The Unseen Movie Review

Doom

Films based on computer games really haven’t got a very good pedigree. After the first attempt, the truly abysmal Super Mario Brothers back in 1993 – where both Bob Hoskins and Dennis Hopper put in turn which are well up there among their worst – many thought that they may have learned their lessons. After all, most games, at least back in the early 1990s, had little in the way of plot or characterisation, and how could you possibly make a film without those?

But as computer game technology advanced and games became more involved and complex, Hollywood kept track of the success of this new rival to its crown as head of all entertainment. By the late 1990s, top computer games began to make nearly as much money as many movies (and now they often surpass them), and so the studio executives began to hunt around. Tomb Raider seemed a perfect choice – a sexy, posh Englishwoman with guns battling against strange beasts in a modern Indiana Jones style. But it was awful. Resident Evil seemed another sure-fire hit – another sexy female lead, but this time with all the benefit of decades-worth of zombie film lore to fall back on. Again, failure. Let’s not even go down the path of the shockingly awful Mortal Kombat or Streetfighter: The Movie, both of which were based on games with precisely no plot whatsoever – all they involved was beating people up.

Yet despite the failure of just about every film based on a computer game so far, they’re still determined to push ahead with the idea. On the basis of games from recent years, you could see how they could think it might work – as technology has improved the likes of the Grand Theft Auto series and others do have definite plots, and borrow liberally from Hollywood, so why shouldn’t Hollywood do the same? There have even recently been computer game versions of some Hollywood classics, notably Star Wars and even The Godfather and Scarface, and almost every blockbuster is now transferred to consoles, sometimes even before it has hit the cinemas.

Yet still they don’t appear to have learned their lesson in Hollywood. Rather than take a complex, narrative and character-driven game like the ongoing favourite The Legend of Zelda and turn that into a movie, they’ve once again decided to pick one of the least cinematic titles possible – the once groundbreaking Doom. This was a game with no plot, no real characters, just first-person blowing the living hell out of everything that moves with a variety of increasingly ridiculous weapons.

The trouble is, Doom itself was largely based on a film – the 1986 action-fest Aliens. The basic idea was exactly the same – kill as many nasty beasties as you can and get out alive. Aliens, of course, had rather more to it than that, and was a moderately successful satire on not only Vietnam war films, but also 1980s capitalism – even if many of its fans couldn’t have cared less about the political commentary. The Aliens formula was taken even further in 1997’s Starship Troopers – a satire so perfect that the majority of people who saw it didn’t even realise that it was satirical. So, once you’ve had films that good revolving around mindless killing of as many nasty beasties as possible, why bother with another?

Well, in short, because it’s fun. No one expected anything brilliant from this film – not least because it stars ex-wrestler The Rock – and if anyone did then they’re a fool. It was always going to be mindless nonsense. But mindless nonsense can be great fun. Is this? Well, to be honest it depends how drunk you are. A Saturday nighter, most likely.

posted by Nosemonkey @ 4:33 AM