The year is 2026 and the Union Aerospace Corp (UAC) has got a freaky problem on Mars on their hands and it's up to the Rapid Response Tactical Squad (pronounced "rrrrrrrrrrttss") to clean up the mess. Enter dynamic crew of contrasting characters, headed by Sarge, played by The Rock. They rush to Mars with almost-too-huge guns in hand via the Ark, a high-tech blob of floating mercury that tosses your cells to Mars so fast that it makes you puke. They hook up with a sexy scientist determined to preserve their research and then get the blasty show on the road, hitting the archeologists' dig site, some labs with floating grossness, and other familiar territory. It's all closely modeled on the Doom 3 game, right down to the comically large interface buttons for terminal panels and dim metal hallways. But in the movie there is no Hell. Moreover, in the place of the nebulous spiritual thang that the game has, all the badness in the movie results from flying tongues hunting evil genes. Y'know, in case you are thinking that it just isn't plausible to be zapped to Mars to fight ghosts in twenty years time.
The graphics in Doom are great, which is to be expected. The scene with Pinky 2.0 is really crazy and the BFG does the hilarious "honey, I melted the neighborhood" damage that you'd think it would. There is never an Anaconda moment where you're thinking "they let that go? Do they think I'm blind?"
But having good graphics these days is like bragging that your movie is in color and so, in the legacy of id, Doom tries to bring something new to film by adding a sequence of first person shooter style action shots. After powering up on genetic Mountain Dew, our hero goes berserk and a raaaaaaawring killing spree ensues. Camera turns, thing jumps out, thing gets blasted, repeat. I get the feeling they wanted us gamers to relate to this and go "YEAAAAAAHHHH!" but it's just not that exciting to watch and ends up looking like a haunted house scene with better graphics. Everyone I talked to seem to agree it was extraneous fluff that didn't do anything for the film. Oh well, at least there weren't any monster closets.
As you'd probably guess by that and The Rock's "Sarge" title, there are a bunch of bones tossed throughout the movie to the fans of id games. The BFG, the use of handles, and the naming of some of the doctors after id staff members are a few.
The use of id staff names get to be really distracting. It's hard to not wince when in all seriousness someone yells "WHERE THE HELL IS CARMACK?" and you immediately get a picture of an anemic programmer in cords furtively scaling the walls. It ends up like someone hitting you with a joy buzzer while you're trying to watch an emotional scene in Roots. It just doesn't help.
I thought that they were maybe being cheeky, but there is nothing like this anywhere else in the movie. They didn't even make anything out of the "what's a chainsaw doing on Mars?" bit from the game which was hilarious. Instead, the director assumes that just recognizing these token things from the game are good enough that it adds something to the film. It doesn't.
Not that I could do a better job, but Doom's humor is so predictably stuck in one liners that it's sad. And the drama isn't much better, culminating in a flashback scene where one of the gruff hired killers stops shooting stuff for a sec to a have a "mommy NOOOOooooooo!!!!" flashback (an actual quote). Maybe she fell into a fogpit after rocketjumping, we can't be sure.
This is the failure of Doom: it takes itself way too seriously. We're not here for the plot. C'mon, It's Doom, a game about going to Mars to kill zombies. It's not an epic comic book tale you want to see preserved, it's ZOMBIES ON MARS. That right there is enough to get you into Evil Dead or Killer Klowns From Outer Space territory. But then The Rock isn't Bruce Campbell. He probably had enough on his meaty, tanned, and glistening plate without having to worry about any emotion other than grrr.
On top of all this, after a pretty underwhelming showdown, the movie ends very abruptly and I was left sitting there thinking "that's it?" or, in my case, "I'm glad I didn't pay to see this." In short, I can smell what The Rock is cooking, and it's not a good movie. On a scale from Robocop to your sister's church play, it's a cosplay show with a big budget and lots of squishy noises. If you're looking to watch it just for the sake of seeing a splatter flick sausage fest, then wait for the DVD. But be prepared for a movie written by the marketing department. And don't ask us what "SEMPER FI, MOTHERF*****" is supposed to mean.
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