Video game movies that are little more than decent are few and far between. I could count all of them on one hand that belonged to a Yakuza gangster constantly bringing shame to his clan. But how can you go wrong with DOOM, right?
Under the surface of Mars lies the vast research facility of Olduvai, full of government secrets. It is the other half of a portal way called “The Ark” that was discovered in the Nevada desert in 2026. The government has been doing digs and research into and on the site of Olduvai for twenty years. Nothing has really happened there, outside of the usual accidents and a few “mishaps” with the Ark transporter. That is to say, until now. A distress call came across from the heart of the station and it was put into a containment lockdown. Now, an elite group of soldiers, the “Rapid Response Tactical Squad” or RRTS is sent in to search and destroy the threat and recover “Union Aerospace Corporation” or UAC, property.
The team arrives on Mars to find that things are further out of hand and more deeply shrouded in secret than they could have imagined. The research staff has all been brutally murdered by some unknown creature. The research they were doing on Olduvai was into the genetic enhancement of the human genome and everything has gone from bad to worse in a very short period of time. The team is split up. They are systematically picked off, and it seems as though nothing an stop whatever it is from killing everyone.
DOOM has been given a lot of shit over the last thirteen years, most of it is justifiably so, but it does have its merits. You just have to look pretty hard to find them. Granted both of the leads have gone on to do bigger and better things, especially The Rock, but this was a disappointing movie for both he and Karl Urban. Karl Urban was coming fresh off of the insanely successful LOTR trilogy. He could have probably had any role out there, but he got this. The Rock was slowly (very slowly) trying to build a movie career of his own (which we all know he obviously did). This movie knocked Urban down quite a bit and didn’t do any favors for The Rock. The Rock even tweeted this year about how Rampage “may have finally broken the video game curse, and I starred in the stinker DOOM.” Also, DOOM is dark. And I don’t mean in that moody, grim kinda way. I mean it is dark and hard to see. Maybe it was edited that way to mask some of the rubber monsters they were fighting, but there were a lot of scenes where I literally couldn’t see what was going on… and I was looking.
Anyway, DOOM is okay when taken out of the context that it actually is based on a video game. The special effects are decent enough. It’s full of action movie cheese (Semper Fi, mother fucker!), and is loaded for bear with over the top fights and action sequences. While on the subject, the first person sequence close to the end of the movie is totally unnecessary but, you know what, I like it. Again, with the right frame of mind, this movie is easily watchable as a dumb action piece. I have always loved the games and the movie isn’t that bad. Rest assured though, this ain’t no game.
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