Zombies of Mars

Movie roasting: 2005’s Doom

Despite what Geoff Keighley might have told the world, I don’t think video-game-turned-movies had improved at all since the aughts. For one thing, they kept going back to the zombie subgenre of horror. Just look at the release schedule between 2002’s Resident Evil and 2023’s Last of Us on HBO. Also, like how the video games kept getting away from copying James Cameron’s Aliens, the movies based on those did the same in those “pre-historical” days. So, when it came to adapting the first archetypical first-person shooter, a stone-cold classic titled DOOM, they made a zombie movie in which no one shoots back at the “good guys”.

The late Ryan Davis had roasted this piece of shit on the site before. But there are certainly new reasons to condemn the movie after that TANG episode came out. Let’s start with how they wasted two actors suitable to play Doomguy for the price of one.

Between a Rock and an Urban zone

Dwayne Johnson, who still only went by “the Rock” in the early aughts, was heavily centered in marketing Doom. Yet in the movie, Mr. Johnson was credited in the last as “And the Rock”. Karl Urban of New Zealand is the top billing talent here playing John “Reaper” Grim. As the expression “doom and grim” goes, guess Mr. Urban’s character is at least closer to the Doomguy.

One review I read back in 2005 considered this as miscast. Urban’s involvement in Hollywood up to that up were Eomer in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings flicks and 2004’s Bourne Supremacy. Neither role gives out the impression of ass-kicking male lead archetype, especially in the latter with Urban’s role being the last one the titular Bourne iced in the flick. The writer of that review was baffled how this nobody Kiwi was kicking a rising action star’s ass. I wonder if said writer would feel ashamed about their words after 2012’s Dredd, a movie provides so much fun out of a helmeted Karl Urban shooting up and throwing down fuckers who would shoot back. It’s almost like that cult favorite is a much better Doom movie than this zombie schlock.

What is admirable about the movie involves the faces Mr. Johnson made as his character Sarge had a steady Heel turn. Without one for “Hey, not too rough” of yesteryear, here are the 4 faces he made that match the 4 difficulties in 2016’s soft reboot and 2020’s Eternal.

About 4 minutes into the movie, a fresh-faced Rock between receiving order that kicked off the plot and dropping the line “We got us a game.”

After seeing the first causality in his squad, Sarge started to lose his cool.

After 4 squad members were dead, Sarge started a “taking no prisoner” policy. “We kill them all” as he said to the kid on the squad before a fatal “friendly fire” incident took place. Here is when my paranoia kicked in and started to think that this movie was made by people who bought into the negative press surrounding Doom games. Sarge started to shoot unarmed civilians, women and children off screen. No such non-player characters are present in 1993’s Doom and its sequel Hell On Earth, almost everyone there shoot back.

Pretty self-explanatory, wouldn’t you say? Well, the final action scene being a wire heavy pro wrestle like fist fight was certainly what they cast Dwyane Johnson for. Still, I would take helmeted Karl Urban shooting scar-face Lena Headey before throwing her out of a window in Dredd over this horseshit any day of the week.

Can’t tell them apart

Those who read Masters of Doom would know that James Cameron’s Aliens and Sam Rami’s Evil Dead flicks were major inspiration for 1993s’ Doom. To me an idealized Doom movie should lay on the Evil Dead side, with an actor like either Dwayne “Mr. Video Game” Johnson or Karl Urban just throw down with one type of demon after another, then it might become action movie of the year whenever it comes out. Revenants can have very cool action designed around them. Sadly, the 2005 flick we got laid into Aliens’ land and fouled up some key factors.

For one thing the squad barely contains any character. They spread that macho bullshit in their barracks and there is a sense that this Mars job is the first time they get together. The whole movie feels like a mission in XCOM games goes FUBAR from the start.

For another, the creature design is underwhelming, not only by the “is it faithful to the game” standard, but also by movie monster standard. While the IMDB page would give Doom fans the pronouns they know such as Imp and Baron, all one can see in the movies are zombie of different sizes and degrees of rotten. There is a Pinky straight out the game titled Doom 3, but let’s face it, that is the weakest design said monster ever had.

Poorly lit corridor, choppy editing and a script going through the motions all contributed to a movie that should have not been made in the first place. The action scene in point-of-view shot is quite ill-advised with its turkey-shoot approach. The so-called Imps do not have to throw fire balls for John Grim to dodge, but they can throw something else at him just to turn up the tension. Id Software’s first-person shooters are about shooting, but they are about moving more. The scene is nothing like it, instead it feels more like Resident Evil, which is ironic given the same year this movie came out, there started to be enemy types who shoot back in Resident Evil 4.

Last grains of salt

“Please stop!” is something one wants to say to Hollywood for many endeavors. Making movies or shows out of video games is currently something I would love to say to that lot. Granted I did find enjoyment in things like Arcane and Twisted Metal, but then I’ve never played League of Legends or any of the once Playstation flagship vehicle battler. Still with the critically acclaimed Last of Us feeling more like one long ass cut scene, the desire to sacrifice interaction for some bucks just reads as greed to me. And greed only leads to more foul-ups.