Double Dragon (1994) is an action, adventure, comedy film based on the Double Dragon video game series. it is directed by James Yukich. Double Dragon (1994) stars Mark Dacascos and Scott Wolf as brothers Jimmy and Billy Lee, along with Alyssa Milano as Marian Delario and Robert Patrick as antagonist Koga Shuko. The film takes place in 2007 Los Angeles after an earthquake has crippled the city. This New Angeles is a mixture of a post-apocalyptic and 1980s and 1990s punk environment.
The film came out on November 4, 1994. Rotten Tomatoes gave the consensus that “Double Dragon‘s clever use of special effects cannot mask the film’s overly simplistic storyline and cheesy dialogue”. It was deemed one of the lowest-rated video game movie adaptions of all time.
In Double Dragon (1994), two brothers have half of a powerful ancient Chinese talisman. An evil gang leader has the other half, and he is determined to get the brothers’ half and have a complete medallion so he can gain absolute power.
In post-apocalyptic California, brothers Billy Lee (Scott Wolf) and Jimmy (Mark Dacascos) are highly trained martial artists living in the ravaged city of New Angeles. The bothers have been trained by Satori (Julia Nickson), who took them in after their parents died. When Satori finds herself pursued by evil overlord Koga Shuko (Robert Patrick), who’s intent on possessing her mystical dragon medallion, the siblings are charged with protecting it from Shuko and his henchmen.
First-time director Jim Yukich summarized his approach to the film in this quote from the article Double Dragon Will Roar in ’94 in Electronic Gaming Monthly:
“Our characters are like normal kids – three kids on an adventure, so we didn’t want to make something that kids would almost be too afraid to see. … I’d like to make it in a funnier, light-hearted vein.”
In an interview with Will Harris, actor Robert Patrick said about Double Dragon (1994): “That was a movie I did that, on paper, I thought could really work. It, uh, didn’t really work that well. … There’s some funny aspects to that character, and it was a fairly liberating experience to be funny and try to be menacing at the same time. I am proud of my performance. It’s a pretty extreme performance. Yeah, and I got to work with Scott Wolf, Mark Dacascos, and Alyssa Milano.”
There was a boat chase sequence in Double Dragon (1994) that was filmed on the Cuyahoga River in Northeast Ohio. The scene climaxes with an explosion that uses 700 gallons of gasoline combined with 200 gallons of alcohol. Warnings to the public were broadcast on different news channels the previous night, however, the explosion caused nearby residents to panic. This led to 210 phone calls to emergency services in a ten minute period.
