Videogame Cinema: DOA: Dead or Alive

When it comes to filmic adaptations of video games there are some that make perfect sense as to why they would exist. Mario, Street Fighter, Tomb Raider, Final Fantasy and Mortal Kombat were all proven money makers. It makes sense why Hollywood would make movies based on them to leach off their popularity.

But then you get the adaptations where you wonder why they exist to begin with. Like Double Dragon for instance. Yes, that series was popular in the 80’s, but the movie came out after the series started to decline in popularity. By the time the movie came out it was too little too late so you just have to wonder what the point of it was.

Then there’s today’s subject, Dead or Alive. One of those adaptations that makes everyone who looks at it go “wait, they made a movie based on that?” I mean I sort of understand why. Dead or Alive was a decently popular series in the mid 2000’s, and this movie came out in 2006 which was around the time of the series peak in popularity, or at least when it was at its most culturally relevant.

But even at its peak, Dead or Alive was never super popular. It was successful and built a decent fanbase, but it was never quite as successful as it’s contemporaries. From my own perspective, I knew people who weren’t into gaming who at least knew games like Tekken or Soulcalibur and especially Mortal Kombat, which was a 3D fighter at the time, but not a lot of people knew of Dead or Alive, and when they did it wasn’t for the best reasons.

Dead or Alive was a more niche game. Which makes it strange that it got a movie before Tekken. Well, live action movie anyway, Tekken did get an anime movie in the 90’s. I think I know why though, and it has to do with the greatest salesman of all, sex. Anyone who knows Dead or Alive knows it is famous, or infamous depending on who you ask, for its buxom battling bikini babes.

This is a series that’s main claim to fame is the invention of jiggle physics. You tell me what Hollywood producers thought would make the most money. A movie about a convoluted family feud where people throw each other off cliffs, or the one with ninjas with massive honkers. Oh the decisions in life.

Looking at the credits already makes me worried since this thing had five producers. One of which is our old friend Paul W.S Anderson who we last saw with Mortal Kombat. Well, hey, I liked that movie, and his own production company was behind this, so we should be in good hands. Oh wait, this is the same production company behind the Resident Evil movies. Thar’s not a good sign.

There’s also Mark A. Altman who was also the guy who got the ball rolling on this thing. See, I guess because videogame movies had been frequent flops, a lot of major Hollywood studios decided to pass on doing them.

This meant a lot of smaller companies were able to buy up the rights for cheap under the promise they would make the movies on indie movie budgets. Essentially, buying them for cheap, making them for cheap. Of course, it helps that they promised to actually make the movies, instead of just buying them and then waffling about for years with no result. Something which happens a lot in the movie industry.

This was Altman’s strategy, and while he would ultimately not make all the movies he bought up, he did do a few. Including, God help us all, House of the Dead. We’ll get to that one another day but trust me, it is a special kind of awful.

As for the creative side of things we have Adam and Seth Gross who worked on Bill Nye the Science Guy… ok that’s a bit random, and J.F Lawton who has credits in action movies like Under Siege and Chain Reaction. As well as the tv series VIP which was a show about a bunch of fashion models who worked as super spies, so he seemed like a good fit for this.

Lawton himself came up with the initial scripts and neither were approved by the producers, or Dead or Alive creator Tomonobu Itagaki who had final say on the script. His first draft not only included an underage French school girl, which Itagaki apparently loved so that’s a notch on the creep meter for him, but also an underwater secret lab. While the second had zombies. Because when I think Dead or Alive, I think the walking dead. Guess you could call that one Undead or Alive.

The Gross brothers made a lot of cuts that did eventually get approval from Itagaki, with the schoolgirl thankfully being one of them. Unfortunately, they weren’t on set to make any script adjustments, which in my experience means the dialogue is likely going to be super awkward and weird.

Things are not looking good so far, are they? But one bright side is the director, Corey Yeung. A famous director and fight choreographer who has worked on a bunch of classic martial arts movies like Fist of Fury, Dance of the Drunk Mantis, and serval of Jet-Li’s films. At the very least then we should be in for some good fight scenes, which considering this is a fighting game movie is a pretty important thing to get right.

The problem is Yuen is Chinese and didn’t speak a word of English. Which meant they had to use a translator so he could communicate with the actors, which led to miscommunications and eventually Yuen got fed up with that and started to use pantomime to help show what he wanted.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the movie was shot in rural China since it was cheap. The movie only had a budget of $30 million, or $21 million according to IMDB, so it made sense to shoot there. Unfortunately, this meant the actors had to stay in the local village, which was apparently very unpleasant, they had little way to contact the outside world, and a few of them even got food poisoning that lasted the entire shoot.

Even after the film finished shooting they had one other problem to deal with, finding a distributor. That’s right, they didn’t even have a distributor to get this thing out in theatres. The movie was wrapped up in 2005, but didn’t release in 2006 due to this issue, and it was originally planned to come out in 2003, so they really missed the release date on this one.

They did eventually find a distributor in Dimension Films. Which, and this irony is so delicious you can taste it from fucking space, was owned by the Weinstein Company. You couldn’t make this shit up if you tried.

The film did eventually come out, but with little to no promotion in the states. It actually had test runs in countries like the UK and New Zealand where it did ok, making about $6 million. Not great but for a low budget film that’s a decent take, especially since it didn’t have the best marketing in those regions as well.

In America though it was a complete wash. It was delayed by another year, coming out in June 2007 and only pulled in about one million dollars. That is pathetic. It didn’t even seem to do well on home video either, at least not from the data I can find. But considering the kind of movie it is, it could have done well in the rental circuit. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, ask your parents.

Suffice to say this thing bombed harder than the Enola Gay. Critically though, it also got savaged. While the action was praised, most critics agreed the film was stupid, campy and far too over the top.

Honestly though, what did they expect. It’s not like Dead or Alive is known for its plot. I’ve been playing through the series for a Casual Retrospective and it’s some of the goofiest shit I’ve ever seen. One of the villains is a Tengu that comes out of nowhere for Christ’s sake. I’m not expecting Shakespeare here.

I don’t care if it’s stupid, of course it’s going to be stupid. I just want to know if it’s entertainingly stupid ala Street Fighter or brain rottingly retarded like Mortal Kombat Annihilation. Which camp is DOA in? Eh, both, neither, it’s hard to say really.

The best way I can describe this movie is that it’s what happens when you take a generic kung fu film, mix with the extreme culture of the 2000’s, and then crank the ridiculousness up to eleven. It’s a unique brand of dumb, but does that make it entertaining? Well let’s find out.

There isn’t much point in going over the plot. Mainly because there’s barely a plot to begin with. It boils down to, there’s a martial arts tournament being held by a shady organisation, a bunch of people enter for varying reasons, hijinks ensue. So basically, the plot to every fighting game ever made.

I guess in that respect the film is at least accurate to the games. I mean, that’s the same story the game has. Even a lot of the individual character stories are taken from the games. Well, half of them anyway. The strange thing about DOA as an adaptation is that it’s half accurate. Like half the movie is very close to the source material while the other half takes so many liberties it feels like it was taken from something else entirely.

For example, Kasumi entering to look for her missing brother and being hunted by Ayane is very accurate to the games. That is her storyline from the first two Dead or Alive games. There’s some changes but it’s close enough to the games that the changes feel minor.

Same for Tina wanting to enter so she can leave wrestling behind. Although her wanting to become an actress isn’t here, that’s close enough to the games plot. The changes they did make are simply there to simplify things for the story. That stuff is perfectly fine and is expected for an adaptation.

A lot of the side characters are also spot on. Zack and Bass are basically ripped straight from the games. Zack especially is almost one to one with his in-game counterpart. Even visually a lot of the characters resemble how they looked in the games. So at least everyone should be at least visually recognisable to fans of the series.

But then you have the changes that are a lot more questionable. Some changes as I said make sense for the movie, like the main villain actually making an on-screen appearance. Yes, in Dead or Alive the main villain never actually shows up. It’s a weird decision the games made. But then there are the ones that just leave you scratching your head.

Kasumi for example is depicted as an actual ninja princess. Which she kind of is since she’s the daughter of the clan leader, but here she’s treated as an actual princess. Like with a palace and guards and everything. In the games the ninja clan is hidden in the forest which is accurate to how ninja’s work in real life. In the movie they have a big regal palace temple in the mountains.

I mean I’m not expert on ninja history, but when I think ninja’s, I usually don’t think massive regal mountain temples. I don’t know it just seems a bit much for a ninja clan.

They also made a weird change with Ayane too. She still wants to kill Kasumi, but now it’s purely because of her duty. The whole jealous rival angle is dropped which makes their rivalry far less interesting. Also, she’s Hayate’s lover despite them being half siblings in the games. Thank you for that movie. I always thought the games were missing an incest plot. What a wonderful addition this was.

Those are minor changes though. The incest thing is funny, but it’s not that important, and they’re not related in the movie anyway I’m just poking fun. Some characters got changed so drastically though that they’re practically unrecognisable. Three in particular stand out, Hayabusa, Christie and Helena.

Hayabusa is the least changed. He’s still a competent ninja and fighter, but he’s depicted as much more subservient to Kasumi in this. He comes off as a bit of a doormat as opposed to the stoic badass who takes no shit he is in the games. In fact he’s such a spineless doormat at times I thought he wasn’t Hayabusa at all. I was convinced he was a different character entirely.

Hayabusa did look out for Kasumi in the games, but he was always stern with her. The dude would throw down to stop her proceeding to keep her safe. The movie version just kind of asks her nicely and when that fails, he asks nicely again. This dude couldn’t throw down a mitten let alone a gauntlet.

But that’s nothing compared to Christie and Helena. These two are not the characters from the games at all. In the games, Christie is a cold-hearted assassin who serves as one of the series main antagonists. In the movie she’s a fun-loving thief who is one of the main characters.

Yeah, they took one of the main antagonists in the games and made her a protagonist in the movie. What’s weird is that Bayman is depicted as a main antagonist, being the main assassin and bodyguard of big bad Victor Donovan, which was Christie’s role in the games. It’s like these two swapped roles, it’s weird.

She is at least depicted as seductive and flirtatious, which is accurate to the games, but that and her looks are the only things they got right. She isn’t even an assassin in this. They say she’s an assassin, it’s in her description in the beginning, but it never comes across in the movie. I think they just added that just so they wouldn’t completely piss off the fans.

Then there’s Helena who is so unlike like her in game character it’s impressive. They did get one thing right in that she is the daughter of Dead or alive Tournament founder Fame Douglas, but that’s the only thing they got right.

In the game she had next to nothing to do with Fame and was closer to her mother with her story being to avenge her death. In the movie it’s the opposite. She’s close with her dad and her mother isn’t mentioned at all.

I can kind of excuse that. it’s something to simplify the plot, to avoid it getting bogged down in unnecessary details, but nothing else resembles Helena at all. In the games she’s an opera singer who wears a lot of elegant clothing to demonstrate her high-class background. In the movie she roller skates everywhere and predominately wears tank tops and short shorts. Every other character at least looks like their game versions, but Helena doesn’t even vaguely resemble hers aside from being blonde.

Also, her entire thing of being the main spokeswoman and host of Dead or Alive? That was another role filled by Christie. It’s like they took everything Christie had in the games and gave it to every other character. What the fuck happened?

From a story structure it also doesn’t make much sense for Christie to be a main character while Helena is a side one. Helena has actual connections to the main villain and the organisation behind the tournament, while Christie is a thief on a little side mission that doesn’t go anywhere.

Shouldn’t Helena be a main character? That’s what she was in the games. Hell, when this movie came out the most recent game was Dead or Alive 4 where Helena was the main character. I just don’t see why she wouldn’t be one of the leads.

Look I’m not going to lie and say I’m huge fan of the games. I only recently started going through them for a retrospective and I can’t say I’m super impressed by the series lore. It’s some of the goofiest bullshit I’ve ever seen in a fighting game, and I’m a Tekken fan.

The inaccuracies don’t bug me that much. They’re weird, but I don’t care enough to be that bothered by them. I guess I just find it weird that the movie gets half of it perfectly and botches the rest. When half the movie is one to one with the source material it’s going to make the half that isn’t stand out even more.

But I’d say it’s close enough. If you’re a hardcore perfectionist it might stick in your craw, but if you go in expecting things to be changed there is enough from the games to please most fans. It’s not the most accurate adaptation I’ve seen but it’s far from the most inaccurate either.

What might bug fans, in fact what did bug most fans is the casting. This was an element a lot of Dead or Alive players took umbrage with. Even Itagaki expressed disappointing in the casting. Honestly though, I’d say most of it is good.

Jaime Pressley as Tina and Holly Vance as Christie are both spot on. Ok Vance isn’t exactly like Christie in the games, but neither is the character. I can’t blame the actress for that. They both do a good job and handle themselves well in the fight scenes, and they aren’t bad on the eyes either.

Some casting is just absolutely pitch perfect though like Kevin Nash as Bass. I have no notes there, that was just a good call. Brian J. White is also really fun as Zack. He matches a lot of the energy the game character has, and you can tell he’s having a lot of fun.

I think the acting is good, well good for the kind of movie this is. It’s a dumb martial arts movie, I’m not expecting much here. As long as the actors do a professional job and bring some energy to the role, I’ll be happy and most of them do that.

The two casting decisions that I will agree don’t work are Devon Aoki as Kasumi and Natassia Malthe as Ayane. Aoki isn’t bad, but she plays the role too seriously. Kasumi can be serious but she’s also a very warm and friendly character and none of that come through in the movie. Aside from her brother she’s too stoic and serious with the rest of the cast which makes her come across as kind of a bitch.

As for Malthe, she’s a Norwegian playing a Japanese girl. I think that tells you everything you need to know. Well that and the age difference. Kasumi and Ayane are meant to be around the same age, but Malthe is eight years older than Aoki, and you can clearly tell. It’s a bit awkward.

You may have noticed there aren’t a lot of big names in this. I guess it makes sense with the movies small budget, but there aren’t a lot of recognisable names in the cast. Some might be, I know Aoki from Sin City and Pressly from My Name is Earl, but the only other actors I know are Kevin Nash, who is one of the bigger names involved which says a lot, and Eric Roberts as Donovan.

Roberts does a decent enough job. I mean Donovan is not the most intimidating or interesting villain, he’s no M. Bison or Shang Tsung, but Roberts at least plays the part as well as he can. Eric Roberts is a good actor, so he does a professional enough job but him appearing in this does show that he isn’t the best when it comes to picking roles.

Seriously, Eric Roberts is the kind of actor that will do fucking anything and everything. The dude has appeared in hundreds of films. He was in seventy-four films in 2017 alone, that is insane. Jesus, and people complain about Pedro Pascal being in everything. Yeah, I got that info from Wikipedia when I was researching it and just wanted to share it. Big whoop, you want to fucking fight about it.

While we’re talking about Donovan though, I should probably get back to talking about the plot. Because while the fighting tournament is the bulk of the narrative, there’s obviously a big evil plan going on behind the scenes. Because fighting tournaments can never just be a simple competition can they.

So what is Donovan’s master plan? What fiendish plot does he have that will rend the fate of the planet?! Sunglasses. No, I am being dead serious. His evil plan is frigging eye wear. Specifically, sunglasses with all the fighter’s data downloaded into it that lets you fight good. How did he get the data? How else, nano machines. I won’t make the Senator Armstrong reference because you’re already doing it in your head.

As for what Donovan plans to do with the sunglasses, I have no earthly idea. He tries to sell them, but to who and for what purpose. Warlords? How would they benefit from this. It would help their armies fight well but that won’t help them in a warzone. You can’t beat guns with karate.

And why sunglasses of all things. Ok, so they need to but the data into something people can wear and see through, because they work by predicting the movements of the opponent. I get that, but why not a helmet or a visor. You know things that won’t easily fall off in the middle of a fight, which is what happens to Donovan in the movie. Nice going jackass.

God help the warlords if they have to battle at night. Unless the entire army is made up of Corey Hart, they’re fucked. It can’t be for military purposes; there’s too many flaws with this thing for that. No, it has to be for private reasons. You know so people can make believe their really good at martial arts, or maybe for self-defence purposes.

I mean it can’t be for that because then Donovan wouldn’t need to be evil. If he’s making them so people can LARP as street fighters, then who gives a shit. The only way this is evil is if he’s selling them to militaries.

This whole plan makes absolutely no sense. But it’s on brand for a company that uses robotic shuriken drones as invitations for their fighting tournament. Yeah, that’s how they send out invites. They use robotic shuriken that home in on fighters when they do something cool. If they have the money for these, why are they bothering with the sunglasses? Sell the drones, they’d make bank with that homing tech.

That’s not the only ludicrous thing about this company. They also get fighters to the tournament by having them sky dive to their private island. This company is just begging for a lawsuit isn’t it.

If you haven’t gathered by now, this movie is ridiculous. Extremely so. In the first five minutes you have Kasumi escaping from guards by jumping across their heads, using a katana to jump over a wall, and then using a special hand glider that she was just wearing despite only just deciding she was going to leave. Why was she wearing that? She do a lot of hang gliding does she.

The whole movie is like this. Every scene has something so dumb that you can’t help but laugh at it. Suffice to say this is the kind of movie where you shut your brain off while watching it. And I mean completely off. If you have any cognitive thought while watching, you are too smart for this movie.

This movie is dumb, but I will admit ridiculousness of it does make it entertaining. It’s like it has this insatiable urge to be extra in almost everything it tries. It fails at almost everything it tries, but you have to admire the hustle. It’s quintessential so bad it’s good material.

But let us be honest with ourselves, who in the fuck is watching this movie for the plot? Probably the same people reading Playboy for the articles. No, you’re watching for two reasons, fighting and tits, and DOA has plenty of both.

This movie’s pacing is relentless. It doesn’t so much fly by as much as it shoots by. While it will stop to have moments between characters, these happen and end so quickly that if you blink you wouldn’t even know those scenes happen in the first place.

The movie is less interested in those than it is in getting to the next action scene, or to get to the next sexy scene. Hence why there is a scene of the women being in their underwear, a bikini or flat out naked nearly every five minutes. Add on gratuitous ass shots and we’re one soft core sex scene from being a Skin Amax production.

There’s even a totally unnecessary beach volleyball scene. I’d say it was out of place, but it’s not. Dead or Alive has a volleyball spin off series so this scene fits in perfectly. Granted it exists solely to get the girls in swimwear, but so did the spin off.

I’m not complaining about any of this, it’s Dead or Alive for crying out loud. This is the series that made thousands off of selling swimsuit DLC packs. I’d be complaining if it didn’t have this stuff. I can’t exactly critique it for being accurate to the source material.

As for the action, it’s not too bad. Ok it isn’t great, but there’s some fun sequences with lots of cool wire work stunts. They have a lot of different set pieces with the different environments which they use in fun and creative ways. Which makes action very similar to the games since having large interactable stages is a core feature of those.

The action is fun but has some problems. There’s a lot of obnoxious editing techniques that can make the fights hard to follow. There are so many quick cuts in these fights that trying to keep track of where characters are only makes them more confusing.

Probably the worst example of this is the Christie vs Helena fight. They swap places in transitions so much that it becomes impossible to tell what in the hell is going on. There’s also so much slow mo you’d think it was guest directed by Zack Snyder. Don’t judge it was the mid 2000’s, everyone was using slow mo back then.

The Christie Helena fight is the weakest in the film. I could barely keep track of it. Though I don’t know if it’s because of the editing, or if it was because it was because they were both scantily clad women fighting in the rain. I’ll leave that up to you.

The rest of the fights are fine, but a lot of the fights are a bit on the short side and a good chunk of them happen mostly off screen, so we don’t get to see much of them. And while the wire work is cool, it can also make things feel less like a martial arts movie and more like a puppet show. Crouching Pinocchio Hidden Petrushka if you will.

But it’s fun at least. I did enjoy the fights even if the editing was so of the time it might as well have had the exact date stamped onto it. In a movie where the plot is more of an afterthought than the game’s story, at least the fights are entertaining to watch and there’s plenty of half-naked women to ogle at.

These are the things you need to get right in a Dead or Alive movie. I can’t say the movie doesn’t understand it’s audience. It knows exactly what they want and gives it to them in spades. Sure, that thing is basically violence and sex but so what. It’s not like you rent the Dead or Alive movie because it’s peak cinema, you’re watching it for soft core spank material.

In fact, the movie knows it’s audience so well it even throws in not one but two audience proxies that exist solely to act as love interests to the girls. One of which is a nerdy science geek who is socially awkward, leers at his crush from a distance and yet somehow has enough charisma to nail the hot rich girl at the end. He’s like every fanfiction OC brought to life. It’s so on the nose that it becomes hilarious.

I can’t say I didn’t enjoy watching this thing. It’s incredibly goofy and over the top, but that’s what makes it fun. This is the perfect rental movie. The kind of movie you would rent at the video store as a quick easy viewing with the boys. I think I just aged ten years writing that, no one reading this is going to know what a rental store is. God I’m old.

This is not a good movie though. Beyond the plot being thinner than an anorexic super model, pointless distinction I know, and making little to no sense, the dialogue is pretty bad. It’s not the worst or anything, but there’s a lot of corny one liners, a lot of the jokes don’t land and it feels very repetitive. The opening repeats itself so much I felt like a record was skipping.

The sets are also a mixed bag. Some of them look ok, mainly the outdoor places shot on location. Those look nice and there’s some decent exotic locales to enjoy. The indoor sets though look very cheap. I won’t harp on this too much because this movie didn’t have the biggest budget, but the sets don’t look the best and even the lower budget isn’t that good of an excuse. I’ve seen movies shot on way smaller budgets that look far better.

The music is also very forgettable. There are some decent tracks that have a lot of energy, but a lot of it is generic and not very memorable. They even use that one romantic music piece that’s in every movie ever made. You know the Romeo and Juliet piece, you probably know the one. Come on even cartoons over use that one, it’s basically a comedy piece now.

Under no circumstances is this a good movie. Honestly, it’s pretty goddamned awful, but you know what, it is entertainingly bad. It never annoyed me or pissed me off, I was never bored while watching it, I did enjoy myself even if it wasn’t always in the way the movie.

While it isn’t quite on the same so bad it’s good level as Street Fighter, it does have its own charm. It’s completely ridiculous and tries so hard to be cool that it’s lame but it’s so lame that it’s funny. If you want a perfect example of mid 2000’s extreme excess, this is it.

The fight scenes are also enjoyable, you can tell a Hong Kong martial arts director worked on this because while the choreography isn’t great it is competent. The acting isn’t spectacular but the actors all do a professional job and are having fun with their roles. I don’t know, it’s not good but nothing is so bad it’s offensive either.

It’s a middle of the road bad movie, but then it has moments where it becomes so over the top that becomes awesomely bad. It’s also not a long movie and doesn’t overstay it’s welcome, making for a breezy watch. I’d say if you want a fun bad movie to rip on this isn’t a bad one to check out. At the very least it’s got some hot women to look at.

Is it low brow entertainment? Sure, but it’s also unpretentious and knows exactly what it is. It knows it’s crass and just runs with it and I do have to respect a movie that knows exactly what it is and goes all the way with it. Even if it is dumber than a short bus as a Trump rally.

I can at least recommend this to Dead or Alive fans. If for no other reason than this is the only other media of the series outside the games. There was no manga, no anime, nothing. This movie is all they got. So, they might as well make do with what they have.

It is still strange that Dead or Alive got a movie though. I guess in the early 2000’s any game could get a movie, even one’s you wouldn’t expect. Next time though I think I’ll look at something a bit more mainstream. In fact, why don’t we look at a movie based on one of the most popular games of all time. Something so popular that it’s playable on everything. Even a pregnancy test.