The Incomparable Fan Service of DOA: Dead or Alive

This screening was part of the Alamo Drafthouse’s Weird Wednesday series. For upcoming shows, click here.

If there’s one thing that can upset a film fan, it's an overabundance of fan service. Even among those fans attempting to be served, a studio’s injection of references from a film’s pre-existing material can detract from its ability to entertain or stand on its own merits. In today’s cinema landscape, it's easy to point to the usual franchise suspects with decades of gathered fandom and quality source-material to draw from. But what if that wasn’t the case? What if the source material was a greasy Victoria Secret catalog that a “fandom” of teenage boys found in the woods? If this were the film you were making, it might be easy to give that audience every single thing they wanted. And if you were making this film, there’s no way you could successfully include as much comparable fan service as DOA: Dead or Alive.

Let's start with a trip back to 2003. In cinema, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle and two Matrix sequels own 3 of the top 15 spots at the worldwide box office. But more importantly, David Spade is hosting Spike TV’s first ever Video Game Awards, and Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball has just won the award for Best Animation. As the recipients stay seated for the ceremonial confetti shower (courtesy the circle of scantily clad NFL cheerleaders), everyone there and at home is in on the joke: that a game has just won an award for its physics design of big-breasted women in bathing suits, at an award ceremony that still thought video games were only for men who would never have sex, on the self-proclaimed “First Network for Men.”

The levels of cringe are endlessly apparent now, but I’d be lying if I said that 9-year-old me wasn’t openly amused by this win and the toxic culture surrounding it, despite never having played the game. The games in the Dead or Alive series had a massive reputation among young men at the time and were a well-kept secret among gaming children who could finally see big boobs on their PS2s. For me, my only hands-on experience with any of these games came from a demo disc I had of 2001’s Dead or Alive 3, a more standard 1v1 fighting game whose biggest selling point was (you guessed it) big tiddy ladies in too little clothing. The international popularity of that Xbox-exclusive title not only helped sell the console outside of the US, but also garnered a fanbase ready to ditch the preconceived notions of the game’s genre in favor of something requiring less concentration and clothing (hence Xtreme Beach Volleyball).

Fast-forward to 2006. A sequel to Xtreme Beach Volleyball is coming in November, but before that, we finally get the film adaptation that everyone has been waiting for! DOA: Dead or Alive was first released in Australia, Germany, and the UK that fall with only $7 million in revenue and negative reviews to show for it. By the time the movie hit US theaters the following summer, it was considered a flop that only made an additional $480,000 domestically, leaving most of the film’s $30 million budget as a loss. As teenage boys around the world cried out in rage, denied permission to see their generation’s Gone With the Wind, DOA faded into a footnote of the game franchise’s history.

And now we come to 2023. The gaming space has become a much more accepting one for women (with plenty of room to improve) and fandoms are more divisive about their billion-dollar on-screen products than ever before. And I sit down to watch DOA for the first time, not with the horny expectations that I would’ve had in 2006, but with the so-bad-its-good reputation that the film has garnered in the last 17 years. And I can say that going in with either of those expectations, at any point in time, you would’ve been thoroughly satisfied as I am having seen it.

With the dated past I have outlined, you might expect the movie to be a gratuitous exploitation of beautiful women for their bodies and nothing else, and you’d be right for the most part. The 3 leads are played by Jaime Pressly, Devon Aoki, and Holly Vance. Each has their own backstories, character connections, personalities, fighting styles, and revealing outfits similar to the leads of Charlie’s Angels, but with none of the reverence. Each of their backstories is introduced early on with just enough footage to create the montages that play at various points throughout the movie, just in case you forget amidst the punching and ass shots that commence once they're gathered together at the DOA fighting tournament. With that, you kind of have all the elements present in the film: backstory, punching, ass-shots. And to be fair, that's kind of all you need. Most of the characters in this film are directly from the video game, and characters that receive backstory get one that is fairly in-line with those from the games. The plot is entirely a function to get big-boobied women in one place for the other 2 elements, punching and ass-shots. And you may think that’s an exaggeration, but it only took me 15 minutes before I wished I’d kept count of the ass shots. In fact, I must show you the most shameless one below and mention it directly in the text.

This single shot tells you nothing about the plot, but somehow everything about this movie. The silliness behind the camera and on-screen is pure camp, whether intentional or not. And while I can laugh now at how severely stupid and gross it is (seriously, think of this shot from ideation to actual filming), I can also believe how stoked fans of the game were to literally be up Helena’s (Sara Carter) ass as she’s fighting Christie (Vance). It's the same reason why young boys would play the game, not because they want to win but because they want to watch those pixels jiggle. And among the well-choreographed but over-edited fighting, there is undeniably a lot of jiggling happening on the screen.

Speaking of the editing, these fight scenes contain some of the worst examples of 2000s-era quick-cutting I’ve seen in some time. These choices range from cutting to cameras seemingly inches away from the previous shot, all the way to frames so close to the action that you have no idea what you’re looking at. This has nothing to do with the performers, many of whom are doing fantastic stunts themselves over the course of multiple days, and I’d even be willing to cut director Corey Yuen some slack. While Yuen has not directed since this film, his direction of both Michelle Yeoh (Yes, Madam) and Jean-Claude Van Damme (No Retreat, No Surrender) in their first major roles is certainly notable, as is his launch of the Transporter franchise and his frequent collaborations with Jet Li and Jackie Chan. With this pedigree of directorial work and even more credits in action/martial arts choreography, Yuen’s influence creeps into frame particularly during scenes that pay homage to the Hong Kong action films he helped popularize. But whether at the behest of the editors or producers (Paul W.S. Anderson anyone?), these horrible editing choices are determined to obscure any talent on camera or behind it.

If that wasn’t distracting enough, many scenes rely either on dated CGI or terrible wire work that never looks real. Specifically I’m thinking of Christie’s introductory fight scene, whose main “set piece” is a CGI bra floating through the air that she perfectly catches mid-fight to cover her obviously blurred nipples. But while my eyes roll now at the editing tug-of-war between fight choreography and “exposed” boobies, I must admit that I have vivid memories of watching this scene online and trying to see any subtle nippage on display. And in that space of nostalgic cringe is where I realize that this is truly the pinnacle of adaptation, the peak of fan service. A teenage boy convincing himself that he sees a nipple where there isn’t one is an experience unique to the games that is absolutely captured here, and this intent in the edit of this scene made me giggle so hard as a full-grown man.

The admirable quality of this film’s over-editing continues outside of the fights into all of the dialogue scenes, which usually end abruptly and transition with an ass-shot at every opportunity. At multiple times I had the thought of “oh, well that was it” before watching the film desperately distract me with as much skin as a PG-13 rating allows. It truly felt like the dialogue and plot were merely bridges to the boobs, which (again) is precisely what the audience is there for.

This may explain why every plot point is incredibly basic for the action genre (avenging dead family, double-crossing heist, nanobots, etc). But not only is the plot a gateway to more DOA fan service (including a volleyball scene), but it generously opens its doors to fans of many 2000s action movies. From a direct Gladiator visual to an important pair of sunglasses granting Matrix-style skills, film fans really get a cacophony of the best eye-rolling references. It's the kind of lazy reference humor that adults can find in children’s movies. But in the context of an "adult" movie that's desperate for my attention, the shameless referencing of better movies is comically earnest.

All of this makes for a movie that has zero fat and is always entertaining, whether in its intent or incompetence. Admittedly in 2023, I was laughing much more at the film than with it. But if I had seen this in 2006, I think I would’ve gotten exactly what I wanted out of it, especially if I had been a fan of the games. Problematic as it may be (and it certainly is that), DOA: Dead or Alive was exactly what horny and misogynistic fans of the games wanted at the time. If only they’d gotten to see it after soccer practice…