Gravec.at: Blogging Like It's 1999
They'll kick your ass if you don't watch this movie.
I know many people disliked the movie adaptation of Doom, an endeavour so ill-fated that it was almost inevitable. Sporting a lamentable 5.2/10 on IMDb (lower than Terminator 3; lower, even, than Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within), the popular sentiment seems to have been echoed — games based on movies invariably suck. Well, pull up a chair, because I’m going to tell you why I think Doom is worthy of redemption, and moreover, an entertaining no-brainer flick for those of us willing to disengage the grey matter and let our eyeballs run on autopilot for a while. But first, let me take a moment to indulge myself and go through the weaker points.
I’m a big fan of the Doom series of games — I played the original two back when I was a young teen, and while I wasn’t as enamoured with the third in the series, at least it held true to Doom’s original principles; that is to say, all hell has broken loose in the most literal possible meaning of the phrase, and a (more or less) nameless Marine in the service of UAC — the Union Aerospace Corporation, who started the mess in the first place — is all that stands between Satan’s armies and the destruction of mankind. It’s a solid storyline for a game series that revolves around slaughtering hundreds of horrific abominations, and for a no-brainer “dick flick” like this one, it seems it’d be hard to go wrong.
Recurring themes: Dark rooms and dead people.
Imagine my disappointment, then, when I discover that the entire theme of Hell’s armies being unleashed from Mars was casually thrown away and pounded into the dirt, replaced instead by an obnoxiously generic excuse of the classic deus ex machina bullshit of “it’s a virus that mutates people” (well, genetic modification actually, but close enough). The presence of the UAC is limited to mere logos in the background, as if in a vain attempt to appease fans. While the visuals of this movie are possibly the best silver screen rendition of Doom 3 one could hope for — complete, naturally, with the iconic B.F.G. 9000 — the storyline could just as easily be ripped straight from 28 Days Later, only replacing flesh-eating zombies with… uh… flesh-eating mutants. Yeah. Even the “lone Marine versus the armies of Hell” theme has been ripped away and urinated upon, though I suppose I’ll concede that point — with only one character, it wouldn’t make for a terribly interesting movie.
“But wait, Grave, didn’t you say you liked this movie?” It has its flaws, but there’s certainly a charm beneath the surface, yes.
The movie begins with what I was lead to assume was an elite commando team (despite one member being a frightened rookie who acts like he’s never seen combat), whose job is to go through the “Ark” — an interstellar gateway leading to Mars, built by a long-dead alien civilization — to investigate what happened to a group of scientists working on the base, even after we — the viewers — are shown them being brutally murdered by unseen foes. In the fashion that even a child could have seen coming from a mile away, it all goes awry and we’re launched into a visceral journey of both murders and dissections, as the paper-thin plot of the movie is spooned out in most transparent terms.
He doesn't like you. I don't like you either.
The acting is adequate enough and the characters — while shallow — have enough personality to be likable; in particular, “Sarge” (played by none other than The Rock), “Duke” (Razaaq Adoti), and Dr. Samantha Grimm (Rosamund Pike) stand out the most, and it should say something about the depth of this experience when a character played by The Rock could be considered one of the most interesting. But therein lies the beauty of the experience, and I hope by now my point is beginning to take form: Because of the unashamedly testosterone-driven, brick-to-the-face nature of Doom, the shallow characterization and weak storyline can easily be pushed aside, leaving a macabre ride which alternates between sinister and action-packed, and leads to what I believe is one of the greatest pieces of work in action movie history.
I’m referring, of course, to the first-person sequence that attempts to mimic the style of modern FPS games, complete with “look, Ma, no hands!” aiming and ridiculously exaggerated reloading, a sequence which every neuron in my brain was screaming at me that I should find ridiculous, and yet I was unable to shift the painfully wide smile that had taken up residence on my face, unable to resist the sheer, unrefined amount of badass present in this scene. I would go so far as to say that no man (or particularly masculine woman) is complete without having experienced it, and that alone should make the bargain-bucket price tag all the more worthwhile.
And that, good readers, is exactly why everyone should experience Doom — at least once — because despite its flaws, if it can bring even an elitist prick of a pseudo-intellectual myself to such a level of joy, then the rest of you have no excuse. Shut down your brain, lock and load, and get ready for the uncompromising — albeit inane — experience.
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