Cyclopean Columns

I went to see "Doom" last night. I was not expecting anything deep or meaningful, just an action romp through the cosmos. Unfortunately, even in this respect it didn't really live up to expectations. Let me tell you why:

Plot was virtually non-existent and more importantly ignored some of the central themes of the game. Acting was wooden, not helped by a pathetic script. SFX were okay but not up to a 2005 standard, IMHO. Did I mention it was a bad script? A lot of the action hinged around the fact that these marines were in it alone, no backup, quarantined etc, but they never actually explained *why* they felt quarantine was so important in this case, nor did they ever say why they couldn't bring in backup in the form of legions of troops or an airstrike or a nuke.

Even seeing The Rock's bulging shoulders with "SEMPER FI" tattoed across them didn't make it a good film.

Oh, and the section of the film that they shot as a First Person Shooter was just annoying. More like being on a sad carnival "spook show" ride, complete with the fake-looking zombie that laughs at you before it gets shot. Pathetic.

Also, the editing sucked. There were characters appearing out of nowhere because they deleted the bridging scene where they first appeared and started doing stuff like, oh, helping to carry a badly wounded marine to the medlab. Or when you get the end of a conversation about why the marines should leave an area without the initial "We are leaving now" sort of comment.

And don't even get me started on the science, or lack thereof. 24th chromosome pair indeed! In a bottle. That can be injected. And makes you either a superhuman or a monster. And can somehow "smell" or "detect" a genetic predisposition in its victims for "psychotic or murderous behaviour" - which is what decides if you're a monster, BTW.

For pete's sake - the original Doom game was about Hell breaking into our reality. Hell. This was just some lame bio experiment gone wrong. And not even in a big way. The closest they got was one of the characters saying to another "It's hell up here Sam. It's always been hell" - you see, their parents were killed in an archealogical accident on Mars ten years ago, and the brother went off to become a marine while the sister stayed to continue the parent's research. So we go from actual Hell breaking loose, Event Horizon style, to hell simply being a philosophical description of the personal despair these two went through from losing their parents.

All in all a vomitous waste of celluloid and two hours of my life that I'm never getting back.