Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Doom (2005)

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Posted by Sam Graham (Member # 2889) on 10-22-2005, 01:58 PM:

CINEMA: Century 20 at Jordan Creek, West Des Moines, IA
AUDITORIUM: 11
PRESENTATION: Dolby Digital/THX
PRESENTATION PROBLEMS: None [Cool]

RATING: Two and one half stars (out of four)

There's an unusually long line to buy tickets this morning. In front of me is an elderly couple who are looking at the showtimes and arguing over what to see. He's suggesting "Just Like Heaven", but she's having none of that. I didn't catch what movie they bought tickets for. So I was quite surprised to see them walk into Auditorium 11 shortly after I did.

Pre-show slides are totally out of focus. Actually, they're zoomed in too. I bet I'm missing something cool. HA HA HA HA HA ! (cough)

The Universal logo swoops around Mars in the intro, which was really cool. We zoom in to the planet and underground where a research laboratory exists. From here, the movie is basically a low-budget looking effort with dark creepy tunnels, video game-level violence, video game-level action, video game-level music, and video game-level dialogue. There's lots of body parts too. Actually, there's a pretty impressive level of gross-out factor here. Your subwoofers will get a serious workout.

Two teenage moviegoing gamers said it best on the way out..."Intense". And it is. Everybody I heard...and everybody was around 12-to-16 years old save for said elderly couple...were impressed.

No, I didn't hear what the elderly couple thought.

Posted by Dave Williams (Member # 299) on 10-23-2005, 01:57 PM:

Regardless of the mass of horrible reviews on this film, I wen't anyway. Primarily because one critic put it this way... "It is just as bad as Resident Evil."

YEAH.. I love that movie. I knew I would have fun.

And I did.

There were some akward moments of attempted story development, and some missed opportunities to really have some fun with the material at hand, but overall, it was a nice ride that ended well.

2.5 stars out of four. It loses ground when it attempts to build a storyline and fails, but then gains some back when it realizes that it is nothing but a zombie film where people just shoot things and blow stuff up.

Ciao

Posted by Wolff King Morrow (Member # 2226) on 10-23-2005, 04:39 PM:

I came in expecting it would totally suck like Resident Evil, but I found it had some good moments.

My big complaint is the plot. The game focused on the teleportation technology opening a port to Hell, much to the dismay of unsuspecting scientists. The movie on the other hand focused on a less interesting plot of bio-engineering gone awry.

Another bad point: No cyberdemon. Come on, you gotta have a cyberdemon if the movie is going to be called Doom.

One thing I really like was how the Rock's character was developed toward the end of the movie. Nice swerve on the crowd.

Posted by Steve Scott (Member # 630) on 10-25-2005, 02:45 AM:

Its like a day camp for aspiring formula sci-fi actors, with special guests The Rock and Universal's contract player Karl Urban! About halfway through bouts of abrupt laughter at the cluelessness of the characters and the lack of coherently filmed demons, I realized that this Doom is a non-clever spoof on the post-Aliens sci fi script... Or at least that's what I told myself in a tired haze after our screening of this dead weight film.

How can you build a video game franchise on a notable style of first-person violence, and then devote like three minutes to that style in the multi-million dollar film of the same title? I guess the execs wanted them to try to make a film. Director Bartkowiak (sic) was really off too, his normally clean action frame was dilluted by strobes and carnage. Control, people, CONTROL!

St. Anthony Main, #1, DTS
Play it loud, its all we can hope to get out of it!

Posted by Jeremy Jorgenson (Member # 2989) on 10-28-2005, 10:37 PM:

Overall, enjoyable - nothing spectacular though.
I guess I should note: I've never played the game.
also: spoilers will be included in the next paragraph.

Pretty much "bleh" for the first 1/2 or 3/4 of the film. It was fine for its target audience etc, nothing to really complain about. Then, about the last 1/4 gets interesting. I enjoyed that (as Wolff mentioned) the protagonist becomes the antagonist ... and a character that was pretty much treated as a "secondary 'good' character integral to the subplot" turns out to be the protagonist and, ultimately, the hero. This portion of the film also contains the first person sequence that Steve mentioned (although, I thought it went a lot longer than "like three minutes" ... but I certainly wasn't timing it). I enjoyed the way it switched to the first person mode.

Ultimately, I think this is pretty much a film in which you get what you expect from the trailer, perhaps a bit more ... but if the trailer turned you off, you probably won't be all that interested.