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Doom Takes A Shot At Gamers 94

Posted by Zonk from the game-movies-suck dept.
The Washington Post has a piece discussing the suck that is a movie based on a videogame. From the article: "At the heart of this competitive marriage is this question: How do you successfully turn an interactive experience (playing an Xbox game) into a passive one (watching a movie version of an Xbox game)? For whatever reasons, the recent crop of video game movies -- including 2003's 'House of the Dead' and this year's 'Alone in the Dark,' both helmed by the German director Uwe Boll -- have consistently disappointed gamers. Someone even started a Web site called Uwebollsucks.com. Is it for real? A joke? No one is sure."
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Doom Takes A Shot At Gamers More

Doom Takes A Shot At Gamers

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  • The same way you successfully make any other movie: by focusing on the story [amazon.com].
    • http://gamestorytelling.com/ [gamestorytelling.com]
      I called Hollywood's bluff.
      Now I'm on the run.
      I'm an outlaw in this town.
      I duck into a back door at the LA Convention center to lose them, and lo and behold it's E3--the video game industry's biggest expo. 50-cent towers over me, as the crowd whirls through the million-dollar diplays set up by Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, Activision, Vivendi Universal, Electronic Arts. Doom, Half Life, Unreal, and GTA--they're all there.
      And nobody gets it.
      I'm the only one playing this game.
      I duck o
    • The story?

      Have you played Doom? Ever?
      • You mean the old pc I used to play Doom 1 was an Xbox ?

        Damn, I could have made a fortune with that PII...

        As for the story, well, yes, the synopsis stands just one word...

        "Aaarrrrgh"
      • "The story?

        Have you played Doom? Ever?"

        Weeeeelllll think about it. Doom isn't story driven, but at least it's a setting. So how do you turn that into a movie? Use the setting to tell a story. Where'd the monsters come from? Where is there a single marine there? Besides the obvious, what sort of conflicts would this character have? Etc.

        Okay, it's still pretty shallow. But you know what? This would still make for an amusing parody. That was the charm of Red Vs. Blue. The world that Halo takes pla
      • Anybody read the books?

        Anyone?

        C'mon, you don't have to be ashamed.

        I am.

        Yeah.
      • Action games lack story, obvious view. So bear with me as I try to explain why the original Doom actually had a pretty good one.

        It's basically magnified Mary Shelley. You're battling against tides of evil, all unleashed by man's own hubris, his own self-congratulating experimentation. But Frankenstein's been around a while, so this much would just be cliche. So here's the real punch: the game actually makes you feel powerful towards the end of the game. For a while, you actually think you can take o
      • Yes, I have played Doom. I have played Doom II. Oh and I have played Doom III (same story as Doom, nice new engine). So yeah, Doom has a story line. This story, however, was not even remotely mimiced by the movie. I mean... there was no crazy mad scientist, there was no gate to hell, nothing! This movie was extremely entertaining. Yet to anyone who played the game, this should be extremely dissapointing.
    • I Saw the Rock (is the the suppsoed to be capitalised ? Only if it's the band I guess) on The Daily Show. Hilarious interview, the guy actually does have comic talent (good on SNL too). He brought out a prop BFG, let Jon Stewart play with it and made tons of raucnhy jokes with and about Jon. A few of monsters from the game were mentioned as being in or out of the movie. He definitely said there were "nods" to the game's fans in some scenes. I'd say they're trying to reach out to the gaming audience, but are

  • RE (Score:2)

    by xgamer04 ( 248962 )
    I thought that the Resident Evil movies were pretty good, but I like cheesy horror movies, so maybe that's why...

    • Re:RE (Score:4, Interesting)

      by cgenman ( 325138 ) on Friday October 21, 2005 @08:48PM (#13849653) Homepage
      The first Resident Evil movie should get lots of props. It took the RE world, but altered the plot dramatically. It put characters in difficult, complex situations. A woman wakes up in a house full of guns, and is smuggled down into an underground laboratory she didn't know existed trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Characters make mistakes that other characters have to pay for. They choose between killing one of their own or facing death together.

      Most of the actors were pretty good. And let's face it, some of the moments, like the laser dicer machine, were pretty cool.

      The problem seemed to be that a few of the actors were distractingly bad, and the CGI monster was ATROCIOUS. Laughably bad. It looked like something out of a cheap CGI fan hentai. Really, if there was a moderately competent sense of dread that the director managed to get out of the great scenario writing, it was killed every time that giant plastic tongue came on screen. Sure, the dogs covered in prosciutto were distractingly bad too and should have been cut from the script. But at least they weren't recurring characters.

      RE: Apocalypse didn't have as strong a scenario, writing, or anything else really. But it did drive the characters forward and did succeed in making RE: 3 the Movie look really, really appealing. At this point, it would make a great serial drama for the sci-fi channel.

      I wish someone would go back and re-do RE:1 with the love and skill it deserved. It was definitely a problem of one or two weak links in an otherwise strong chain.

      • It looked like something out of a cheap CGI fan hentai.

        Looks like I found my new sig.

        I wish someone would go back and re-do RE:1 with the love and skill it deserved. It was definitely a problem of one or two weak links in an otherwise strong chain.

        I really should watch it again. I went to see it in the theater, and had low expectations (after seeing crap like Super Mario Brothers and Tomb Raider), so I was at least entertained by it, which usually doesn't happen when I go to movies anymore.

        • Re:RE (Score:1)

          by mink ( 266117 )
          It's missing a, um, word at the end. ... cheap CGI fan hentai cartoon ... cheap CGI fan hentai comic book ... cheap CGI fan hentai rock video ... cheap CGI fan hentai magazine advertisement

          The value "hentai" is describing a quality (perverted) of an object that is not defined. Error parsing SIG.
          • I was not the one who came up witht the sentence. When you say "porn" to someone, they generally don't spaz at you and demand to know if you are talking about print material, video, etc. In the same way, the word "hentai" means to most English-speaking people an anime/manga that is pornographic/perverted in nature. ...

            I just realized you either trolled me very well or are just a pedantic loser who has a closet full of hentai.

            • Re:RE (Score:1)

              by mink ( 266117 )
              I know you were not the one who came up with it, I responded to the post you made saying "Looks like I found a new Sig".

              Hentai does not translate to porn. And if someone said "Thats a low budget pornographic" to me I'd be wondering what pornographic item the person was speaking about.

              I am neither. I just know the meaning of the word.

              My goal wasn't to be painfully pedantic, it was to point out that phrase felt like it needed a little something and be humorous. I'm sorry if my humor was not all that funny.

      • Re:RE (Score:2)

        by rthille ( 8526 )
        The first Resident Evil movie should get lots of props. It took the RE world, but altered the plot dramatically. It put characters in difficult, complex situations.

        I think you meant to say:

        Milla Jojovich was super-hot in Resident Evil, so I could ignore the bad storyline, effects, acting, plotholes, etc.
      • The first Resident Evil movie should get lots of props.

        RE: Apocalypse didn't have as strong a scenario, writing, or anything else really.

        I thought RE was okay when I first watched it, and later my opinion of it improved after watching some of the special features- it sounded like some of the people involved had interesting ideas and worked hard etc. Then I watched RE: Apocalypse, and my opinion of the first movie skyrocketed. Wow, was RE:A bad: the boss-monster, the corporate villains, that female police
      • I went in to see Apocolapse knowing that the movie had been panned by every critic alive, and probably a few dead ones too. I was about twenty or so minutes into the movie, and thinking that while the movie wasn't going to win any Oscars, it wasn't bad. The critics were full of crap as usual.

        But then I saw Mila's entrance in the cathedral scene, and thought, "no, the critics were exactly right about this movie".
  • "WHERE IS CARMACK?"

    You know they have failed us.
  • From the article: But the game does have cool weapons, such as the BFG, which some translate as "Big Force Gun,"

    I don't think I've heard anyone, once, translate BFG into big force gun.

    And why does a university club have a PR man?

    • The writer could have steered the readers in the right direction by saying something like "B and G stand for Big and Gun, I'll let you figure out what F stands for.."
      So I'd like to propose another couple of translations:
      Big Fluffy Gun
      Big Frog Gun
      Big Ferrous Gun
      Big Female Gun
      Big Funky Gun
      Big Frightening Gun
      Big Fumanchu Gun
      Big Fermentation Gun ...
      • The movie has bigger things to worry about. Such as

        - How to avoid looking like Aliens the movie.
        - How to allocate budget for all that fire power.
        - How to show the film in anything higher than +1 brightness contrast.

    • Bio Force Gun (Score:3, Informative)

      by MachDelta ( 704883 )
      Just came back from this. The BFG is labled as the "Bio Force Gun" (you/The Rock sees a schematic on a computer screen). When The Rock actually gets his hands on it though, he walks around it and goes "Big. Fucking. Gun."
      Its all good :)

      • The Rock recently did an interview on the Daily Show. He walked on with what he called the "Big F***ing Gun." (It may be on Comedy Central, but they still go through Standards and Practices before 1AM, I guess.) I've got some great pictures off my TV capture card of Jon Stewart with the BFG.

        Only one I've actually uploaded so far is this one [xenoveritas.org] which is intended to be used as an avatar on various forums. (So it's 100x100, which is kinda postage-stamp sized.)

        But, hey, Jon Stewart with the BFG. What more

  • The author's swipe at 'Tron' (the movie) was completely unnecessary and stems from being rather ill informed.

    Compared to the last ten year's crop of 'game' movies, Tron was new and exciting because:

    • It featured a new revolutionary way of telling a story with an unprecedented amount of computer graphics
    • It tried to tell a story within the hardware of a computer
    • It appealed to the first generation of computer gamers

    Unfortunately the author didn't realise that Tron was actually not a 'tie-in', though

    • yeah what a dickhole, comparing it to Mario Bros and Street Fighter.

      Anyone remember "Tron"? The arcade game and the movie?
      Yes, I remember both quite fondly. And the movie had much better writing than your sorry article, Mr. Washington Post.

      "Doom" is not quite bleh, more like blah.
      Wow, great description.

    • Compared to the last ten year's crop of 'game' movies, Tron was new and exciting because ...

      ... because it wasn't based on a game! The games were based on the movie, not the other way around!

      In any event, I really liked the Tron 2.0 game. I wonder if they make a Tron 2.0 movie, would it be a sequel to the movie Tron (in which case it's likely to suck, but could be OK) or a movie version of the game (in which case past experience tells us that it's doomed?)

  • It's Uwe Boll, I mean, It's Uwe Boll! He couldn't make a succes movie even if he copied the script of an existing blockbuster and watched every scene of it on his VHS player, frame by frame.

    • Re:'nough said... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Shadarr ( 11622 )
      Yeah, everyone gets hung up on the fact that Uwe Boll makes crap movies about games, rather than just that he makes crap movies, period. He would fail at any genre he tried. He just chose videogames because, as Tycho of PA posits, he hates them.
  • How do you successfully turn an interactive experience (playing an Xbox game) into a passive one (watching a movie version of an Xbox game)?

    Ah, the genius of it:

    Take a PC game and make a movie of it: Bad

    Take a dumbed down for consoles version of a PC game and make a movie of the dumbed down version: It has Oscar written all over it.

    Personally, I'm waiting for a movie based on the Gameboy Advance port of the Tony Hawk games. Movie based on a video game? Check. Based on an inferior port? Check. Skating movie?
    • X-box is games right, so this movie is based on a game right therefor the game is on a x-box right?

      Doom of course was a PC game, for the newbies, and is also extremely old. Talk of a movie version has been going on for far to long so since that time consoles have caught up a bit and the third version actually seems to have made it into console land. Then again the 3rd version was all ready close to a movie. It certainly seemed to take a lesson from the alien series, make it so dark that you can't see the s

      • 1.5 hours of zero story and non-stop violence

        That last good video game movie I watch was the guy who beat Quake 1 in like 15 minutes of zero story and non-stop violence. Before that was the guy who beat Mario Bros 1 in like 3 minutes (which to this day I have yet to beat =[). But Doom did have a story! Don't you remember the end when your head was on a pike? Or with that poor bunny? That poor, poor bunny...

        the american version of Red Dwarf

        I have to assume this is sarcasm. Please tell me this is sarca

        • Grant Naylor made 2 pilots for an American version of Red Dwarf prior to Series VI. Both pilots were never picked up, and were simply god-awful peices of smeg. The only remotely interesting bit is that the actress who played the Cat in the 2nd pilot, was the same actress who played Dax in DS9.
          • There were two pilots?
            I only have one. Where might I find the other. I use the one I have to scare people straight from thinking americanizing british shows = good idea. I also have the US version of coupling and that knock off show where people vandalize each others houses for backup.

  • Obligatory (Score:2, Funny)

    by heinousjay ( 683506 )
    The subject says it [penny-arcade.com]

  • High Hopes for Silent Hill (Score:3, Interesting)

    by venomkid ( 624425 ) on Friday October 21, 2005 @08:38PM (#13849597)
    The upcoming Silent Hill Movie [imdb.com] doesn't have a single hair of Boll on it, and that's got me hoping.

    It's actually got some pretty strong talent behind it. The script's been refined by Roger Avary (who co-wrote Pulp Fiction, True Romance and Reservoir Dogs among others). It's being directed by Christophe Gans (Brotherhood of the Wolf), who can create pretty amazing atmospheres. And the original Silent Hill sound designer/composer Akira Yamaoka is doing the music. Not to mention starring Sean Bean (Boromir in LotR) and Radha Mitchell (Mary Barrie in Finding Neverland).

    Apparently Avary and Gans spent hours playing the game together while coming up with the visuals and finer plot points, and even the special effects guys are saying it's like nothing they've worked on before.

    So yeah, enough of my rampant fanboyism. This one has all the marks of breaking this horrible cycle.
    • If Akira Yamaoka is doing the music, then it'll take a lot of work to mess this movie up. The audio from the game, alone, scares me more than any other games I played or any other movies that I saw.
    • They shot a bunch of the Silent Hill movie in a town about 10 mins from where I live and some in an old armory right in my home town. From what I was able to see, which was very little they did a really good job on the sets. I can't wait to see the first trailers to see how well it actually turned out.
  • 'nuff said.

    To add more detail for those who've not seen his Meaningless Obviously Vacant & Idiotic Eggheaded Shindigs aka "movies", they have appalling stories (yes, even considering the source material), terrible acting, horrendous special effects - they're just aweful! For some reason he thought it would be a good idea to show snippets of the original game footage in House of the Dead [imdb.com] while Alone in the Dark [imdb.com] used an anti-racism song in a terrible sex scene?!?!

    Yet, somehow he keeps getting relatively

  • Xbox Game? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by WebScud ( 662900 )
    Did they just say Doom is an Xbox game? PC port if anything.

  • fucking washington post (Score:2, Informative)

    by chigun ( 770799 )
    This Washington Post article was utter nonsense. It had two things in it that really irritated me. First was the quote from the one student giving the opinion something along the lines of "it's not oscar-worthy" or something like that. I don't know about my fellow slashdotters, but I don't go into many sci-fi movies thinking they have even a chance at scoring even a nomiation. Second was that unnecessary shot at both the Tron movie and game. I loved both very much, not to mention the new incarnation of
  • Face it, even having a strong fan base, gamers will NOT make up most of the market going to see a movie.

    Look at Serenity and its loyal fanbase. While the movie was made as a thank you by Joss Whedon for the support his fan's game him for Firefly, the movie barely did 30 million at the box office. The movie was unapoligectially made for the fans of Firefly, and having spoken to a few non-browncoats, few could follow the movie or even enjoy it because they didn't have any Firefly background (there loss of c
    • Look at Serenity and its loyal fanbase. While the movie was made as a thank you by Joss Whedon for the support his fan's game him for Firefly, the movie barely did 30 million at the box office. The movie was unapoligectially made for the fans of Firefly, and having spoken to a few non-browncoats, few could follow the movie or even enjoy it because they didn't have any Firefly background (there loss of course). As a fan, I loved it, but obviously there was only about 3 million of us that was interested in se
      • Hell, even the plotless Quake 3 would make a better movie than Doom 3. The doom style "Marines vs. Monsters" action has been done to death by much better directors. Quake 3 would be pretty simple - it's Mortal Combat meets The Matrix. Just make up some bullshit with starwars-style regeneration tanks, energy shields, nanosurgeons, and performance-enhancing nanites to explain the superhuman feats and the whole "coming back from the dead a dozen times in a single fight".

        Quake 2's monsters already got a pre
    • I'm rather disapointed that despite the Doom trailer looking like a joke, Doom opened to a 50% higher box office total than Serenity :(

  • Article Problems (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cgenman ( 325138 ) on Saturday October 22, 2005 @12:32AM (#13850684) Homepage
    The Washington post is supposed to be a reputable newspaper with a reputation for reliable informaiton. So why was this article not basic fact checked by anybody?

    That is, anybody before us.

    Come 'on everybody! Let's all pile on to poor Jose Antonio Vargas and point out everything he just plain got wrong.

    I'll take the obvious ones.

    1. Tron was not a videogame-turned-into-a-movie. It was an original movie about games in general. The videogame followed.
    2. Doom cannot be categorized as an Xbox game. Doom has seen basically all of it's sales on the PC for about a dozen years, with the occasional port.
    3. Console gaming and movies don't "crave" the 13 - 25 year old male audience. According to the Entertainmetn Software Association [theesa.com] the average gamer age is 30, and 43% are female. This skewes a little lower on consoles, but the numbers are far better than the shallow stereotype Vargas passes as journalism. And hasn't box office gold been Date Movies [imdb.com]?

    Arguable points

    1. Doom is not the Granddaddy of FPS games. Wolfenstein 3D is. Wolfenstein 3D begat Doom. There were other FPS games before Wolfie, but it was the first to see real commercial success.
    2. Half-Life was based more on classic adventure games than Doom. It certainly didn't "follow the Doom model."
    3. He points to Spielberg signing a deal to create 3 franchisable games for EA as a sign that the industry is at a crossroads. However, Spielberg has worked on games many times before, though his LucasArts and Dreamworks Interactive studios. Don't get me wrong, I'm excited to see him spend more time trying to alter the craft, but it's still nothing he hasn't done before.

    As a side note: Movies are about why you do something. Games are about how you do something. Movies about "how" are hollow, and games about "why" are boring.

    • 2. Half-Life was based more on classic adventure games than Doom. It certainly didn't "follow the Doom model."

      No, it wasn't based on "adventure games" at all. Half-life fits directly into the chain of FPS starting with Wolf3d.

      The main challenge facing a player of Half-life is how to shoot things before they hurt you (exactly the same as in Doom). Adventure games are based on collecting and using objects to open puzzles, and while many FPS have minor elements of puzzle-solving, just think about a simple qu
      • 2. Half-Life was based more on classic adventure games than Doom. It certainly didn't "follow the Doom model."

        Which change would've hurt Half-life's sales more- replacing the mild puzzle-solving with Doom-style "red/blue keycards", or removing the gun-shooting and monster-dodging? The answer should tell you which genre it's really from.

        It's in the Doom genre, but it added a much deeper storytelling aspect to it that Doom never had. Remove that, and it wouldn't have sold well at all. But transplant that st
        • It's in the Doom genre, but it added a much deeper storytelling aspect to it that Doom never had.

          That falsehood is quite commonly repeated. It is a sign of a misunderstanding what "storytelling" actually means, which is difficult to address without suggesting a course in creative writing and/or literary appreciation.

          In terms of storytelling, Halflife was only minorly stronger than Doom, and barely any different in terms of plotline. "Nasty government scientists in their wasteland underground lab experimen
          • In terms of storytelling, Halflife was only minorly stronger than Doom, and barely any different in terms of plotline. "Nasty government scientists in their wasteland underground lab experiment with teleporters and unlease weird monsters"

            In FPS terms, Halflife added tremendously to the genre. Pretty much all stories can be reduced down to a few essential plotlines. The strength of storytelling comes in moments like when you have a chat with the guard at the door about his family, only moments later to wat
    • are people reading the same article as me or what?

      This isnt the only post to have raised some issues that confuse the hell out of me but it has them all in and was the first I came to.

      1. he doesnt say which order Tron came out in just that they came out, and though it is open to interpretation I read it as being nostalgic rather than derogatory.

      2. Unless im missing something he never once says Doom is an X-Box game. This point has been whined about by half this damn thread. He never actually says i

  • Xbox Game? Here is a PC Gamer's review. (Score:3, Informative)

    by jasonmicron ( 807603 ) on Saturday October 22, 2005 @02:11AM (#13850949)
    Ok, before I start: XBox game? What the motherf*ck? Can we please shoot the editor? Please? This game has as much to do with the Xbox as Jane Fonda has to do with Oprah. I mean, really? WHAT THE F*CK????? Ok ok, all obvious references (and anger aside at the total lack of observation for the gaming industry for the, oh i don't know, last 15 YEARS) aside, here is an honest gamer's review:

    Doom has been a mainstay for the PC gaming industry for well over a decade. To this day it is still the pioneer for multiplayer deathmatch and cooperative games in general and as the foundation for first person shooters (FPS). If you play any game, whether it be Metroid for the Gamecube, Halo for the Xbox or any other type of FPS game, you have Doom to thank. Doom launched the FPS genre to stardom. id had previously released the WWII FPS game Wolfenstein but the genre wasnt credited as taking off until Doom came into the picture.

    First off, let me say that since Doom for the PC first came out over a decade ago I have been a die-hard fan. I have been a fan since the original shareware version of Doom and will always continue to be a fan due to the fact that it has been the most inspired game that I played back in the 1990s. To this day I still go back and replay the game, both in single-player and multi-player. I am however continuously concerned about any video game movie that graces the big screen. They usually suck, flat out. Doom does draw the first exception I think I have ever seen.

    The director, producers and writers seemed to take great care to stick to the storyline as much as humanly possible and took great pride in the story that the Doom franchise presented. With that said, let me give my review.

    Doom starts off with a prologue. You see a few scientists running away from "something". This "something" pulls the scientists through ceilings, floors (ala grating them in many pieces) and various other methods of morbid slaughter. Dr. Carmack (obvious homage to the game's creator) sends out a distress call to Earth shortly before becoming food for a giant creature that blasts his office door open.

    Enter the marines on Earth after a nice rendition of the Doom logo on the big screen. Sarge (The Rock) takes center stage as the leader of the marine squad being dispatched to the Mars UAC facility. Shortly after assembling his octet-numbered squad we find them looking for the missing scientists and trying to retrieve data for the UAC complex. Only a small portion of the facility has been compromised so there are still a good number of UAC workers on-site.

    After a while, Sarge and his crew quickly discover that there is more than meets the eye. There is a serum which ends up being the culprit, turning regular humans into these "monsters" Apparently this effect is selective to only certain people with disdainful DNA. "The Doom Guy" (see how long it takes you to figure out who he is) ends up saving the day with a nice final climax against the obvious if you have played "Doom 3".

    The BFG 9000 (Bio Force Gun, yea right) makes a very big appearance several times as the weapon of choice for Sarge.

    The storyline isn't stellar but it isn't anything to scoff at. This isn't Friday The 13th Part CXII: Jason In Space or Aliens but the feel is relatively similar if you don't follow the game series. The writing could also have been more refined than presented but it will do for a casual movie.

    Except for the serum the movie follows the game (Doom 3) relatively well. Dont expect the good ol flying heads or Cyberdemon: The most you will see are imps and zombies since Hell isnt involved in the storyline (though Hell is referred to continuously).

    There is a 5-7 minute segment in the movie where you go into First Person View with "The Doom Guy". It is during this sequence t

  • when Doom was blamed for curupting America's youth on the news all the time, and now its getting a movie. Wonder how long before GTA gets a movie? Bets anyone?

  • Way too much blather about the movie (Score:4, Informative)

    by MachDelta ( 704883 ) on Saturday October 22, 2005 @04:58AM (#13851376)
    Just saw Doom tonight with friends and mixed company. We had a nice little demographic cut there, ranging from PC game geeks (like myself) to total noobs. And chicks, OMG!

    Anyways, if you're not a gamer, have never played Doom, or aren't the least bit interested in gratuitous violence - don't go. One guys girlfriend actually fell asleep during the movie, which was suprising to me given the abundance of loud noises, screaming, and overamped bass. However, if you are a gamer, have played doom, enjoy gratutious violence, and have a sense of humour - then by all means, go see it! You can skip the fancy theatres, just grab as many geeky friends as you can find, load up on your choice of alcohol/drugs/sugar, and HAVE FUN at the theatre. Yes its bad, but its bad in a good way. As long as you can let your expectations go, relax, and just revel in the stupidity, you'll have a blast. I sure did!


    Now on to specifics.

    Plot & Script: Yeaaaah there isn't much of a plot, as you might expect. 'Something Bad'(tm) happens on Mars. The 'RRTS' (good-guys) teleport over there, more stuff goes bad, people die, etc etc etc, curtain. What plot exists has virtually nothing to do with the videogame - no portal to hell, no 'demons', none of that - though references to hell are scattered throughout. The actual plot ends up being a lot more like Resident Evil. That is to say, bio-engineering + lack of ethics = zombies and other mean things. It's really fairly pointless, and although the movie does try to tackle the idea of Good vs Evil, Right and Wrong (and almost, ALMOST succeeding for a nanosecond), it just ends up getting in the way of shooting more stuff.
    The script, unfortunatly, is just as bad. It doesn't even score points for having cool one-liners you can shout at friends later. For the most part its uninspired and just stupidly obvious. That, or its all screaming/yelling. Heck, the only real line I remember from the movie was "He has a condition. He's dead." or something to that effect. Its more like reading a cookbook than it is cool or poetic. Shucks. :P

    Characters: The characters are a little hit and miss. There are about 11 major-ish characters in the movie (8 are marines), all fleshed out to various degrees. Some have lots of screentime but zero backstory (like Sarge), others feel more human (Reaper - this is intentional i'm sure). Some are funny/pitiful (The Kid), others just there for show & violence (Destroyer), and yet others who could have been completely cut out of the script with no ill effects (Mac). A big but expected dissapointment for me was the utterly horrible intro/outro of the characters. You basically have one scene that introduces all of the marines at once, yet doesn't explain jack about who they are. Then throughout the movie, people die, dissapear, and die again. The Samantha character literally crawls out of the movie and is never seen again 5 seconds before the credits. Oh well.
    One thing the movie failed to do, or did very well (depending on your point of view), is leave the morality of some of the characters quite obscure until late in the flick. Is Portman evil or just stupid? What motivates Sarge? Is Duke a badass or a tender-heart? I found myself questioning the characters at times, which was both interesting and kind of revealing (asto how pointless many of them really were :P), but i'm probably trying to read into something that isn't there. :P

    Acting: Karl Urban (John 'Reaper' Grimm) is one of my favorite actors, and IMO he does pretty good with such an utterly craptastic script. Doom definitly does not feature some of The Rock's (Sarge) best acting however. A couple lines seem like they were almost flubbed but left in anyways due to the length of a cut. Overall however, he does get the "grrr soldier badass!" feeling out to you. Rosamund Pike (Samantha Grimm) is one of the best actors in the movie IMO, though i'm not sure if its because of

  • I liked it. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by John Carmack ( 101025 ) on Saturday October 22, 2005 @02:22PM (#13853244)
    I had fairly low expectations, and there were even some plans in palce to guide me away from any press after the premier if I didn't like the movie, so I wouldn't say something "unproductive", but I was pleasantly surprised.

    No, it isn't an oscar movie, but it definitely isn't Super Mario Brothers / Street Fighter / Double Dragon.

    I do wish they had kept the true satanic / hellish theme, but I think they did a credible job with their alternate direction.

    John Carmack

    • Re:I liked it. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Morinaga ( 857587 )
      It's ok that a licensed product of your company would have "low expectations" from it's founder? I understand that game developers probably don't have the same kind of influence over movies as say Rowlings, Grisham etc... but it almost sounds like id have very little quality control.

      Is this simply the result of the licensing parent just not having enough muscle power to influence direction?

      • I have to agree with your opinion. After watching "Sin City", then this weekend going and catching "A History of Violence" I was saddened. While "Sin City" was great, "A History of Violence" was pathetic. Hollywood can't figure it out that each person putting their own spin on a story isn't really wanted or needed. Look at the previous Batman movies compared to the more recent one. Hollywood is in a tailspin as it is, all they can do is old TV show to movies that bomb (Dukes of Hazard, Bewitched, Star

    • Re:I liked it. (Score:2, Interesting)

      by calimer ( 872695 )
      My question really is, why did they remove the hell theme? Was it related to budget? It just seems like such a drastic change between the original doom concept, and extremely unneccessary and hurtful in my opinion. How many movies have we already seen that focus on an experiment lab gone bad and created some genetic mutation? Zillions. How many movies have focus on actual hell beings entering our realm and the heroes having to fight them back? Not nearly enough in my opinion. I don't understand why a
    • I can't come up with a good reason why they strayed from the hellish theme. Political correctness comes to mind, but for some reason I doubt the target audience would be offended by the presence of Hell in the film. I'll be seeing Doom tomorrow, so I can't comment on the actual movie yet. MercyKiller
    • This is what I thought of it:

      it was a good movie, but without the elements of the game, it didn't seem like doom. the plot ended up a lot like Resident Evil, which isn't supposed to be a red hot poker in the eye, but I'm just saying we've seen it all before. as said, there haven't been enough movies that has that plot.

      However, the reason for not having the hellish theme is valid enough. It's a risky world out there, you make one wrong move and you're gonna get sued. Too many lawyers in this world.

  • The reason video game movies are having such a hard time is probably the same reason movie based video games are notoriously bad. For all but a rare few, you are taking a crappy movie or game and slapping a franchise logo on it in hopes it wrangles in some suckers. If you had a great movie or game, you would probably just let it stand on it's own so you wouldn't have to pay licensing etc.
  • I've always had the opinion that with a video game -> movie thing you have two options.

    1) Movie is exactly like the game and you don't want to see what you've already played. Movie sucks
    2) Movie is not like the game exactly so you don't want to believe it. Movie sucks.

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