Badmovies.org Forum

DOOM (2005) (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0419706/) - This film isn't bad. It's not great, but the whole space thing was neat. The gore effects were well done. The Rock did well and in the end you wanted him to die. Some parts of this space colony weren't really explained, but that was ok. The characters were also ok. It's like a mix between Alien, Shivers, and some kind of Zombie film. The ending goes game mode on us and kinda ruins any continuity that it may of had. Picked it up at that Circuit City sale last month.

 :thumbup: (7 out of 10 Stars) Catch it for free somewhere.

(http://www.splitreason.com/blog/img/doom.jpg)

That makes two of us.   :teddyr:

I wasn't expecting much out of this yet I was surprised at just how underwhelming this movie (plotwise) turned out to be.  I know, silly to look for story depth in a movie adaptation of a video game, but one can dream.

I thought the actors did rather well, despite the apparent lack of plot development, and it looked really great visually.  Otherwise Doom seemed like an 80s era style Alien knock-off.  Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, though it didn't really manage to bring anything new or interesting to the genre aside from good SFX.  I wouldn't mind seeing a sequel.

One of the worst movies that I've ever had the misfortune of seeing.   :teddyr: 

I got this GEM last year at Blockbuster sidewalk sale for a $1.00 it's got to be worth at least that much. It's not bad, not great but it's watchable maybe once a year.

I got into a showing of this one free because a friend of mine used to work at the theater.  I expected it to completely and totally blow ass.  Thankfully, it was just a few steps above that, so it was worth it. A few of my friends have asked me when I'll add that to my collection, and I always say, "When it's in the $5.50 bin."

Call me a stickler for details, but I would have enjoyed it a lot more if they had stuck with the game's explanation for all the monsters/demons.

Oh, I have a previous viewing of this one too:

http://www.badmovies.org/forum/index.php/topic,112427.0.html

I think that The Rock's sudden transformation into a "kill them all" bad guy is what confused me the most.  For the low point of the film, it was discarding the entire gateway to Hell on Mars angle for something else. 

wasnt as bad as i thought it was gonna be. the " im gonna get me a bottle of tequila and a couple of she-boys and lock myself in a hotle room for a week" line made me ask myself if he really just f**kin said that and who the hell wrote this script (im still not sure if he really said it, i didnt bother going back once was enough). i thought the rock was going to turn into this badass monster but he didnt, i was fuzzy on the whole teleportation thing i didnt know when they were on mars and when they were back at the space station except when he blew the rock all to hell. There wasnt enough monster mayhem and i kind of enjoyed the first person thing at the end it was sortaof groovy. 2 outta 5

Finally got round to viewing it. Well, it's got atmosphere (reminded me a bit of Blade II in places) and the whole set up is nicely done. Inevitably, you wonder which Marine will get it first, and they didn't go for the obvious.

On the other hand, there is FAR too much time of people walking through dark corridors, looking worried. When you go to movie based on a shooter game, you expect something to get shot, occassionally. Instead, you get a lot of wandering around in the dark, then a bit of exposition, and suddenly the bodycount skyrockets. The pacing of Resident Evil was better.

I also think The Rock was underused in this one. Sure he is no great actor, but with a better script, he could have done a better job of 'Model Marine going mad'. Also he's got a great physical presence and a certain grace when he moves, whereas in Doom he is limited to glowering in the dark. Surely some kind of  duel with a monster in the first part of the movie isn't too much to ask?

Some things I learned from this movie:
*In the future, all night vision technology will be lost.
*The ultimate in hand held weaponry looks like a V8 engine.

Why is it that when ever they make a movie out of a game, hey have to change everything that made the game so cool. What was wrong with demons from hell? Thats such a cool idea. I wanted sick demons tearing people apart and twisted hellish rooms and atmoshpere. Instead they made it about a genetic experiment gone wrong, how incridibly stupid and unoriginal. Did the director and writers know nothing about the games other than what a BFG is. This movie like every other movie based on a video game p**sed me off to no end.

I actually saw this in the theater.  I'm not a big fan of the video game series, but overall the film was okay.  I've seen worse.  I gotta say though, The Rock pretty much made the movie worth watching.  Even in bad flicks, his performances are decent.  He might not be Brando, but he's not terrible either.

It was watchable, but there really isn't any excuse for taking one of the greatest, scariest games of all time and turning into a safe, mundane, completely typical action/horror movie.

(http://xdoom.newdoom.com/imgs/doom_movie/doom_monsters1.png)

Call me a DOOM lover. I have the DVD and it's one of my favourites. Easily my favourite videogame movie.

Great atmosphere, great monster designs and effects (extra points for using real Steve Wang monsters instead of just CG all the time!), great music, a really fun first person section, a sweet superhuman final brawl and The Rock in one of the most interesting roles he's done.

The only downside really is, as everybody says, the lack of the satanic element from the videogames, but sometimes when I think about a campy Sci-Fi movie involving The Rock and Karl Urban pumping lead into biblical creatures from Hell, in space, does sound like it could have turned out pretty unintentionally hilarious and just downright silly (some things work for videogames or B-movies but not Hollywood blockbusters.) and I think that maybe it was the right choice to ommit it, but include metaphors and refrences.

Either way, Hell or not, I really enjoy DOOM, it's like a 21st century ALIENS with a kickass Marine vs. Marine superhuman punchup at the end.

It's the destiny of every videogame movie to be called "terrible" on the internet, because videogame fans can't take the changes. Some of the best movies I've seen have been seriously hammered at in big numbers for reasons such as differences between the movie and the source material in all kinds of movie adaptations of other media. I remember seeing a number of sites referring to the Tomb Raider movies as "terrible" despite those being very popular and particularly fun Indiana Jones-esque adventures. I think that a lot of people out there need to get themselves familiar with a certain term called "based on" as opposed to "adaptation of". Videogames are getting to the point where they're almost like movies themselves but with a longer running time and you in control, so if you're going to make a 90 minute movie of a 40 hour videogame, I say you might as well be creative and make it fun.

I think my main problem with this movie is the fact that it's called Doom...

They could have easily made a Space Marines fighting monsters on Mars [or similar] without screwing with the Doom Hell plot point.  I mean, I understand changes will be made, but that still doesn't excuse shoddy marketing techniques.  It's just easier to get the $$$ with a 'name' behind it, and as such I just can't agree with the fact that it's just an ok movie when I know they could have done better.

Well not really, it has a lot of elements taken straight from DOOM, particularly the teleportation and the UAC and stuff, and it definitely has the feel. I mean it's not like having the DOOM name on the movie makes it suddenly 'official' or damages the game in any way. Besides if it wasn't called DOOM I probably wouldn't have had the pleasure of seeing it.

Apparently they went through like 15 different scripts using the Hell idea and they just couldn't get it to work - and it makes sense that it wouldn't. I'd rather they changed the idea and came out with a great movie like this than kept it and ended up with something which turned out bad.

As I say, it's a movie based on the game, not a direct adaptation of it, and there is like a huge heaven/hell metaphor going on which is more suited to this 21st century atheist world.

I'd like to see some of those scripts, though I don't doubt the folks in Hollywood had major trouble coming up with any coherent picture of Hell. I mean, this is Hollywood where there's plenty of vague "spirituality" to go around, but not much actual belief.

The critics are right, though: the game's unique appeal lay in its having a lone marine take on Hell itself with a shotgun. Take that part out, and the movie is just another lame Aliens/Predator ripoff. It didn't help, either, that the guys in charge apparently couldn't make up their minds which Doom game they were doing here, as much of it looks like Doom 3 in spite of the plot being (badly) adapted from the first Doom.

As for metaphors... don't we all get sick of seeing stuff reduced to metaphors once in a while? How about having the good guy face some real demons, or at least (as I must concede a shotgun couldn't actually put a dent in a real demon) some real honest-to-Satan demon-possessed creatures? There have been movies about demon possession, and there have been movies about vicious extraterrestrials, but I've never seen a movie about demon-possessed extraterrestrials before. For now, alas, all we get is some Hollywood garbage about mutants standing as metaphors for demonic possession. Yech!

I don't mind the movie: it's not completely horrible, since most of my complaints about it are the Doom-game related annoyances, but still can't help feeling that it is just a generic action movie set in space, and as such I'd prefer to treat it as such.  Take away the Doom and I'd have no problem with it other than the other obvious bad points.

Actually I always interpreted it that the gene was making them into actual demons... I mean, like, did you ever see Doctor Who when there was "the beast" - the beast which was either Satan himself, or the beast which the legends of Satan was based on. I always thought of DOOM as being similiar, like, the gene being what determines if you're an angel or a demon, the previous beings being the angels and demons and whatnot, hence they calling it "the genetic blueprint for the soul"...

I wouldn't say generic... It has some of the best monster designs and effects in a long time, which actively goes out of it's way to create true monster effects as opposed to CG, it has the whole first person sequence which is really fun and different, and it has all the great 'boyz movie' stuff like the huge Japaneseish superhuman punchup at the end, and the themes of teleportation and the like.

I'm stoked that DOOM was turned into a great movie rather than being a really cheesy flick which is more accurate to the game. For Hell in Space, check out Event Horizon, but really if that had been done in DOOM, I think the whole "hellspawn vs. bullets" thing would have just been too silly. The only thing I miss is the satanic imagery, but the actual satanic plot would have probably really sucked in a 90 minute action flick.

Besides, wasn't the story for DOOM (and most id Software games at the time) just something made up quickly to give a reason for the bloody monster massacre gameplay? In a way it reminds me of the people who complain that the Final Fantasy movie was too different, when every game has nothing to do with the previous anyway, aside from a few magic spells and creatures, which again would probably be kinda weird in a movie.

Hell, when I used to play DOOM 1 and 2 back in the day, I always thought the whole hell thing was talking figuratively and that the monsters were Aliens. It wasn't until DOOM 3 when I realised it was entirely literal.

The scene with the black marine in the pit was great.  The high point of the entire film.  I wanted him to escape and become the main character and win.








That said...  I also think this this took WAY too much from Doom 3 and not nearly enough from the first two games.

The problem with the Final Fantasy movie wasn't that it was "too different" from the games, but that it wasn't really a video game movie at all; for all its vaguely familiar video game elements, it wasn't based on anything in particular. Without any reference point for comparison, players and non-players alike could only judge it on its own merits, and these were somewhat lacking. (At least watching that movie won't make you want to gouge out your eyes and/or strangle Uwe Boll, though.)

I think both ideas you had of Doom are essentially accurate: these are aliens, but aliens possessed by demons, just as the former human comrades you meet in the game are possessed. The Satanic imagery testifies to which specific malevolent intelligence is at work while the alterations made to human constructions point to the extraterrestrials having some agenda of their own. Yes, the story was kind of a last-minute addition to the game. Abbreviated and tacked-on as it is, though, it manages to raise several very thought-provoking premises that are missing from the movie:

1. Assume Satan and the demons are real.
2. Assume extraterrestrials are real.
3. Assume Hell is real.

One can then draw some further thought-provoking implications:

1. God's enemies are real, so God and Heaven are probably real too.
2. God has also created extraterrestrials.
3. Satan and his minions have gotten control of these extraterrestrials.

These in turn lead to some disturbing conclusions:

1. Satan can enslave an entire sentient species, has done so many times, and is now attempting to do the same to us.
2. Extraterrestrials are not at all morally superior to us as some suppose; quite the contrary, in fact.
3. Hell's flesh-and-blood military has only been one hyperspace jump away from us all this time; we really shouldn't mess with hyperspace.

Now, if you can just figure out what it is that makes the hero immune to the influences to which so many of his fellow space marines succumbed, you have all the makings of a surprisingly philosophical action movie.


I'd like to see the black guy win in something other than a blaxploitation flick once in a while too.

I'm pretty sure the demons in the game were always supposed to just be the monsters which lived in hell, not aliens.

Personally I find a spreading 'virus' and something which can be injected into the blood much more convincing than "the devil".

I definitely disagree with you there.  One of the reasons the "Doom" games worked so well for me is that encountering demons and devils in a technologically advanced setting is fascinating to me.  "Event Horizon" tried, but didn't get it right.  I love the idea of Space Marines fighting against demons.  Real, "our master is Satan" demons.

Most of my points I said in an earlier thread:

http://www.badmovies.org/forum/index.php/topic,112427.0.html

I really don't know if it would have worked in this movie, though. I know that they tried a whole number of scripts and could not get it to work, so I'm glad they chose something which did.

I made a lot of the same points in that thread too.

One other notable plot point in the game, which the novelization also gave some attention and the film did not, was the level in the Inferno known as the Temple of Mysteries, in which you come across two large rooms, one filled with Hell's Barons, and the other with Cacodemons. In the Hell's Barons room are a number of Cacodemon corpses strewn on the ground, and in the Cacodemon room are a number of Barons who've been crucified up on the walls and left there to rot. A scene like that in the film would have given it some further moral depth too: behold the final consequences of a hatred so vindictive that two whole species of extraterrestrials sold their souls just to get even with each other.

Well there's always DOOM 2 :P