Show of hands, who's played the video game Doom? For those losers who haven't, let's recap:
Doom 1, 2 (Titled, Hell on Earth), and 3 are all first person shooters in which the player (that's you) takes control of a marine and goes about destroying a plethora of demons from hell...all taking part on Mars. That's it. I mean, you can figure out more of a "plot" by progressing through the game, but who cares? Aim, shoot, kill, reload, repeat; that's it. And it is considered one of the most successful games of all time. See? Us video gamers aren't that complicated.
So in 2005, just after the release of the PC's Doom 3, Universal Pictures put out a movie to follow the video game series titled Doom. Now....would you like to know what it's about?
IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT IT'S ABOUT!
Because this movie stars The Most Electrifying Man in Sports Entertainment, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. Yeah, he plays the roll of "Sarge." I bet we're in for a breakout performance. But, that's ok. Because action movies like this are allowed to be campy. I'll let it slide, unless it happens to get too painful. So instead of complaining about who's in the movie...let's talk about what the movie's about.
But before I start...do you know what's wrong with this movie? I'll give you 10 seconds to guess...
Time's up. The problem: There's a plot. How can DOOM have a plot? Doom isn't supposed to have a plot. It's supposed to be mindless and destructive. A guilty pleasure movie...think, First Blood/Rambo movies. They actually have the right idea when this movie starts...it opens up with a bunch of scientists running for their lives, one of them getting their arm cut off, then the lone escapee calling for help. Next scene, we're in a marine locker room, where Rocky is getting orders from his commander, while the other marines line up for the opening roll call.
Perfect. Now get to the hell demons. It doesn't even have to be in first person (although, the movie previews do note that there will be a FP scene). Oh...sorry, first I need to introduce you to the cannon fodder....err...characters. In what be the MOST cliche set of names ever to appear in a movie, John Grimm aka "Reaper," Goat (Greatest Of All Time?), Duke (Blue Devils?), Portman (Vince has no joke for this name), "The Kid," and "Destroyer." That's their names...I'm not kidding. But you know what...it's better than the name given to you in the video game Doom (the joke there is that you play as a nameless character). So, to be honest, it works. So far...the cliche aspect is drawing me in...I'm hooked. What's next, movie?
Well, what's next is that the movie wastes no time telling you the story about us silly Earthlings who found a warp to Mars, called the Arc, and some fossils of the civilization that created it-but we don't know what happened to them! I know what you're thinking, "How can there be a civilization from hell?" This is the first clue to the audience that the menace is, in fact, not hell demons
Please God no...stop trying to formulate a plot.
Still holding out hope that the devil will burst through the walls of this Mars science facility and crush all of them, the Marines are given order to eliminate the threat and retrieve the super-secret data. Convenient enough, John Grimm's sister, Samantha, is a scientist here and has been given the duty to download the data. Still no sign of a fully developed plot...so we're in the clear for now.
Please, oh Prince of Darkness...be in this movie and layeth the smackdown on these jabronis!
On the Marines go into the heart of the facility to take on anything that comes their way. They all make their way to the proverbial "safe room" where the marines split off to search the premise, while Reaper and his sister bicker over the re-opened dig that, apparently, claimed their parent's lives while they were young. Samantha shows off the prize possession, a bunch of humanoid bones, that apparently have a 24th chromosome. This supposedly made her Super-Human. Great...is anyone getting the hint that Resident Evil and Alien had a love child, and this was it? Fuck this is going to be painful...
The Great One leads his diligent crew around until he stumbles upon an extremely fast shadow who makes the marines give chase. The Shadow turns out to be the guy that called for help at the beginning of the movie, Dr. Carmack. And he looks like shit. The dude is so scared out of his mind, he rips off his own ear and is carrying around the lady's arm who was ripped off early. I guess the Devil started to sing.
The movie then shows Portman screwing around with the Kid, freaking him out so much that the young rookie needs some drugs to get through it. Why would the marines, knowing they are going on a mission this dangerous, take someone that could become a detriment to the squad? Why don't movies like this make sense? Next to develop a trait we don't care about it, Goat, who gets scared and says, "God damn it." He then proceeds to cut a cross into his wrists. 10 bucks say that neither of these aspects have any relevance to the plot that shouldn't be in the movie.
The confused crew carries Carmack's sorry carcass to the proverbial safe room to examine him. Carmack begins to freak out and mumble inaudibles in what might be the worst filmed scene of all time. He doesn't look like a man that is slowly being corrupted, genetically, by a synthetic chromosome. No....he looks more like an old guy who just saw Megan Fox naked.
Side rant...This is where the audience gets the first look at the movie's token "stupidest future invention:" the nano door. The nano door is the most ill conceived way to enter or exit a room this side of the spinning door; except much less fun. With a simple code input, then pressing of a large button...the user will liquify or solidify the pathway to the door. Do you realize how unbelievably stupid that is? In a science lab where anyone could walk through it and accidentally be caught while it was being closed? Ugh...moving on.
Reaper and Goat are off and about in a animal testing area where they get a few cheap scares thrown at the audience, before a rat-eating doctor charges the 2 and promptly gets the business end of those assault rifles. Not to be outdone, Destroyer and Sarge Rock get spooked by sounds coming from a vent...acting like a trained killer, Destroyer investigates, gets scared like a little bitch, and destroys the creature with his chain gun. What was the terror? A monkey. Truly these are the finest men for the job! But wait, Sarge notices that the blood dripping from the vent is already clotted. Oh god...I'm thinking the directors never played the video game. Hell demons do not zombies make, damn it!
Before you can even react to the idiocy going on, Reaper and Goat, once again, give chase to another rabid doctor. It's doctors gone wild! They blindly chase and shoot after like they were trained to do, I'm sure. And track it into a sewer. Is it ironic that the marines are going to be wallowing knee deep in the movie? Of course, keeping up with it's ratio of minutes of footage outside of safe room, and minutes of footage inside, even at 1:1, we find out that somehow the dead Dr. Carmack revived and disappeared. How did he disappear...there's only one way out?! Never mind...I'm sure this won't come back to haunt them. Back in the sewer, the mutated doctor stalks the crew, until it gets a hold of Goat. FINISH HIM...by sticking your tongue penis in his jugular vein? "See, audience? We're not a rip off from Resident Evil, our non-zombie creatures don't bite!"
More inconsistent shooting later at the safe room...Dr. Mutant Carmack attacks Duke and Samantha, but plot-conveniently, they capture him in the nano door. I guess it isn't the only way to get in or out of the room, because the rest of the crew takes the dying Goat to the safe room and, somehow, misses the creature's carcass frozen in the doorway. Goat dies and Carmack is shot in the head. Good...we're thinning down the crew faster than in a Friday the 13th flick. The faster they die...the faster I'm free.
The Marines decide it's a great idea to get the fuck out of there...so that's what they do. But not before Samantha has the most random scientific breakthrough ever. She discovers that the monsters are actually selecting whom they penetrate with their tongue penises. That C24 (Chromosome 24) will corrupt those with malice genetically coded in them, and give those with good genetically coded in them super human capabilities.
Sarge gives the order to set the Mars station to self destruct, then get through the arc. Once back on Earth, shoot anything that is still alive so the threat isn't released out into the rest of the world. I agree....kill them all, then yourself. Please roll the credits. Of course, Sarge goes on a killing rampage, ignoring the warning from the Siblings Grimm that not everybody is infected with RE:Clone24. In about 3 seconds, Sarge goes from main character...to antagonist. Nice character development, movie. The Kid has a conscious, and the Rock quickly checks him into the smackdown hotel via a bullet through the frontal lobe. Uh oh...I bet this isn't foreshadowing what kind of chromosomes he has. Then out of fucking no where, a huge horde of TOTALLY non-zombies rage at the crew. They get chased behind a nano door, Sarge hits the button and the highly expensive military equipment breaks like it was Triple H's glass jaw. Naturally, the nano door doesn't close immediately (I told you it was fucking stupid) and still allows the non-zombie hands to grab the Sarge's ankles...and...drag...him...wait, is the movie actually taking a chance by killing off the Rock before the resolution?! Wow! Of course, this feeling of victory is shortly lived, because the movie ruins it by having the Rock proclaim, "I'm not supposed to die." Thanks movie...taint licker.
Reaper, who got hit by a ricochet bullet, is bleeding out which would leave Samantha to fend for herself. But, of course, she has a great idea. She injects him with C24, announcing that she knows he won't turn into a mutated creature. Yeah right. C24 for some reason knocks out Reaper for about 30 random seconds...which is just long enough for Samantha to scurry off and get into some shit. But, whoa...here we go! Reaper gets up and we are now in First Person Mode, baby! It's like playing a game...but a movie. It's like the Full Motion Video fad all over again! Reaper kills everything in sight...which turns out to be a pretty cool effect, before he meets up with the now infected, but not yet mutated, Sarge. Play the final showdown music, ring the bell, this is about to be a slobber knocker. And by slobber knocker, I mean one of the more boring last fight scenes ever. The two exchange wire fighting maneuver blows before Reaper gets the upper hand, opens the Arc, and sends the Sarge through. The finishing move? He throws a grenade through the warp and it blows the Sarge up. Kinda anti-climatic for what is supposed to be 2 super human...zombie...mutant things. Samantha is carried out by Reaper in the most insensuous of ways and the credits roll...we're finally done.
Doom was failed from the start. The exact second that it was noted it would not be hell demons, but infected Resident Evil zombie knock offs, the movie was doomed (excuse the pun) from the start. There should have been NO story, besides killing hell demons...then shoving a grenade up Satan's ass. That's it. Instead they go with this overly complicated, but somehow still mundane, story about extra chromosomes and mutations. It's not even that the plot doesn't make sense....it's that the plot is stupid. They aren't supposed to be zombies! They are supposed to be demons who shoot fire balls. And why was the first person moment so emphasized? It only lasted about 2 minutes, and it wasn't all that good. I know they couldn't have done an entire movie that way, but maybe emphasise it a little more if it's your selling point. Doom is boring...sluggish...and down right annoying to watch. A better way to spend your time: Play the superior video games. Do it...NOW.
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