I am sorry to report that the Doom movie, after finally having come out, was a pretty large disappointment. They have taken a terrible amount of freedom with this conversion to the big screen and most of them bestow the movie with an even more negative charge. The first thing I should therefore say is that this movie's problem isn't the acting. The acting was above average, especially from Karl Urban and Rosamund Pike. Al Weaver's few moments deserve a positive connotation as well. Even the Rock himself seems to suddenly develop some talent.
I enjoy playing FPS games. I adored DOOM, rarely played DOOM2, but loved DOOM³, although the quintessential unmountable flashlight 'annoyed the hell out of me'. Now, what these guys did is an insult to the games. The story about having found the 'genetic blueprint for the soul' is utter tosh, so is the selective pathogen attached thereto. My other major beefs with this film is the available technology, the lack of suspense, the failed attempt at character building and the scenery, which despite many positive comments is quite dreadful.
As far as the technology is concerned, the 'Arcing device' and the opacity walls are rubbish and I hated them. They are an insult to the Doom games and as far as the Arc could be considered a teleportation device, I wonder where Hell is to be found. There is no Hell, there is no Doom, there is only the 24th Chromosome Pair and all the nonsense it spawned, which is why I substituted the title 'Doom' and called this comment 'the 24th Chromosome' instead. Because that is what it is about. Everything that made Doom 3 a worthwhile gaming experience was destroyed by this movie. You want to see the slow decay of the mind, the escalation as the Mars facility slowly changes into a Hell on Mars. And I bet I speak for every Doom fanatic out there that we wanted to see what Hell looked like in this movie.
Part of this brings me to the lack of suspense, which was created by two major mitigating factors. Part of the kick from Doom 3 was the desolation you felt from being a hundred million clicks from Earth. The Arc took that away by inducing a mean of instantaneous travel back Home. Like this, one could have simply thrown a small tactical nuke through that gravity defying globule in the first place and get things over with. Secondly, making Reaper superhuman robbed the movie of whatever suspense it had left, as suspense is built around the fear that something terrible might happen to a vulnerable person. This could be partially solved by having miss Grimm NOT disappear and tag along as that ridiculously long and superfluous FPS scene ensues (I rather play the real thing).
Then there is the one chance for the two main characters of the movie to develop, but that goes even more awry than the genetic experiments. The two always refer to some kind of incident, which is accompanied by a musical tune, but never is actually elaborated on what this plot point is really about. That already tells it. There's no plot point. It's all about these genetic misfits and slaughtering them. A good thing I can say about this movie though is how it doesn't try and integrate some love interest here or there. Maybe the filmmakers tried - and God knows Hollywood's famous for killing movies with these things - but couldn't find any live, non-related marine to hook up with miss Grimm. If not, bless the movie, if so, bless the circumstances.
Now about the scenery; the corridors were Doomy, I won't argue about that, but the set pieces could've been better and more detailed. Now maybe I should thank the quality of the screener for it, but I could make it out fine enough to make the observation. The electric parameter holding pen was stupid, be honest, but the Sewers on the mars facility made me laugh. Who would ever build a research facility on Mars and let so much space go to waste for the soul purpose of putting in a medieval system of catacombs as a poor excuse for plumbing?! I have done my say. To conclude things: I found the movie quite bad. I found it almost horrid. Horrid from a cinematographic standard, horrid in the choices made for the plot, the scenery and the characters. But, I rather have a bad movie that's exciting and enjoyable....... than a good movie that isn't. And Doom wás at least mildly exciting and enjoyable enough for me to bare. And it had a couple of charms; I loved the BFG (although they should have made the effects green).
4 out of 10
I enjoy playing FPS games. I adored DOOM, rarely played DOOM2, but loved DOOM³, although the quintessential unmountable flashlight 'annoyed the hell out of me'. Now, what these guys did is an insult to the games. The story about having found the 'genetic blueprint for the soul' is utter tosh, so is the selective pathogen attached thereto. My other major beefs with this film is the available technology, the lack of suspense, the failed attempt at character building and the scenery, which despite many positive comments is quite dreadful.
As far as the technology is concerned, the 'Arcing device' and the opacity walls are rubbish and I hated them. They are an insult to the Doom games and as far as the Arc could be considered a teleportation device, I wonder where Hell is to be found. There is no Hell, there is no Doom, there is only the 24th Chromosome Pair and all the nonsense it spawned, which is why I substituted the title 'Doom' and called this comment 'the 24th Chromosome' instead. Because that is what it is about. Everything that made Doom 3 a worthwhile gaming experience was destroyed by this movie. You want to see the slow decay of the mind, the escalation as the Mars facility slowly changes into a Hell on Mars. And I bet I speak for every Doom fanatic out there that we wanted to see what Hell looked like in this movie.
Part of this brings me to the lack of suspense, which was created by two major mitigating factors. Part of the kick from Doom 3 was the desolation you felt from being a hundred million clicks from Earth. The Arc took that away by inducing a mean of instantaneous travel back Home. Like this, one could have simply thrown a small tactical nuke through that gravity defying globule in the first place and get things over with. Secondly, making Reaper superhuman robbed the movie of whatever suspense it had left, as suspense is built around the fear that something terrible might happen to a vulnerable person. This could be partially solved by having miss Grimm NOT disappear and tag along as that ridiculously long and superfluous FPS scene ensues (I rather play the real thing).
Then there is the one chance for the two main characters of the movie to develop, but that goes even more awry than the genetic experiments. The two always refer to some kind of incident, which is accompanied by a musical tune, but never is actually elaborated on what this plot point is really about. That already tells it. There's no plot point. It's all about these genetic misfits and slaughtering them. A good thing I can say about this movie though is how it doesn't try and integrate some love interest here or there. Maybe the filmmakers tried - and God knows Hollywood's famous for killing movies with these things - but couldn't find any live, non-related marine to hook up with miss Grimm. If not, bless the movie, if so, bless the circumstances.
Now about the scenery; the corridors were Doomy, I won't argue about that, but the set pieces could've been better and more detailed. Now maybe I should thank the quality of the screener for it, but I could make it out fine enough to make the observation. The electric parameter holding pen was stupid, be honest, but the Sewers on the mars facility made me laugh. Who would ever build a research facility on Mars and let so much space go to waste for the soul purpose of putting in a medieval system of catacombs as a poor excuse for plumbing?! I have done my say. To conclude things: I found the movie quite bad. I found it almost horrid. Horrid from a cinematographic standard, horrid in the choices made for the plot, the scenery and the characters. But, I rather have a bad movie that's exciting and enjoyable....... than a good movie that isn't. And Doom wás at least mildly exciting and enjoyable enough for me to bare. And it had a couple of charms; I loved the BFG (although they should have made the effects green).
4 out of 10