John Grimm: Karl Urban
Sarge: The Rock
Samantha Grimm: Rosamund Pike
Pinky: Dexter Fletcher
Goat: Ben Daniels
The Kid: Al Weaver
Corporal Dean Portman: Richard Brake
Mac: Yao Chin
Duke: Raz Adoti
Destroyer: Deobia Oparei
If imitation is indeed a form of flattery, then James Cameron must be in a permanent blush.
In 1986, Aliens set the benchmark for sci-fi horrors involving
testosterone-fuelled grunts hunting down alien creatures in confined spaces
with high-tech weaponry. Cameron practically made this set-up its own sub-genre!
7 years later in 1993, Doom became a video game phenomenon; a First Person
Shooter that paved the way for dozens of imitators, like Quake and Unreal
Tournament. A movie adaptation had been mooted since Mortal Kombat (1995).
Now, 12 years after Doom spearheaded a gaming revolution, the movie belated
appears starring professional macho men The Rock (Walking Tall) and
Karl Urban (Lord Of The Rings). The plot is disappointingly similar
to the countless Aliens rip-offs and modern zombie movies, with a research
station on Mars becoming infested with marauding creatures, and a ragtag
group of Marines, led by The Rock's "Sarge", being tasked to eliminate the
threat.
If you're adapting a video game into a movie, you already have inherent
problems to overcome; the fact remains that watching a faithful game writ
large is nowhere near as fun as playing said game. Games are only adapted
because studios know there's an inbuilt audience for the product, and most
game's premises are increasingly cinematic (i.e. they steal ideas from
the movies). As such there's a vicious circle going on, as even a faithful
Doom movie would merely be a pale imitation of Aliens...
However, Doom isn't even particularly faithful to its source anyway. Another
gripe with adaptations is that the writers obviously want to put their own
spin on the concept. Nobody really wants to see an exact duplicate of the
game on the big-screen (except diehard purists) because you may as well just
play the game. That said; Doom does excise story elements that were integral
to the game's success –- primarily the origin of the creatures has been
changed from Hell to a laboratory. They're not demons; they're genetic
aberrations from an experiment that went wrong. Sigh...
I suppose they thought a Hell-based plot wasn't plausible enough (snigger),
but by shifting the emphasis onto genetics, Doom disappoints the hardcore
gamers, loses its one faintly original pulp sci-fi component, and becomes
not only a pale imitation of the classic Aliens, but also the poor cousin of
Resident Evil!
The Rock is undoubtedly a charismatic man who should be this generation's
Arnold Schwarzenegger, but he just can't seem to find the iconic role to
catapult him to stardom. Doom marks a low-point even for him, as Sarge is a
paper thin creation that could have been dumb fun, but winds up being
exasperating and clichéd. He needs his own Terminator, fast.
Karl Urban grunted through Lord Of The Rings in a forgettable beefcake role,
but proved to be quite a cool villain in
The Bourne Supremacy,
so it's frustrating that his character in Doom is underwritten and implausible.
As John "Reaper" Grimm (all the cast have silly names) he's actually the only
character with anything approaching a back-story and personality, but that's
faint praise...
Rosamund Pike is, quite simply, atrocious in this. Pike is hardly an
acclaimed actress anyway, famous mainly for a supporting role in Bond
adventure
Die Another Day,
but you can usually rely on British actors to elevate material like this. But
Pike is totally miscast as Dr Grimm, spending half the movie looking perplexed
and locked into the same vacant expression. She quite clearly can't take any
of this seriously, so why should we?
The supporting cast are your typical amalgam of weirdo's (Ben Daniels'
self-mutilating Goat), one-note grunts (Raz Adoti's Duke), the teen
newcomer (Al Weaver's The Kid), etc. All of them are just meat for
the killing, with only Dexter Fletcher's wheelchair-bound Pinky
proving to be a memorable presence.
Of course, with a movie like Doom you don’t expect much in the way of plot
dynamics and character relationships. At its core level, Doom should provide
kinetic action, gore and quips aplenty. Unfortunately, it barely succeeds on
even those moderate terms.
The special effects are shrouded in darkness (to hide their shoddiness you
soon realize - no idea what they spent the $70 million on!) and the editing
during the attacks is so bad you can't really grasp what's happening, or
to whom most of the time!
The production design successfully apes Doom 3, even throwing in a
few direct links for fans (most notably the presence of the BFG -- a phallic
gun filmed as the ultimate penis as The Rock strolls around it). It's a
well-judged moment of silly gun eroticism that quickly evaporates when said
gun is only fired a few times in the entire film, and never kills anything!
Even stupid teens with little time for plot and characterisation will likely
be disappointed. The game's premise is bastardized, the variety of creatures
sorely limited, and the weaponry nowhere near as eclectic as the games,
resulting in a formulaic mess of a film with faint traces of the game
sprinkled here and there.
There is one sequence toward the end of the movie when the action shifts to
the real-time POV of a lead character, effectively transforming the movie into
a photo-realistic version of the game. It's here that the film's budget
seems to have been spent; the monsters are better realized, the iconic
chainsaw appears, as does the Pinky "demon", and there's a sense of vibrancy
and dark humour that was missing everywhere else. It's an oasis in a
desert of a bad movie, and even then it just made me want to play the game
and turn this soulless enterprise off.
To summarise, Doom fails because it's a decade too late, doesn't adhere to
the game's mythology to please the core audience of fans, and lacks the
requisite scares and laughs that general audiences demand from such trashy
films. The truth is, while Doom the game was cutting edge in 1993, the
2005 movie arrives amidst a slew of doppelgangers with their own ominous
prologues, macho soldiers, secret labs and zombies. It's all been done to
death already...
I'm not a snob about movies; even "bad" movies can entertain on their own
terms as cinematic junk-food, but Doom just fails to recapture even a
fraction of what made the games such a hit... and for that it can't be
forgiven...
Doom is released as an Unrated Edition DVD, which means 13 extra minutes of
"goodness" sprinkled here and there. The disc comes in a keep case with one
of those pointless cardboard slip-cases. A pet peeve of mine.
The menu screens are that familiar use of futuristic displays, seen countless
times on similar DVDs, although the opening shot of Mars is quite cool.
The 2.35:1 anamorphic picture isn't particularly good. The movie
is totally filmed in darkness or dull metallic rooms, and the blacks are
blurry, with the image lacking punch. Detail levels are okay, and there are
no artefacts, but there are noticeable smears and ghosting sometimes.
The best aspect of the movie is definitely its sound mix. The DD5.1
audio puts the emphasis on the rear speakers and sub-woofer, with sound
almost constantly pumping out from the rears. A nice level of bass is
omnipresent and proves quite effective.
The disc's menu screens are your typical futuristic menus seen countless of
times in hundreds of similar titles. A little disappointing, but the load
times are good. To make up for it, there are some pretty decent featurettes
on this release, most of them more entertaining than the actual movie...
Basic Training Featurette:
a look at how the cast were put through their paces with military training
by a Special Forces veteran. Very entertaining, particularly when the
effects of a blank round on a styrofoam head is revealed...
Rock Formation:
a mediocre look at the make-up required to transform The Rock into a
half-demonic creature. Occassionally interesting, but hardly earth-shattering.
Master Monster Makers:
this featurette overstays its welcome, but it's quite an enjoyable look at
how the movie's creatures were designed and performed. It's worth noting
how little CGI was used, but it's a shame the film's cinematography was
so poor that half the work was obscured by darkness...
First Person Shooter Sequence:
by far the film's best moment, it's enlightening to see that this 5-minute
sequence was actually directed by a Second Unit and took weeks to complete.
It's certainly good work, and the sequence is included for viewing.
Doom Nation:
a 15-min featurette about the Doom video games themselves, packed with
interviews and clips of the iconic Doom, its sequel Doom II and the
quantum leap that was Doom 3. Interesting to see the parallels between game
and film, but this is a little tiresome...
Game On:
only diehard gamers will enjoy this -- a series of tips and tricks for
playing Doom 3. Moderately interesting.
Rounding out the disc are trailers for Serenity and Jarhead. But not Doom
itself! Anyway, overerall this isn't a terrible release, with the image
quality not impressing me. On the plus side, the sound mix was good and
some of the extra features are quite diverting.
As of April 2009, Blu-rays and DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TH-37PX80B
37" Plasma TV with a Sony BDP-1500 Blu-ray player and played through a Yamaha DSP-AX820 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Jan 2011: Intel Quad Core Dell XPS 8100, i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80Ghz, 8Gb RAM, nVidia GeForce GTS 240, Windows 7
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
