These Video Game Movies Adaptations SUCK!

DOA: Dead Or Alive, the film so in love with itself, they named it twice. Well if the title is anything to go by then surely this will be a true and blue honest to god adaptation of the hit fighting game series right? Well yes actually! The film does actually include a tonne of references and stays true to the core of the franchise!

It's just a shame that Dead Or Alive's narrative has never been the game's strong suit, and the only "plot" most fans are watching comes with jiggle physics. Seriously this is one of the few times where following the exact lines of the main games is a detriment as a fighting tournament with a shadowy figure at the top has been done to death and DOA brings nothing new to the table.

Weirdly it's also a film with a tonne of fighting in it but none of which feels actually impactful. It has some nice choreography from time to time, but because the plot seems to amble about at its leisure you can't help but feel that the combat is only in there to hit a certain run time.

Plus the acting is bad. Like high school production of Grease bad. like a High School production of Grease where funding has been cut and the cast is going through puberty so their voices keep breaking midway through songs. You know when people say "leave your brain at the door" when trying to justify a film with no certifiable merit? Well, this clearly was the mentality for the actors themselves who deliver lines as if post lobotomy.

There's a lot of key jangling, cut every microsecond because we don't trust our audiences attention span filming going on here, and by the end of things, you realize the DOA stood for Dead On Arrival.