I finally got to watch the movie on DVD. Even just a few minutes into the movie, I could tell that none in the production department had played Doom or even knew its storyline. That, or they simply thought that the tried and tested plot of gene mutation monsters was better than Doom's hell portal theory. Sure, there were a couple recognizable Doom creatures like the zombies, the Imp, the Hell knight aka the Baron, and everyone's favorite Pinky, and the story takes place in Mars. But apart from that, it's definetly not Doom.
The main story in Doom, or atleast Doom 3, is about an ancient civilization on mars who research and succeed in inter-dimentional travel via teleportation. But they find that they had opened a portal to actual Hell. Hell demons start to invade mars. The martians create an artifact called the 'Soul Cube' through sacrifice of almost all of the mars population and arming their strongest warrior with it. The legions from hell were beaten back by the warrior. The remainder of the Martian population teleported to another dimension/galaxy, while a few others teleported over to Earth and became the first humans. The martians leave behind a detailed documentary on stone tablets, of their opening of the portal, the evil that followed, the usage of the soul cube, it's location and how they advise other civilizations not to try this in their backyard. The Union AeroSpace Corporation, UAC, establishes a research facility on Mars and contemporary scientists, upon finding the tablets, attempt to recreate the portal opening. They succeed but they are not aware of the Hell-concept. So, many scout teams and researchers, no matter what they are armed with, return either as dead bodies, lobotomized zombies with extra-large blood lust or as a giberring wrecks. Dr.Bertruger, the lead Evil scientist at the base, leads on the research no matter what the body count. This is when you get enter the UAC facility. You were a Marine who disobeyed a direct order to gun down innocent civilians. Giving a fatal punch to your CO is not a very good way of disobeying. The CO gets military burial while you get your can kicked over to Mars (on the theory that your body will naturally follow it). Dr. Bertruger has plans of his own. He goes through to hell, gives the soul cube to the Devil there and reaches a pact with them.
From here on, though the game becomes schwarchenegger-style-kill'em-all, it's the attention to detail on the horror element in Doom that really makes it Doom. For exampe, I remember one time when the light flickers for a few second and then ther's an Imp just behind the iron staircase. But when the light came back on, there wasn't anything there or behind me. All this I noticed on the corner of my eye. I still have't worked out if that was actually scripted, my hallucination or a bug in the game's clipping code. (Actually, I replayed the game and saw the Imp again. So it *was* a scripted event :) )
All along the way, you hear distant voices of your fellow marines getting acquainted with the demons, see things that aren't there, witness giant bloody growth all over the base, humans, disfigured and dismembered, arranged in some satanic art, cries of babies and women pleading you or beckoning you. There's just too many scare devices to count. And then there's the no-scotch-tape-on-mars syndrome, which means you can't mount the infinite battery-life flashlight on your weapon. A shame when you consider that powercuts are virtually permanant on the base. The creatures from Hell are a bit too demanding on the maintenance crew, I guess.
I don't expect a Fraped version of the game play relesed as movie, (Mainly because it would be nauseating and boring without the interactablity of the game, but actually because there are such videos of Doom3 and other games on the net. They are called SpeedRuns of the game. But unless you've played the game well, you can't follow the video or it's intent. 100% runs, in which the gamer finishes the game as fast as possible while collecting all the collectibles and killing all the killable NPCs, are hard to come by. But they would give you some idea of what the Doom experience is all about. VisualWalkthroughs is a great site for those who want a low bandwidth Doom experience), but I certainly expected the movie to exceed my expectations. You know, get creative and novel and stuff.
But no. There's the old gene mutation theory in cloak, the human genome containing the 'blueprint' of the soul (?), cliched one-liner dialogues, despicable characters whom we don't care if they rot in, well, mars, a heroine (is she?) who can do autopsy on hellish monstors but annoys viewers by her constant screams upon viewing a zombie lobotomizing itself on the other side of a bullet-proof glass, a civilization that can travel at the speed of light but still uses guns and metal bullets, ...
The movie in question is not bad at all, as a movie. It has a weak-but-OK storyline of the kind you would expect of an action movie, an OK cast (The Rock only sways rather than rock in this movie), an occasional nod to FPS gamers (Dr.Cormack, BFG, the FPS mode), couple of catchy one-lines ("Semper fi, mofo!", "Kill them all, let God sort them out."). I did root, root when the FPS mode started (About 3 minutes long), and I did watch the movie about four times. Infact, if they had named the movie something along the lines of 'non-Resident Evil' or 'YARE (Yet Another Resident Evil)' or 'Resident Evil in Mars', then I am sure that the movie wouldn't have recieved so many sighs from gamers and film critics.
Being a marine, Dwayne Johnson flouts the US Marine corps motto, "Semper Fi" (actually, "Semper fidelis") all over the place; whether it be on his extra wide shoulder tattoo or when talking down his adversary in the final boss-fight ("Semper fi, mofo!"). The exact meaning of the word is "always faithful", but, as Sarge, The Rock translates it as "Faithful to the core". But well, I don't think this movie is faithful to the core at all. It just isn't Doom.
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