I watch bad video game films so that you don’t have to (Pt. 2)

After the awesomeness that was Tekken I decided to run through another potential visual treat: DOA: Dead Or Alive (so good they had to name it twice).

The film is based on Dead or Alive, which is a terrible fighting game franchise that relies almost entirely on bad jokes and titillation to get by. The film DOA captures that mood perfectly.

I was initially worried that the film was going to be straight faced and serious. The opening scene is set in some castle where this girl, who was in 2 Fast 2 Furious, is talking to this guy called Hayabusa about some other guy called Hayate who is supposed to be dead. I was getting ready to either fall asleep or turn the film off when it caught me off guard with the following sequence.

It starts with 2F2F girl running across the shoulders of a bunch of soldiers following a flying sword. Not a big deal.

Well, the sword lodges into a wall and then she jumps onto it, using it as a springboard to launch over the fortifications and into free fall off a massive cliff.

Her kimono is flung off in lieu of more suitable attire with a backpack  hidden underneath. The backpack unfurls into a hang glider.

Then a random shuriken comes out of nowhere and she catches it; on the side of this object is a digital display that invites her to the DOA tournament.

After this series of events I was sold. If I had been the script writer I would have had the fucking credits roll at that exact point, having expended every drop of creative juice in my body on coming up with that shit. I would have pretty much said “This is all that is good in the World and nothing, nothing will top that.”

The guy who wrote this script is clearly a more talented dude than I as he goes on to have Poison Ivy show up (not to be mistaken with this Poison Ivy or that Poison Ivy) and drink some Pabst on a boat in time for Liu Kang from Mortal Kombat to attack and subsequently get his derrière whooped. Then our heroic writer has that bird off of Home and Away get set up by that bloke off of Coronation Street and fight her way out of her hotel room while semi-naked. Both of these women then receive the tournament invite.

The film switches to a scene inside a plane where the supporting cast are displayed for the first time. It then introduces some girl – Helena – and there is a brief introduction to some of the rest of the cast. Hayabusa is there too, which makes no sense even within the film’s limited plot continuity.

I stopped caring about continuity, though, because without warning  they all have to jump out of the plane to get to the island where DOA is being held.

The three protagonists all land together and do a bit of bonding while climbing up a tower. I am still reeling, a little ashamed to call myself a scribe, after seeing so much awesome in so little time.

After learning the power of teamwork the trio arrive safely at the tournament. Him off Corrie (for he is here too) says something smarmy as they arrive. There are some serious plot points involving him later on but at this point in time the film cracks out the big guns by introducing the villain of the film: Eric-fucking-Roberts.

There follows a montage where the fighters all get into various states of undress and the story takes its first sinister turn. No, it isn’t the fact that the guy who was on The Shield has the most horrific boxer shorts I have ever seen.

You see, this computer nerd under the orders of Mr. Roberts is injecting the fighters full of nanobots. This is explained away as being intended to monitor their performance, but to everyone watching it’s obvious it will lead to no good… although it is used as an excuse to linger on semi-clothed parts for about four minutes.

All the combatants face off in random places on the island that look very much like areas in the game, and their numbers are quickly whittled down. There is some waffle about her off of H’n’A and him off Coronation Street stealing 100 million dollars and the girl Helena being the key, I think.

By this point I was still reasonably entertained but my initial enthusiasm had waned slightly. It was as if the film could read my mind because it then dropped a gratuitous, fan-service volleyball game into the mix (a nod to when Dead or Alive became a volleyball series for a bit).

With choices like this it is hard to understand why DOA didn’t win an Oscar for best volleyball  film ever made. Sure, Helena makes this weird face when she is laughing but I could forgive that based on the fact that the whole point of her laughter is to distract Eric Roberts while Hayabusa ninja-sneaks into the compound.

Unfortunately his ninja definition of sneaking seems to involve walking right in and beating the bejezus out anyone who comes within swinging distance of him.

I can’t remember exactly why but he gets captured at about the same time that the volleyball game ends in a tie… because the ball gets popped by a shuriken. This shuriken belongs to a pink-haired female ninja who has to try and kill 2F2F girl. They talk about Hayate, or something; I’m not really sure what happens exactly but the pink-haired girl runs off.

The next high point of the film is Poison Ivy fighting the guy off The Shield and her kicking him through a wall. This is followed swiftly by her off Home’n’Away fighting the Helena girl in the rain. They seemed to have spent a bit of time shooting these scenes, as although the fighting is pretty rubbish the rain and angles look reasonably rad.

The Helena girl loses and is really bummed. The nerd comes and comforts her; he’s been trying to get in her pants from the offset. She keeps calling him Wallerby but then gets his name right (scriptwriting genius still at work as there is nothing like a good running joke). It is at that point that the nerdy guy remembers that maybe, just maybe, Eric Roberts might have killed her dad. I clearly know nothing about women as I would have assumed that withholding this kind of key information would have pissed her off; apparently though it is endearing.

Eric is not happy about this information being revealed, however. He captures the other three women (who were sneaking around his secret lair looking for Hayabusa) and then sends his guards after Helena to kill her. Unfortunately for Eric his elite guards consist of the Asian equivalent of the Keystone Cops and Helena beats them all up with the bluntest sword ever.

Eric’s sinister plot is revealed: he is going to steal the four best fighters’ powers and stick them in these glasses and then wail on the not-dead Hayate and send him flying through a wall (which is okay as he gets rescued by the pink-haired ninja, who happened to be chilling out at just the right spot). This sequence of events impresses some random weirdoes on the Internet and Eric sells them the glasses tech.

Well, Helena and nerd manage to stop the download and forward the info on to the CIA, which makes sense because the CIA always come in to stop people from downloading dubious files from the Internet. Eric gets pretty pissed and knocks Helena about, rams the nerd’s head into a keyboard and then sets the self-destruct sequence for his secret lair, obviously worried about the CIA finding his collection of vintage amateur Mexican porn. This seems like a drastic action and, given that the island is inaccessible by plane, you would have thought he might have given himself a little more than two minutes to escape.

Eric sends a Steroid Dude to collect his money – oh yeah, that’s the money which the guy from Corrie was attempting to steal. This Steroid Dude encounters Corrie man in the vault and it turns out the two of them have a history as Corrie man once hit Steroid Dude in the balls with a shoe – I am not making this up. So, SD knocks Corrie guy out.

Next the nerd comes to and frees the three protagonists as well as Hayabusa, and along with Helena  they attempt to stop Eric Roberts. However, Eric is powered by his high-tech glasses so gets all Best of the Best on their asses. Things become very elaborate in their ultimate staged fight atop a tower. Eric Roberts almost wins too but, like a dumbass, he drops his glasses. Hayate shows up so that he can punch Roberts in the foot and then 2F2F girl paralyses Roberts in time for the whole place to blow up and for the cast to do a sweet jump off the tower.

Liu Kang then appears so that Poison Ivy can beat him up again (see, more running jokes!) and take his boat.

Everyone hooks up with their dude, except for Poison Ivy who is all like “Get a Room!”

The END