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You give the game your all...you stay up latenights...you've hunted around on the web...and still
you just can't get past that point in the game. Not all is lost!
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Volume 9 DOA: DEAD OR ALIVE More Alive Than Dead
Among the film’s better qualities are well shot and choreographed action sequences that reflect each characters unique fighting style, cool sets and (with one exception) great casting. For some inexplicable reason, the role of Ayane is played by Natassia Malthe (Uwe Boll’s new BloodRayn star)…who you can’t help but notice is not Japanese and therefore unlikely to be a ninja from the same clan as Kasumi (Devon Aoki, who is actually Asian). But the rest of the cast fit their roles well; Jaime Pressly is particularly appropriate as American pro wrestler Tina.
So why did DOA tank so badly? The movie is a pretty dead-on interpretation of the game; it’s almost like watching Yuen play through a synthesis of Xtreme Beach Volleyball and the fighting DOAs. But unless you’re a big DOA fan, a 16-year-old boy or someone who likes watching scantily clad women fight each other (in a PG-13 way), there’s no compelling reason to see DOA. Too many scenes seem laughably ripped out of other movies. It has a Basic Instinct-ish interrogation scene, the bamboo forest scene from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and if you don’t think “Charlie’s Angels!” at least five times, you aren’t watching the same movie. The only scene missing is one where Freddie Prinze Jr. takes aside the nerdly male love interest, removes his glasses, musses his hair, unbuttons his shirt and turns him into the hottie we truly know he is just in time for the prom.
As far as most video game movies go, this one is far from ending up on a future MST3K. But while a movie like Silent Hill attracted a fair amount of people outside the game’s fan base, that isn’t likely to happen for Dead or Alive.
Expo, Studio Kojima announced plans for a Metal Gear Solid movie in Show Maybe?, a tongue-in-cheek promotional handout from Konami that was designed to look like an official trade show magazine. Not too many details were given, but Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima was quick to confirm that “Mr. Uwe Boll [the much-maligned director of House of the Dead, Alone in the Dark and Bloodrayne] will not direct a Metal Gear Solid film.” He also stated that while the feel of the game will be apparent in the movie, the film won’t be a strict adaptation. He also denied rumors that the film would be CG instead of live action. Sony Pictures recently attached its name to the project; hopefully we’ll be seeing a MGS movie in 2008.
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If you didn’t see DOA in the theaters, it’s because
you live in North America, where the film was
never granted a theatrical release. Instead, it went
straight into international theaters, earning the
lowest box-office draw of any video game-based
movie. Ever. The funny thing is—and I’m as surprised
as you are—it’s not that bad! Corey Yuen
(The Transporter 2) is a competent action director
and the writing (by J.F. Lawton, the writer of Pretty Woman)
is yards better than most of what this genre produces.
Hitman will “hit” theatres on October 12th
of this year. Vin Diesel has long since dropped
the project and instead Deadwood actor Timothy
Olyphant has been cast as Agent 47. The
film, to be shot in Europe, begins production in
March. Post-Hitman, producers Adrian Askariah
and Daniel Alter will go on to produce a movie
based on Eidos’ Kane & Lynch game.