Introduction
Doom was one of my favorite computer games during my college days. The hours spent on the network version of Doom was countless. So when the movie based on the video game was made, I decided to check it out.
Coming to movies made out of games, Tomb Raider was one of the success stories, so I expected Doom to be at least at the level of Tomb Raider if not better. Also, I smacked my licks to check out some of the legendary evil characters from Doom.
The Plot
The movie Doom is based more on Doom III than the other two parts of Doom. A research center based in Mars has something brewing inside.
Something in its research has triggered some evil which is causing havoc. The place is placed under level 5 Quarantine and a Rapid Response Tactical Squad containing hardened marines are sent out to neutralize the danger.
The RRTS is lead by Sarge (The Rock) and after initial inspection find some strange happenings. This leads them to question the scientists who finally reveal that the experimentation was about adding another chromosome to make humans into superhumans. The only flip side of this is that the superhuman can turn out to be a supervillain based on his mental state. So it seems that the supervillains are out there who need to be neutralized.
So Sarge leads his troops including John Grimm (Karl Urban) on the mission cleanup of the UAC facility on the Mars. How successful is the crack team and how do they go about their job? Check out this movie for the answers.
Critic’s Viewpoint
Doom’s success in the computer games category was phenomenal as it represented one of the earliest 3D games. The simplicity of the goal in the game i.e. to finish off all the monsters and collect the keys and open the doors combined with the addictive nature of the game made it such a big hit. Given the simplicity of the game, I really did not think that the game could be converted to a movie in the first place. So I approached the movie little gingerly so to say and did not really expect much out of it. In the hindsight I was correct about my scepticism.
The storyline is very thin as must be expected from such adaptations, so the movie had to depend on the visuals and action. This is where I think Andrzej Bartkowiak, the director, lost the game so to speak. First and foremost, I expected the background of the movie to be dark as it is inside the facility where the power is failing, so things ought to have been dark, but what disappointed me was that it was so dark that nearly nothing was visible which made watching the movie a futile experience. Next up, I hoped to see all the monsters including the likes of zombies, Imps, lost souls, Cacodemon, Hellknights, Mancubus, Wraiths and the Cyberdemon. All I could see in the movie were a few zombies that’s all. I really don’t know if the others were present and I just missed them because it was too dark to make out who is who or whether they were not present at all.
Another interesting thing about Doom the game was the weapons. I expected to see the full array of weapons used by the various team members of the RRTS probably each person having a weapon of choice kind of script. Again, it was disappointing to see that everyone had similar kind of guns and only at some points some other weapons were briefly flashed that’s it. I expected to see Chainsaw experts, Rocket Launcher experts, machine gun experts showing the world how to do it, but what I saw in the movie again disappointed me.
Also there were no keys to be found, not clues to be cracked and not mysteries to be solved, making the whole movie a dumb shoot in the dark kind of a movie.
One thing that I did like about the movie was the small sequence at the end, in the first player mode in which the Grimm is shown taking on the monsters with a similar look and feel as the game. I found it as an interesting innovation in the game to movie adaptations and liked the sequence more than anything else in the movie.
Of course, in such a shooting movie, there is nothing much the actors and actresses can bring to the screen than macho presence. The macho presence does not get bigger than The Rock. But, somehow I felt that the performances were low key and it appeared that they themselves did not buy into the concept of the movie.
Summary
All in all for a fan of the game Doom, the movie Doom is destined to be doomed. There were some key areas like the weapons and monsters which Andrzej Bartkowiak simply failed to exploit and this was a big let down.
All in all I would rate this movie a disappointing 2 star rating.
Additional Links
For those of you who are interested in the game of Doom and want to know more about it, check out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doom.
For those who want to know more about the Doom Monsters check out: https://doom3.gameamp.com/doom3/viewMonsters