DOOM
Reviewed by Sam Hatch
A friend of mine once told me that there is a secret universal law that prohibits the existence of a good film adaptation sourced from video game material. And so Boonstra's Law has become the stuff of critical legend, as by and large it has proven true time and again. (I actually thought the Resident Evil flicks were pretty cool, but don't tell anybody) This year has already seen the release of that Tara Dorff-Slater nightmare Alone in the Dark, a film that was reportedly so noxiously bad that one wonders if anyone has even seen the whole thing. (Perhaps the film editor has, but that's just conjecture on my part). So pardon me for a moment while I wax lyrical on the nature of game to film adaptations and try to point out some of the weaknesses inherent in such a foolish venture.
One of the biggest problems of video game based movies is the disparate nature of the two experiences. Adventure games like Tomb Raider, Resident Evil and Doom are essentially solitary experiences – one person solving puzzles and quietly taking on a world teeming with enemies. Dialogue is almost nonexistant, and what little there is of a plot is mainly relegated to the 'cut scenes' linking large levels together. What is cinematic in these games lies in the sound and production design. But of course the feel of the game is usually the first thing to go during the adaptation process. Alone in the Dark turned a Lovecraftian haunted house game into an Aliens style shootemup flick (or so one hears). Resident Evil turned a Lovecraftian zombie-house game into a brightly lit science fiction film. Tomb Raider tried to capture the spirit of the game, but still lost something in the translation. Tomb Raider 2 the video game is still better than both of the theatrical films combined.
And one big thing these first person action games have over their filmic counterparts is (surprisingly) a lack of one thing – action. With just one person and nobody to talk to, much of the gaming experience consists of silently skulking around, soaking up the ambient sound effects and getting a feel for the virtual world. Action does occur, but oftentimes you can decide how and when it occurs. Some players opt for the Han Solo balls-out ‘running with guns blazing' technique. Others such as myself opt for a stealthier tact, creeping around hallways and picking off enemies one by one. I've yet to see a video game movie capture the thrill of chucking a grenade around a corner, only to hear a monstrous scream a moment later. So for the most part video game movies are way too ‘Movie'-ish to be successful. But can a movie take these untapped elements and integrate them successfully? Probably not, but I'm still waiting for someone to try.
Enter Doom, the adaptation of one of the most popular first person shooting games ever. A descendant of Id games' undead Nazi epic Castle Wolfenstein, Doom saw one ugly soldier (his grisled mug could be seen in a menu bar at the bottom of the screen alongside important health statistics, weapon choices and the like) stuck on Mars fighting hordes of demonic creepy crawlers. Doom in turn spawned the similarly successful Quake, and is still a primary influence on many of today's popular games such as Half-Life and Halo (the latter of which is soon to be a major motion picture produced by Peter Jackson).
This adaptation was scripted by Dave Callaham and Wesley Strick, and helmed by Andrzej Bartkowiak, director of such deep meditative classics as Romeo Must Die and Cradle 2 The Grave (Yes, the ones that would have you believe that your average gangsta rapper is as good a fighter as Jet Li.). Doom begins with one of my least favorite script devices ever – the half-hearted voiceover blandly telling you some boring establishing info that would have been much more effective if it were shown to you instead. In this case we learn that a space travel portal nicknamed the Arc was uncovered in the Nevada desert, and soon served to transport curious Earthlings to the planet Mars. Conveniently, nobody cared to find out who built it or where it came from. Even if a ‘mysterious excavation' opening scene can be a bit of a sci-fi cliché, I'd still rather have someone give it a shot as opposed to phoning it in like here. Imagine Stargate starting with a voiceover stating “In the twenties some scientists found a round thing in the desert which we later realized was a gate to another world” and then cutting to the Stargate transportation scene some thirty-five minutes later. That's pretty much what Doom does before cutting to a brief and confusingly shot scene on a futuristic Mars research outpost named Olduvai as a frightened cluster of human scientists run from the gaping maws of some sort of slimy nogoodnik.
We quickly shift back to Earth and meet The Rock's by-the-book sergeant named (Guess, wait for it…Give up?) Sarge as he sits hunched over a computer, proudly sporting a full-shoulder Semper Fi tattoo to let us know that the spirit of the Corps runs deep in his veins. Or in this case the RRTS, an elite group of badasses airlifted straight out of Jim Cameron's Aliens. RRTS stands for Rapid Response Tactical Squad, and one must assume that they receive more mission orders than the Sluggish Response Tactical Squad. Sarge receives such orders demanding he delay his team's shore leave, and to promptly use the Arc transport to beam the boys over to Mars for a righteous investigation/asskicking festival. The obligatory character-building barracks scene introduces us to said badasses, who have really cool names like Duke, Goat, Destroyer, and of course the unfortunate newbie saddled with the monicker The Kid. Of the group the only actor I recognized was Ben Daniels, who essayed Joe Chill in Batman Begins earlier this year. His character fills a bit of the need for a sleazy wisecracker. The last member we're introduced to is John Grimm, aka Reaper (get it?), played by Lord of the Rings and Bourne Supremacy alumnus Karl Urban.
Sarge advises Reaper to take the leave time instead of joining the mission, an order we know will be disobeyed after a few minutes' worth of soul searching. The screenwriters try to trick us into thinking Grimm is a potential liability on the verge of a nervous breakdown, but come to find out his angst is steeped in his feelings for a particular woman. A woman who just happens to be on our favorite cursed Martian research base. At this point if we the audience were playing an actual videogame we would have pressed the 'Start' button a long time ago and jumped into the thick of things. To hell with human relations and haunted pasts, we want to shoot mutated things with three arms and four rows of razor sharp teeth!
The Arc turns out to be something akin to a small floating mercury bubble, which sucks in the soldiers and propels them across the galaxy. After suffering from brief onsets of vomiting, they meet Dexter Fletcher (Soap from Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels) as Pinky, a paraplegic computer technician whose severed torso is fused to a futuristic wheelchair, which is actually one of the coolest effects on display in the film. In true Aliens style, Pinky sits behind a master console that's fed by the miniature cameras equipped in all of the soldiers' weapons. From there he masterminds their journey and watches them get eaten from the comfort of home. And just what are those creepy shadowy things lurking around every corner?
Since you can't just have monsters hanging around for no good reason, we need a lot of scientific explanation and the like, which once again lands us in the plot neighborhood of the tried and true zombie formula. This one involves a recently discovered and uber-mysterious twenty-fourth chromosome which may or may not cause monsterization. Rosamund Pike's (Die another Day) character Sam arrives shortly to figure it all out, and she is indeed the female character with ties to our pal Reaper. We're then treated to numerous scenes of soldiers creeping around dark hallways whilst Sam and a few others linger in the labs for a marathon stretch of intellectual deduction and autopsy work.
For a widescreen production, Bartowiak doesn't really display much of an eye for anamorphic composition. He somehow manages to make the wide format feel like a television frame, loaded with numerous closeups with no breathing room. In fact, some of the tight shots are just too damned close for comfort - especially one in which an ailing scientist lurches dramatically into frame. His sweaty face is crammed into the audience's so intimately you may find yourself pressing backward in your chair in a feeble effort to escape this violation of personal space.
But to hell with the humans, are the monsters scary? Stan Winston's creatures don't really draw too much attention to themselves for the most part, and it isn't until the latter half of the film that the most creative monster of the bunch appears to do deadly battle against a chainsaw-wielding soldier. The others are sub-Alien derivatives that ooze slime as ordered and jump out of dark spaces as directed. One of the best effects involves one such agitator who gets stuck in a Nano-door (presumably a door of nanites that can be ordered to change from a solid structure to a malleable one that humans can walk through) and is left partially hanging around in bisected form for a good portion of the film. Watching it twitch in the background becomes a strange delight as the laboratory scenes unfold.
Soon it becomes clear that Sarge may not be the hero we all thought him to be, despite an unyielding devotion to both his orders and the spirit of the Corps (or the Squad). It's Karl Urban's character Reaper who is revealed to have a bit of a scientific past and is not utterly opposed to concepts such as learning and adapating to the situations at hand. He ultimately becomes at odds with Sarge's jarhead methods, and a rivalry gathers steam throughout the second act.
Fans of the game may notice that by this point much of the proceedings haven't fully captured the feel of Doom, mainly because everything has been played out in slimy basements and brightly lit laboratories. This futuristic environment feels more akin to that of Quake 2, and the film could have used more shots of alien landscapes and strange skylines peeking through windows. It isn't until the action moves back to Earth that we're treated to the orange-hued steel passageways so oft envisioned in the videogame. We're also introduced to the holy grail of video game guns, the BFG. A computer screen schematic announces it as the Bio Force Gun, but astute gamers will know better. (Fear not, the Rock announces the true name of the plasma-firing gun when he picks it up for the first time.) And yes, Dwayne Johnson managed to keep the prop guns for himself once shooting wrapped, lucky feller.
Much has been made of the strange looking shots peppered throughout the trailers in which we are treated to a live-action version of the first person shooter style. Expecting these to occur throughout the film as our soldiers progress through the levels, it seemed like it would be a cute idea but ultimately a bad one. Fortunately, it becomes apparent halfway through the film that these scenes are being saved for something special near the end. And sure enough, we eventually get to follow the exploits of one particular character as they tear through a compound on an arse-kicking spree. It works brilliantly, and earns points for allowing the film to acknowledge its roots instead of burying them in shame. Of course a traditionally-shot Hollywood showdown follows, as Sarge and Reaper finally have at it, but by this point I came upon the sinister realization that I was actually having a relatively decent time.
Fans of the source material will surely find moments of joy here. Fans of the Rock may find it disconcerting to view him in a less than honorable light here. (He still needs that one breakthrough role, which must be hidden behind a secret wall around here somewhere). The too-tight, too-grainy cinematography leaves something to be desired, but the score (by ex-Pop Will Eat Itself frontman Clint Mansell) is decent, and there's even the prerequisite Nine Inch Nails song present during the end credits sequence (once again designed in the first person perspective). As an entertaining B-grade creature feature it works well enough. Doom is Dumb, but what the hell -- I kinda liked it for what it was. You got a problem with that? We'll settle it in a deathmatch! R2, L2, X, Circle, Triangle, Left, Square,R1, Triangle, X, X, Circle...