Well as you may have gathered from the topic title, I have now been to see Doom and was pleasantly suprised at how much I enjoyed it. Now it will most certainly not win any academy awards but it is the first of its kind, a movie based on a game licence, made for gamers rather than the mainstream audience.

The first half of the movie was quite clichéd and reminiscent of Resident Evil, however what makes it unique is its familiarity. Every wall, every access panel, every room just screams Doom... sometimes literally, making the latter half of the movie that much more significant and that much more empowering. For it is the latter half where this movie really comes into its own. I have heard many complain about the first person view which the movie takes up, but let me just say, if you are a gamer you will have a grin from ear to ear when it does happen. The feeling for the few brief minutes when it does happen is truly gaming nirvana. It is also in the latter half where some of the suprising plot twists are revealed, but I won't spoil it for anyone who may have of decided that they couldn't care less and might as well find out the ending, because this movie should definitely be a part of every gamer's DVD collection.

Overall I'd give it 8.9/10, even if most of that score comes from the FPS perspective scenes, it really is worth it.

Should I play through Doom 3 before I go see this?

Here's what I wrote in the movie review thread:

I also want to add that I was dissapointed with the lack of the Doom series tradmark weapon; the shotgun! Where the hell was it?

Gaming nirvana?
LOL! It was ok, but I wouldn't rate it that high. :lol:

I would most definitely rate it that highly, to see the gamer's lifestyle up there on the big screen felt so empowering and so cool.

Texta: It couldn't hurt... but the truth is I never actually finished Doom 3 because it got me pretty freaked out... :(

I'd definitely like to go and see this but chances are I won't see it until it is on DVD. I don't really go to the cinemas anymore.

Shouldn't be too long for the DVD then. *prays*

Saw it over the w/end and I liked it quite a bit. Not the best action flick out there, but worth the price of admission.
I liked the movie's story(what there is) and how the demons come about as it was done in a more realistic way, instead of the very sci-fi "they're from hell" storyline of the game.
One thing I thought the movie was lacking was shooting. I mean it's based on a game where you shoot non-stop, yet the movie's shooting scenes are too few and a bit "piss weak" due to the guns they use. Like Estapol said, a shottie would've looked right at home in those scenes.

The movie's ending is also good. I won't spoil it, but will say that you won't expect it...

Overall, I enjoyed it. As long as you don't take it seriously, you'll come out the cinema pleasently surprised. :thumbsup:

8/10

From watching the trailer the film looks like it's the most closest to it's orignal source material than any other film based on a game, which I thought was a good thing, havent seen the actual film though.

I'm of the understanding that the word 'empowering' means to be given the tools, or the power, to achieve something. I don't see how that can be applied to a movie about a computer game.

Well I am of the complete opposite mind to that of MetalliX.

I went in expecting to see a very sub-par film, with plenty of the tradmark cliches, and big explosions. The first 2/3 served it's purpose, setting up the final climatic showdown... boy did it take a turn for the Uwe Boll.

For a movie titled Doom we saw a total of probably 4 monsters, and mostly they were confined to the darkness. The rest were rejects from a B-Grade Zombie movie casting session.

Weapons were ok, the BFG i was actually happy with. The setting wasn't too bad, if a little reptitive.

Acting from Karl Urban and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson was substantial enough to be enjoyable, however Rosamund Pike (Samantha Grimm) must either be really that bad, or just did not care enough. Her screaming at the marine resurrecting in the infirmary was attrocious.

The story... well, we've all know for quite some time that the monsters were no longer the demon spawn of satan spilling over from hell, but genetic experiemnts gone awry. This is not such a big deal, i personally thought the idea of a portal to hell may have been a little hard to translate. However even with the modified story the managed to sersiously do something wrong. At one point Samantha Grimm asks her bro for 10 seconds to explain. This is about how long it took her to introduce about 4 different plot elements. After plodding along with all the corridor searching and what not, it was like they realised the last hour did not really add anything tot he story, and that they should do something now to setup up the showdown. The idea of the last 10% being the soul, and the 24th Chromosone pair affecting some sort of pyschopathic part of certain individual's brains, the ark being created by Martians for them to emoigrate to earth - its like they had a hat full of ideas, and picked them out at random, and said "That there is the story for Doom". But instead of trying to build the story up on these ideas, they just threw them in at the start of the forth quarter.

I know this movie was never going to be about the story, but the fact is the action also failed. DJ-Civic has already mentioned that the shooting scenes suck - which i agree - so when the story fails, and the action... what the hell is there left to entertain us.
The First Person scene also failed to really click with me. It reminded me more of playing House of the Dead than any of the Dooms, not due tot he on rails nature of it, but more to do with the fact that alot of the enemies were zombies. The battle with the mutated pinky was ok, but the rest was a joke.

The final showdown was not Doom at all. A fist fight between a marine who suddenly goes Vietnam crazy, then gets infected, and one who shoots himself with a ricochetting bullet (wtf!), and uses the 24thC to save himself. I was ultimately hoping for some big nasty beastie, i mean shit, what else do you face at the end of Doom than a big nasty beastie (or Romero's head on a pike).

The other time this movie failed is when Portman went to the John. The setup was completely there for that scene from Doom 3 when the four-legged beastie bursts out from the darkness, with the light swinging overhead.

So ultimately for me:

Story: failed
Action: failed
Acting: standard
Doom-ness: absent

They could have called it "Resident Evil: Nemesis Goes to Mars" and no one would have been the wiser.

LOL, good points Lazlow, and yeah, I think it probably would have been cooler if Sarge had transformed into one of the big bosses from the Doom games during the fight rather than staying in a Human form for the whole thing.

Though when he was pushed into the Ark(which I thought was an awesome effect) and naded, that was pretty cool.

You know how you saw Rocky, and when you came out you just wanted to find the biggest black guy you could, and punch him... despite the fact he is four times bigger than you? Thats empowering... after seeing Doom, thats how I felt, first thing I did was load Doom 3 straight up and go for a good massacre.

I honestly thought the Rock was going to turn into one of those Centaur things, but going through the Ark like he did more than made up for it.

Now, what we are all forgetting about Doom is that there is no storyline, it was all find the exit, shoot the demons. The objective of the Director was to create a light storyline for the masses whilst still not reinventing the Doom franchise and ruining it for the gamers. This isn't Forrest Gump... its senseless violence, exactly what Doom was, if you wanted to go in and dissect the storyline, criticise the actors, you picked the wrong movie.

But those aren't the things that people are criticising. :P

:huh:

Those were all ONE persons complaint, I said "people", by I which I meant the people in this thread, by which I meant me, Civic(we said more [shooting of]guns!) and Lazlow.

You see, that's the problem...it wasn't non-stop senceless violence, why? Cause they tried to add a story-line in.(IMHO I didn't think it was as bad as Lazlow said)
Now if you go to the effort to put a proper story-line in, you put yourself up for criticisim.

I'm sorry, but you can't use "it was violence the whole time" as an excuse, since that wasn't the case.


My opinions from my previous posts still stand though.

Actually I purposely got them from Lazlow because thats who I was referring to, I just thought it better to let the person I was referring to remain anonymous, but I guess now its too late... :P

I didn't say non-stop... I said senseless, I also said the first half of the movie was lacking, and it was in the second half where it really got interesting.

i'm sorry but on the whole the movie sucked... plot, action, violence, beasties.

it did not feel like doom to me.

bad acting ruins any film. and a shitty storyline can too. they could have made the story something light and vague, buit no they tried to go deep and failed miserably. the beasties looked shit, and the action was dull. and i don't see how the rock going back through the ark was anything special.

If he turned into a Baron of Hell, or a Cyberdemon, then now we are talking. The only thing Doom-related in this film was the BFG, everything else was a miserable attempt at immitation.

That's not being empowered. You were inspired to play Doom 3, not empowered. Anyways, it doesn't really matter.

Keep up the good work Hello. :P

I though that most the beasts look extremely similar to their counterparts from Doom 3. (only difference with pinky was that he had wheels and not bionic legs)

If you're trying to compare this to the old Doom games, then you'll find very few similarities, as it's pretty much a Doom 3 inspired movie.

Pinky was the closest, the rest i couldn't tell - it was too dark. they were just men in latex suits to me. Clumsy and cumbersome.

True to the games. Haven't you noticed the repetitive alleys and rooms? :P

I noticed the shit acting, sets, monsters, script and music.

John Romero should've directed this movie.

Uwe Boll might as well have directed this movie. It was always going to be bad.

Sounds shitty so far, considering how I've recently developed a Doom addiction. I'm ready to be underwhelmed.

Come-on it wasn't THAT shithouse.

ESPECIALLY compared to other Game>Movie Films.

Now now Estapol, remember it makes you appear intelligent if you bag out movies like this. :P

I liked it anyway. As someone else mentioned the first thing I did was go home and play Doom 3. Doom 3 gets bagged out too much as well. Poor Doom. :lol:

The thing is i went in expecting a well below average film and it still managed to be extremly underwelming. And I liked Doom 3 (except for some obvious scripting issues).

I like some average action/drama films such as Constantine, and The Prophecy series, The Crow, Black Hawk Down, hell even Woo's the Killer was not all that great.

Doom had nothing redeeming about, which i have already stated. Bad action, a weak story, that bottlenecked at the end, and a shitty climax. The movie was not Doom at all. Maybe taking hell out of it did have an impact.
If the theme of hell was involved then maybe the Doom touch would have been there... the fact that it was on Mars is redundant, as you don't see much of the exterior. The shotgun was sadly absent. Maybe if an imp hurled a fireball...

I dunno what else to say. It was a badly thrown together mess, that didn't have the Doom touch.

Resident Evil would've been better if they used the original actors from the first game's FMV scenes. Only because you'd look at it and say
"hey, it's those bad actors from the original game!"
With that nostalgia, you'd forget the storyline and give it a better rating

Well that's some flawed logic.

RE felt a little like RE beacsue it was about Zombies and a Virus. It had a cold creepy atmosphere to go with the story. These things were present within the game. You still had Umbrella, you still had Racoon City, and you still had the mansion.

Doom didn't build any tension, missed many tradmarks, the story was completely butchered, lacked decent action, and the legit iconic monsters were few and far between. And when they did appear were unimpressive.

The story in Doom had many things wrong with it. It was paced badly, it plodded along, and then hit the audience with the gist of it in a 2 minute period prior to the climax. It hinted at things from nowhere (that humans are decendants from martians, and the 24th pair might be the soul).

Fact is i knew the story was going to be shit. I went to seem Doom portrayed in film, and what i saw was not doom. That first person sequence has fooled many people. For christ sake, Doom was never about teamwork. It was always a lone marine. Even in Doom 3.