DOOM

***Note***

Avast, thar be mild spoilers ahead, says I. Yar!

***End Note***

Doom has gotten, almost universally, bad reviews from the popular media - newspapers, tv and some of the more cunning webcritics - but I'm here to set the record straight. Doom is an adequate movie that you'll watch and say, if your a fan of the game, I'm not completly outraged.

Starring Dwayne "Can you smell what The Rock is cooking?" Johnson, from WWF fame, and a crew of "oh yeah, that guy" actors including : Karl Urban (Eomer from "the lord of the ring" trilogy), Dexter Dletcher (Soap from "Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels") and a few others from here and there.

Doom is set in a not so distant future, where a teleportation device, able to instantly send anything to Mars, is discovered and the 'new world' is being researched. Three operations are taking place on mars: Weapon development, Genetics and Martian anthropology. When some of the experiments go awry, scientists and civilians begin dying and this is where the big guns come into play.

A little context for the story, Doom is a first person shooter video game. Which means you see a gun at the bottom of the screen like you were holding it. You go on your merry way blasting evil demons and monsters to a Hell from which they were spawned. No character development, no concrete reasons, no stopping, just shooting and killing. Not such a hot topic for a 2 hour film.

The pacing of the movie is slow to build tension but never builds up and there is never a good release. All scenes are dark to make them spooky but it doesn't quite make it. The acting is decent considering the core material. The reason this movie gets a moderate review is that the target demographic for the film, kids that played the game when it first came out in the ealry 90's, will notice the little things that made Doom great are missing: The chaotic feel of desperation when your back is against the wall and you only have the hand gun and chain saw, feeling no remorse when double killing corpses so they don't come back as zombies, the rocket launcher, the Hell parts, the absence of a love story/team politics/comraderie, and the plethora of weapons.

The Rock plays the Sarge well but the rest of the cast fill their roles in less than stellar fashion. The old Doom midi from Doom1 makes it triumphant return, the first person shooter aspect is not over used or terribly done and the BFG are all the elements from the game that make great additions to the movie.

I give this movie a 5/10 or a 2-2.5 star rating. It was okay.

Pros:
Elements of the first Doom made it into the movie
Cheesy lines
Sarge is Bad-ass

Cons
the little unnecessary changes to the story
Romantic elements added
Character named - John Carmack but not one for Romero ( Carmack and Romero created Doom the video game)