Doom (Movie) Retrospective Review
By: Nik S
The world of video game movies can be a very tricky mistress. You can get some shining gems hidden amongst the piles of flaming garbage. Sure there isn't very many of them, but there's not really a middle ground for an "alright" video game adaptation movie. So imagine just how pumped up people were when the announcement for a movie of Doom coincided with the announcement of the third game in the series. Doom, being such a beloved freeware game of the 1990s, has a bit of reputation for being called one of the best video games of all time. Fans who mail-ordered their shareware from id Software and slapped it into their MS-DOS computers were ready to finally ready to see the game on the silver screen.
Except that it got less than stellar reviews and was going up against Saw II. From lukewarm receptions to absolute rotten reviews, Doom seemed to be lopped together with the rest of the flaming garbage. Universal spent a reported $60 million dollars for its budget which, keep in mind, is rather low as Star Wars: Episode III came out the same year with a $113 million budget. The studio was not able to break even as the movie only made an estimated $56 million dollars back in sales. What's sad is this was one of the earlier movies Dwane "Rock" Johnson was in. Which, in hindsight, was probably to just help boost ticket sales.
The movie itself was certainly a mixed bag of different creative visions clashing. It almost seemed as if the writers wanted to do two completely different movies, the director of cinematography wanted to do creative action shots to liven up slow-talking scenes, and the director wasn't sure if they wanted to make an action, horror, or drama flick.
The movie centers around a group of Marines, the RRTS, who are preparing for a mission to Mars. We're quickly introduced to each character and their specific trope of a boss (Johnson), funny guy (Razaaq Adoti), quiet guy (Yao Chin), tough guy (DeObia Oparei), the new guy (Al Weaver), weird guy (Richard Brake), strict guy (Ben Daniels), and the dude with a mysterious past (Karl Urban). They have to take ancient alien transportation to the red planet dubbed "the ark" which is a CGI water blob. While on Mars we learn that there is something attacking some of the scientists and it's up to the Marines to contain whatever the threat is. Though it's not demons like in the video game, it's instead just mutated humans.
But why is it mutated humans instead of demons? Well, the archeology team found human remains of a female skeleton protecting its offspring. While doing a DNA test on the humanoid alien they discovered that it had an extra chromosome. Now a quick Google search can tell you that having an extra chromosome can result in certain disorders in humans. This movie makes it sound like humans having an extra chromosome injected into them (is that a thing one can do?) would give them superpowers. Well, it turns out the chromosome is seeking out people who are slightly crazy. Turns out the twenty-fourth chromosome wants to spread as much as possible and is extremely bloodthirsty.
The writing was just all over the place with this movie and nothing seemed consistent at all. The biggest example would be Johnson's character known as Sarge. Starting off his character is the one in charge, everyone seems to respect and listen to him. Then it was about halfway through the film that the writers realized "oh yeah, we don't have a main antagonist, do we?" So who else other than the Rock, I guess. Which was a weird choice because they never build him up to be the big baddy until the last twenty minutes of the film. Throughout the film, he and Karl Urban flip-flopped on taking over the main character mantel.
The acting, much like the writing, was so sporadically different from one actor to the next. You'd have some actors who seemed to care about their role and tried to bring passion to their character, then they'd be paired with someone who wished they were dead. For example, Razaaq Adoti's character Duke is told to protect Rosamund Pike (a doctor and the sister to Karl Urban's character). Now Duke is the comic relief and seemed to actually have some passion for every line he said, while Dr. Grim just couldn't care and felt like she was just there for her paycheck.
This is one of those movies you watch with a group of friends, have a few drinks, and just make fun of. It really did try to be something enjoyable, and the unrated cut actually has a little more to enjoy with certain shots and kills. But, overall, the movie just feels like something Universal pushed out to try and see if they could compete with other horror movies in October.
Speaking of October, a reboot of the film is set to release this year. Though, unlike its predecessor, this one is going straight-to-video/streaming. Looking at the trailer (below) it looks like we'll be seeing more of the same, though with a much, much lower budget. It honestly looks like something that should have been made for the Syfy channel, but we'll see in three months what we'll be dealing with.
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