Video games have come a long way since their inception. At first seen as being only for nerds and social outcasts, video games have exploded to become the most dominant form of entertainment on the planet. Obviously, this led to a lot of movie and TV video game adaptations over the years, with some becoming billion-dollar hits, and others becoming some of the worst films of all time.
Most of these awful adaptations come from the ‘90s, a time when video properties were easy to acquire and adapt for a cheap cost. And of those terrible ‘90s video game movies, Double Dragon (1994) is often considered one of the worst. It’s a bizarre film in plenty of ways, and now it’s available to watch on JustWatch TV. If you’re tilting your head at why that’s a good thing, it’s because Double Dragon is one of the best worst movies from a decade absolutely stuffed to the brim with them. If you haven’t seen it, then you’re in for a wild ride.
What Is ‘Double Dragon’ About?
Double Dragon, as a franchise, has always been a bit of a mess. While the original 1987 arcade beat’em up is a stone-cold classic, most of the games afterward varied in quality and had little to do with each other. The only thing that’s somewhat consistent between each game is that they star two brothers, Billy and Jimmy Lee, who use their martial arts skills to save the day.
The film focuses on Billy and Jimmy, but it’s everything else that makes Double Dragon completely deranged. Instead of following Billy and Jimmy’s rescue of the girl they both have a crush on from gangsters, like in the original game, the movie tries to do its own thing. Here, Billy and Jimmy have to protect an amulet from a weeaboo businessman who looks like a parallel universe Vanilla Ice, played by Robert Patrick. This amulet contains untold magical powers (because every amulet always has some mysterious magical power), and if Robert Patrick unleashes its power, he can take over the world.
He is an evil businessman after all. That’s really all they want to do any day of the week. So, obviously, the only ones who can stop him are two teenagers. (Power Rangers (1993) logic at its finest.)
How Bad Is ‘Double Dragon’?
Double Dragon’s premise is a bit wild, but most video game premises are silly when you say them out loud. I mean, just look at Sonic the Hedgehog (2020). It’s about a blue rat who runs fast, outwitting a scientist who looks like an egg. Still, Double Dragon’s execution is exceptionally bizarre.
For some unknown reason, the film is a post-apocalyptic action movie. It takes place in the lawless hellscape that is 2007 Los Angeles, where a gigantic earthquake obliterated the city. Don’t you remember it? It was the same earthquake that encouraged gangs of cartoonish crooks who look like rejects from The Warriors (1979) to roam the streets at night and be mildly inconvenient to anyone they encounter. I mean, the rampant destruction and gangsters made LA look like Escape From L.A. (1996), which itself was set in the post-apocalyptic hellscape of 2013 Los Angeles, but that temporal paradox is besides the point!
You would think that such a gritty presentation would lead to some action worthy of its PG-13 rating, but you couldn’t be further from the truth. Double Dragon was intended to be a kids’ movie in the same vein as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secrets of the Ooze (1991). After all, the biggest threat to these macho gangsters is a literal group of children ninjas. Are they intimidating? Absolutely not. The kids from 3 Ninjas (1992) would mop the floor with these toddlers turned ninjas, and watching Billy and Jimmy try to save the day from Weeaboo Vanilla Ice is deeply humiliating for Robert Patrick. This is the same man who, three years ago, played the deeply serious and stoic T-1000 in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). Now, he’s begging a teenager not to beat him up.
‘Double Dragon’ Is The Ultimate Guilty Pleasure Movie
Tonally, Double Dragon is all over the place, but that’s precisely what makes it such a weirdly fun watch. It is cheesy and corny in a way that only a video game movie from the ‘90s can be. The mismatched setting and tone never fail to get a chuckle out of audiences, regardless of whether you’ve ever played the games or not. The fact that this movie got a PG-13 rating was a death blow to its long-term success, because it truly is ideal for young children, probably seven and under. The bright colors, weird character designs, and nonsensical plot turns are all lighthearted and fun, even if they’re not really authentic to the rest of the franchise.
Films like that were par for the course in the ‘90s. In all honesty, the same problems that plagued Double Dragon also plagued its contemporaries, most notably Super Mario Bros. (1993) and Street Fighter (1994). All three films are cut from the same cloth, with wildly different interpretations from their source material that really don’t work, but are still guilty pleasures. Double Dragon just isn’t as popular as those infamous bombs, so it doesn’t get the recognition that it deserves.
Double Dragon is a hokey and inherently silly 96-minute action movie that you should watch if you have little kids or just want a strange mix of ‘90s action tropes and kids’ movie shenanigans.
