuko’s control, there’s an elaborate backstory that includes an earthquake and a semi-postapocalyptic Los Angeles that is overrun by the underworld. Somehow, there are still martial arts tournaments in this brave new world. But as conceived, the backdrop of the movie’s story fell flat.

The special effects are anything but special

Double Dragon was reportedly made for only $7.8 million, which was a low-budget movie even by 1994 standards. But that doesn’t excuse the film for special effects that are absolutely embarrassing. Watch the trailer above, and you’ll see Koga Shuko’s shadow warrior effects that make him seem like a human toon from Who Framed Roger Rabbit. I’ve seen Mighty Morphin Power Rangers episodes with more convincing special effects than these.

Movie-making is never easy, and Yukich probably got as much out of the budget as he could. Unfortunately, the results speak for themselves.

The action is subpar even for the ’90s

Gramercy Pictures

Dacascos is a real martial artist, and he’s one of the few actors in the movie who can fight with any authenticity. The rest of the main cast just kind of does what they can. If there was one thing that Double Dragon had to get right, it was the action. And it just didn’t work. The fight chorography was bad, the performers were unconvincing, and there’s never any real excitement or visceral sense of violence.

Yes, this is largely a kids movie rather than a straight martial arts flick, but the attempt to water down the concept for a younger audience spectacularly backfired. Compare this film to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie from 1990, and you’ll see that the latter was able to serve action fans and youngsters. Double Dragon simply couldn’t pull off the one aspect of the arcade games that drew people to them in the first place. More than anything else, that’s what doomed this flick to mediocrity.

You can watch Double Dragon on Prime Video, but if you want a version that you’ll actually enjoy, rent or buy the RiffTrax: Double Dragon edition, which is also on Prime Video. The latter is from the former cast members of Mystery Science Theater 3000, and they pull off the incredible feat of making Double Dragon watchable.