Videogame Cinema: Doom

Doom! There are very few names in gaming that have as big a visceral reaction as it. Doom is THE first-person shooter of the 90’s. It wasn’t the first of its kind, in fact Doom was built largely from the ground-breaking work of Wolfenstein 3D, but it is the one that really popularised the FPS, or first-person shooter, as a genre.

So ubiquitous is Doom to first-person shooters that for a good while we didn’t even use the term first person shooter to describe it, but Doom clone. Because every single FPS in the 90’s was trying it’s best to copy what Doom was.

Obviously that term fell out of favour when FPS’ started to diversify and move away from the Doom formula, but even amongst modern shooters Doom’s influence can still be felt. The entire Boomer Shooter sub-genre is basically keeping the old Doom design philosophy alive, and the modern rebooted Doom games are some of the most popular shooters in years.

Doom is a big deal. If you put together a gaming Mount Rushmore and had Doom on it nobody would question it. Even if they wouldn’t put it up there themselves, Doom is such a big name in gaming they would be hard pressed to think of an argument against it.

While modern Doom is popular enough in its own right, despite the recent Dark Ages being somewhat divisive, the early 90’s Doom games were something else entirely. Doom is one of the most beloved games of the 90’s. It was a technically innovative marvel that defined computer gaming for almost the entire decade. In fact, if you think of 90’s computer gaming Doom is probably the first game you think of.

To give you an idea of how popular Doom is, there is a website called Can It Run Doom that exists to document the various machines people have ported Doom to. People love it so much they will put it on anything, and I do mean ANYTHING!

Doom on NES? They’ve done it. Doom on the Atari 2600? They’ve done it. Doom on Game and Watch/Tiger Electronics Handheld? They’ve done it. Doom on lawnmowers, Doom on a thermostat, Doom om a piano, Doom on a Lego brick, Doom on an ATM, Doom on a Kodak, and Doom on a goddamned pregnancy test. You think I’m kidding but I’m not. Check the website out for yourself if you don’t believe me, those aren’t even the craziest examples on there.

The sheer devotion people have for this is insane, but hey, that’s Doom for you. Doom isn’t just a videogame, it’s one of the biggest, most enduring, massively popular games of all time.

Why the fuck did they make a movie about it? I know you just read all that and you’re thinking I’m an idiot for just asking that. I’m not stupid, I realise they made one because of the immense popularity of the franchise. That much is obvious. The problem is, Doom is the least movie genic game ever made.

Doom is probably the primo example of a game that shouldn’t be a movie. The only other game that could equal it would be a puzzle game like Tetris or something, and yes, I am aware there is a Tetris movie but it’s about the making of the game not the game itself.

Doom is all about the gameplay. It’s less focused on world building and character development than it is on creating battle arena’s where you massacre any hapless demonic dipshits that walk-in front of your gun. Doom doesn’t even really have a story.

The narrative is just one angry guy killing demons on Mars and Earth because reasons. Even the more recent games which try to have lore and shit don’t move beyond that idea. Doom’s story is more of a meme than a feature at this point. I mean the whole thing started because demons killed Doom Guys bet rabbit for Christ’s sake. I don’t think people play this for the narrative.

Even John Carmack, one of the original creators of Doom, even famously said “Story in a game is like story in a porn movie. It’s expected to be there, but it’s not that important.” That’s how little story matters to this franchise.

But regardless, there was indeed a Doom movie released in 2005. Although they had been trying to get a Doom movie made as early as Doom 2. They shipped the idea around to various movie studios for years, but it kept getting turned down due to not having good scripts, and because of the Columbine High School massacre and the incredibly stupid media frenzy surrounding that.

Eventually Universal would pick up the distribution rights and they would move forward with a script by David Callaham who would later go on to write The Expendables and helped co-write the Spiderverse movies, with rewrites being handled by Wesley Strick who worked on films like Arachnophobia and Cape Feare and would go on to work on Man in the High Castle.

So writing wise we seem to be in good hands. Fun fact though, before Strick was involved they originally approached Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright to touch up the dialogue instead but both turned it down. What I wouldn’t give to see that version of the movie.

For director we have Andrzej Bartkowiak. If you haven’t heard of him, I wouldn’t blame you, but he’s had a long-storied career in the industry working primarily as a cinematographer working on movie like Twins, Species and Falling Down. As a director he primarily worked on action movies so that makes him a good fit for this, but he was also responsible for Street Fighter the Legend of Chun Li. That’s not a good sign.

As for the cast, they originally wanted Arnold Swartzenneger and Vin Diesel but both turned the movie down and instead we got Karl Urban of Lord of the Rings, Dread and The Boys fame and Dwayne Johnson although he was credited as The Rock because this was just after he had left wrestling to become an actor so he was more well known as his wrestling persona.

We also have a young Rosamund Pike as the main female lead well before she became famous with Gone Girl. Which is a bit of a running theme for the leads. All three are pretty famous, but they didn’t become famous until after this movie. The Rock is the exception due to him being well known as a wrestler, but his acting career wouldn’t really take off until a few years after Doom.

So it’s not looking too bad so far. All the people who worked on it have done good work, and some bad but no one is perfect. Maybe this won’t be so bad. Or it could be another videogame movie disaster.

Yeah, the movie didn’t do that well. It bombed pretty hard at the box office and was not received well by critics or even fans of Doom. Even the people that worked on it didn’t enjoy it. Dwayne Johnson said in a 2009 interview that it was an example of what not to do for a videogame adaptation, and Rosamund Pike expressed embarrassment at it. But hey, John Carmac liked it at least.

Which confuses the hell out of me because this movie is as far away from being Doom as you could possibly get. I don’t expect much from a videogame movie. Honestly, with how bad a lot of them have been so far, the only thing I ask for at this point is for them to be entertaining or at least try to resemble the games in some way, shape or form.

Doom fails on both counts. Not only is it not an entertaining movie, at all, but it’s about as close to being Doom as Dragon Ball Evolution was at being Dragon Ball. Ok, it’s not that bad, but it’s still not a great adaptation.

The story is at least somewhat like the videogame. In 2026 a portal is found called the Arc which leads to an ancient city on Mars. An organisation named UAC, Union Aerospace Corporation, is set up to study it and twenty years later something goes horribly wrong, and a bunch of marines are sent in to clean up. Hijinks then ensue.

And by hijinks, I mean endless scenes of wandering down dark corridors with absolutely nothing happening. I am not kidding. The entire movie is almost entirely consistent of a bunch of random space marines walking down dark hallways and nothing the fuck else.

Oh, there might be an action sequence here and there, ones that last all of five seconds, but the bulk of the movie is just a bunch of army dudes wandering around in the dark not having a fucking clue what the hell is going on.

Let me put it this way, they took Doom, the poster child of non-stop kinetic action gameplay, and made a movie about it with no fucking action in it. It’s like the watched gameplay of Doom for reference but only paid attention to the parts where you were wandering around looking for keys. That’s what it’s an adaptation of, all the boring parts of Doom. How do you do that?!

Now, if I’m being fair, I don’t think this is trying to be a straight action movie. Instead, I think it’s trying to be more like a horror movie. It’s got a slower, creeping tension to it, making it feel more like Alien than Doom. Which is the direction that the Doom series was going in at the time.

The most recent Doom game when this movie came out was Doom 3, and the writers confirmed that was the main inspiration for this film. Doom 3 moved away from the fast-paced action of the first two games and moved it into a slower paced horror focused direction. It is also commonly referred to as the black sheep of the Doom series. Which should tell you that basing the movie on that was a really bad idea.

Look, Doom 3 is not a bad game and does have its fans, but it’s still a very different kind of game than the others in the series. Basing a movie on that would be like basing a Sonic movie on Sonic Labrynth, or a Star Fox movie on Star Fox Adventures, or a Metroid movie on Other M, even if it’s good it wouldn’t be a good representation of the series.

The fact that Doom isn’t good doesn’t help matters either. Even if viewed as a horror movie it doesn’t work because it’s not scary in the slightest. The atmosphere is weak because of the bland setting - how do you make Mars bland? come on! - and half the scares are so predictable Stevie Wonder could see them coming. They even unironically do the “he’s behind me isn’t he” thing. Even Scooby Doo isn’t that cliché.

This movie loves its fake out jump scares. It’s literally all it has, and to be honest it pisses me off. I mean I am the jumpiest fucker on planet Earth, so I hate jump scares in general, but in the context of this movie they’re such a tease.

The movie has instances where you think the action is going to kick in. The music hypes up and the characters get their guns ready, and you think it’s going to get nuts, only for nothing to fucking happen. At any opportunity the film will tease you with an action sequence, and when it comes time to pay up it gives you the movie equivalent of an IOU. This is more like blue balls to the wall action.

Even when something does happen the movie is so dark you can barely make any of it out. I know Doom could get dark at times too but at least the games let you see what was going on. Maybe they did it to hide the bland set design, or to disguise the fact they reused the same sets several times. Seriously they use the same lobby set for the teleporter on Earth for the one on Mars only they changed the lighting. How cheap are you guys.

Suffice to say this isn’t the most exciting movie out there. Not helped by the fact that there’s no tension because you don’t care about any of the characters. They try to do what Predator did where the marines have distinct personalities, but unlike in Predator where the characters were likable and bounced off each other in fun ways, the characters in Doom are just boring and uninteresting at best and complete idiots at worse.

They all have one core personality trait. There’s the young naïve one who gets high on the job, the comic relief guy who is super rapey, so basically Quagmire, there’s the religious zealout who likes to carve the cross into his skin like a fucking serial killer, and the Asian guy. No really, he’s just Asian they don’t give him anything else. Well at least their an ethnically diverse group of murder victims.

Because that’s basically what these are. They’re just there to be fodder for the demons to kill off. It’s basic horror movie rules, but you could at least give them something. To go back to Predator, even if the commandoes weren’t deep, they were all likable which made them easy to root for. These guys are so lame I couldn’t care less if they died.

Even the main characters aren’t that interesting. Sarge, The Rocks character, is a typical army asshole who just follows orders. He’s the main villain but instead of being set-up as a bad guy early on and slowly showing the depths of his evil as they progress, he’s just a typical army guy one minute and a psycho the next.

His switch to villainy is so sudden it’s like he became a different character halfway through. Seriously he starts as a stoic but reasonable guy who cares for his men but then becomes a psychopath who values the mission so much he’s willing to kill his own men when they don’t follow orders. The character change is so sudden I’m surprised I didn’t get whiplash from it.

I think the idea is he’s meant to get more and more insane due to the messed-up stuff he sees. Sort of like Sam Neil in Event Horizon, but instead of a slow descent into madness it’s more like a Wile Coyote drop off a cliff into madness. There is no build up to it at all, so it just makes the character look inconsistent.

Even the main character Reaper is just kind of there. His entire thing is that he joined the military after his parents died on Mars during the initial dig and he’s all bitter and sad about it. This is supposed to be the Doom Guy, the scourge of Hell who is literally too angry to die, and he’s just a guy moping about how his parents died.

That’s his backstory, his parents died in an archaeological dig, so he hates Mars now and he became a marine. Why he became a marine I have no idea. The two events don’t connect so any kind of character motivation is left up in the air.

The backstory is even lamer than the backstory in the game and need I remind you the backstory in the games was literally Doom Guys pet rabbit was killed by demons. It’s one of the dumbest, meme worthy backstories of all time, and yet it’s 1000X more interesting than the one in the movie. at least there’s an actual dramatic throughline there.

Also, his sister is the head researcher on Mars and the two bicker on what paths the other took. I don’t know why they bicker at each other. One became a scientist like their parents, and the other didn’t. Ok, who gives a shit. Why do you care what your sibling does with their life. This is the most forced bickering I’ve ever seen.

The only character I liked was Duke because he was the only one who had any kind of likability or charisma. The rest are all dull sticks in the mud that don’t look like they want to be there. I can’t blame that on the actors because I know the cast can be very charismatic, but the script just gives them nothing to work with.

So let’s see, we have an action movie with no action, a horror movie that isn’t scary, and a cast of charming likable actors that the script turns into boring sticks in the mud. It’s like the movie went out of its way to suck all the fun and excitement out of it.

That’s perhaps the worst part about the movie. It’s fucking boring. Doom is a lot of things, but boring should absolutely never be one of them. I cannot stress to you how much of this piece of shit is just a bunch of guys, wandering around accomplishing Jack. It’s so tiring.

Again, this is Doom motherfucker. The perennial poster child of insane, twitch shooting, kinetic, demon slaying carnage. The fact you took that and turned it into a boring Aliens knock off with more walking than Dear Esther is almost impressive. You have to try and make Doom boring.

To give you an idea of how un-mitigatingly dull this movie is, I want you to take a guess on how long it takes in this movie for a demon to show up. Keep in mind I’m not counting the zombies, because they’re just fodder, or any moment where demons are in the shadows and off screen. I mean when they’re on screen actually killing someone. Just try to guess how long it takes for that to happen.

Forty-three minutes! You have to wait until you’re a third of the way through just to see the main threat of the fucking movie. You weren’t waiting that long for the Xenomorph to show up in Alien.

The kicker, it’s not even a demon. And I don’t mean that in a fake-out way, I mean that in a there are no goddamn demons in the movie kind of way. Because there aren’t any. The story is that the research scientists on Mars discover a humanoid race of race with extra chromosomes that gave them enhanced abilities. So they started injecting them into people and that causes them to mutate into zombies and other abominations.

So they aren’t demons, they’re genetic experiments. This isn’t Doom, it’s Resident Evil in space. I’m not even that far off either since there’s more zombies in this movie than there are demons. I know Doom had zombies, but they were a minor enemy among dozens of others. Where are the Imps, the Flaming Skulls, the Hell Knights. Give me some variety damn it.

The fact they aren’t demons isn’t the worst of it; it’s the fact that they try to call them demons because they’re in hell. Not in the actual hell though, that would be cool and actually accurate to the games, but that they’re metaphorically in hell due to their situation.

Really? A metaphor? You’re using a metaphor in Doom. That’s the most un-Doom thing about this. Doom has all the subtlety of a neon lit freight train with fireworks going off and slayer blasting from its speakers. It doesn’t do metaphors. It’s not exactly a good sign when Event Horizon is a more accurate Doom movie than the actual Doom movie.

At least the few “demons” that do show up are designs from the game. Granted there’s only like four or five of them total, and the explanation for why Pinky has the robotic legs he had in Doom 3 is very stupid, but I will give any praise I can at this point no matter how faint it might be.

But where are the weapons? Doom is known for its iconic arsenal of destruction. The Super Shotgun, the Chainsaw, the Plasma Rifle, the Rocket Launcher, the Chain Gun, and the big daddy of them all, the BFG 9000. The Big Fucking Gun.

Dooms weapons are as iconic as almost anything else about it. You mention the BFG to anyone and they’re immediately going to think of one of two things, the Roald Dahl book, or the giant fuck off cannon from Doom, and frankly the latter is probably more likely at this point. Make of that what you will.

Of the many arms of desolation Doom had on offer, only three made it into the movie. The Chain Gun, the Chainsaw, and the BFG, which is called Bio-Force Gun because the film makers are cowards. Well, things are starting to look up now. We’re having fun. Jokes on you because they barely use these things.

The Chain Gun is only used to kill a monkey in a vent, trust me even in context it makes no sense, the Chainsaw is used once in the whole movie and barely has half a minute of screentime, and the BFG is fired twice, and both times only hits a wall. You have a big ass plasma gun that can melt people to much, and you don’t kill anything with it. You were the kid with a BB gun that only fired it into the air weren’t you movie.

Let’s recap shall we. This is a Doom movie that barely has any action in it, where the demons aren’t actual demons and hell is a metaphor, and where the weapons are either not in the movie or barely do anything at all. It’s official, this isn’t Doom. I don’t know what this thing is but it sure as shit ain’t Doom.

We don’t even see the iconic Doom power armour. The main character just runs around in a generic military uniform that’s so indistinct it could go on anyone. He isn’t even the lone angry space marine who screams “RIP AND TEAR! RIP AND TEAR THEIR GUTS!!!” like he is in the games. He’s just a guy, who is a little angsty sometimes.

Did they get anything right here? Well, yes, two things actually. For one there’s a decent amount of gore. There are some cool bloody deaths, and the effects are actually pretty good. The CG is ok, not the best I’ve seen but decent enough, but there is a healthy amount of practical effects and those look great.

The make up looks good and the “demon” designs I have to admit do look pretty cool and are accurate to the source material. I do wish there were more monsters like the Cacodemon or Cyber Demon, and there were plans to include them, but they didn’t have the budget for it sadly.

Still, what we got looks fine for what it is. There are a few issues with them like Pinky’s human form looking like something out of Marz Attacks and the Ark’s teleporter being the teleporter from Galaxy Quest, but those are weird design decisions not an issue of the effects themselves.

And the second thing that works in this movie, and the part you were probably waiting for me to talk about, is the first-person sequence. Since Doom is the most famous first-person-shooter the film makers decided to include a sequence in the movie shot entirely in first-person, and it fucking rules.

No seriously, the whole first-person sequence is great. it’s fast paced, there’s tons of action, it’s shot very well, it’s exciting with some cool demon kills, the music is awesome (which in fairness is the case throughout the movie it’s just that there isn’t enough action to hear a lot of it), this is the only part of the movie where it actually starts to feel like Doom.

It’s just a sequence where a lone space marine goes around killing zombies and demons. That should have just been the whole movie and it’s only a short five-minute sequence. Not even that, I’m being generous saying it was five minutes, but hey it’s the only five minutes that are even remotely entertaining, so I’ll be as generous as I want.

Well, that isn’t entirely true. The last twenty minutes are pretty fun. The last fight with Reaper and Sarge is pretty cool since they have super-powers and they’re jumping and throwing each other all over the place. It is more Matrix than Doom, but I was just happy to finally get some action in this.

If you’re wondering about how they got superpowers, Sarge got bit and turns into a demon, except we never see him become a demon which sucks, and Reaper got injected with the alien chromosomes which gives him superpowers but doesn’t infect him because some people don’t get infected for some reason. Something about it being tied to the soul or something, I don’t know and I don’t think the movie knows either. They have superpowers just roll with it.

But yeah, the last twenty minutes was the only part I found any joy in. The rest of the movie is such a dull cavalcade of suck. The story is barely existent, although let’s be honest we are not watching a Doom movie for the plot, there’s very little action, and it doesn’t even have that many of the iconic elements of Doom.

As a movie on its own, disconnected from the source material, it’s a boring mess. The story is paper thin, the characters lack any depth, and half the movie’s plot points don’t go anywhere. You could make a drinking game out of how many sub-plots are brought up and dropped. I wouldn’t recommend it though, not unless you want to keep your liver.

As an adaptation of the games, it’s even worse. This is one of the most horrendous videogame adaptations I’ve seen. Not in terms of quality, Mortal Kombat Annihilation is still the king of that shit mountain, but simply in how unlike the source material it is. It’s up there with Super Mario Bros and Final Fantasy Spirits Within; I’m even tempted to say it might be worse.

Doom only has a few surface level things like the demon designs, a few weapons and the setting, but not only does it do nothing with them, we barely even see Mars for Christ sake, it doesn’t capture the spirit of the games in any way.

Doom is not a complicated game. It’s just a game about blasting away hell spawn with ridiculous weapons. The fact the movie couldn’t give us any of that, despite it being the easiest thing to get right, is the most insulting thing about this. You had a perfect set-up to make a fun over-the-top action bloodbath, and you somehow botched it harder than Madonna’s face lift.

I do not recommend this one. It’s not even so bad it’s good, it’s just a boring dull sci-fi horror action movie with a Doom skin on it. There’s no fun cheesy dialogue or bad acting to laugh at, no gloriously over the top action to admire, it’s just a dull bore fest. Which for a Doom movie is the worst sin you could commit.

But if you want to watch a movie that does capture the spirit of Doom, there are two movies I think you should check out. The first I already mentioned earlier is Event Horizon. Not really an action heavy movie, but it’s a decent sci-fi horror movie about a space station dealing with hell. If you like the horror elements of Doom, and you also enjoy Lovecraftian horror it’s worth seeking out.

The other one I recommend is Hardcore Henry. It’s an action film shot entirely in first-person, that, ok isn’t like Doom in terms of story or setting, but it is an insane action-packed movie with tons of violence and over-the-top stunts that is a ton of fun to watch. It’s like the first-person sequence in this movie only it’s the entire flick. It even features a silent protagonist who is too angry to die. It’s the movie that Doom deserved to have but didn’t get.

I mean there is the other Doom movie, but I don’t think that will be any better. I’ll probably get to that at some point, but for now I’d like to wish you a happy Halloween. This wasn’t the most joyous way to celebrate the holiday, and it wasn’t as elaborate as the stuff I usually do, but I’ve had a lot of big projects this year and I’m glad I got something out for the spooky season.

Next time I think I’m going to look at another videogame movie based on a sci-fi gaming series. One that that actually had potential to be a good movie, but still somehow found a way to screw everything up.