DOOM
(UNRATED WIDESCREEN EDITION) (2005)
Doom (Unrated Widescreen Edition) (2005)
Starring: Karl Urban, Rosamund Pike
Director: Andrzej Bartkowiak
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only)
Run Time: 113 minutes
Available Subtitles: English, Spanish, French
Available Audio Tracks: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), French (Dolby
Digital 5.1), Spanish (Dolby Digital 5.1)
DVD Features:
-
Basic Training
-
Rock Formation
-
Master Monster Makers
-
First Person Shooter Sequence
-
Doom Nation
-
Game On!
-
Doom 3 XBox Demo
Movie:
  
Disc:
 Doom
is of course based on the famed first-person shooter game of the same name
(as if you didn't know that).
In the first two Doom games the portals of Hell
itself has somehow opened on a Martian research station spewing forth all
kinds of nasty beasties and demons. In the movie version the research
facility is infected by an experimental virus of sorts that turns people
first into zombies and then Alien-like monsters.
Yawn.
I sort of like the whole Gates of Hell concept better,
and always thought the original games would make excellent movies if they
could duplicate its creepy atmospherics and ambitious production designs
onscreen. This however isn't that movie. This one doesn't even bother
recreating some of the original's architecture and instead has a generic
looking group of black-clad marines running endlessly down dark corridors
with heavy metal guitars pounding away on the soundtrack (always a bad
sign). Not particularly scary or thrilling . . .
I can't however attest as to whether this movie version is
more true to the latest Doom 3 game since the last computer game I've
played was Quake somewhere in the mid-1990s
?
to be honest I grew tired of the constant hardware upgrades so that I can
play the latest games. But while this movie has big guys with guns running
down darkened hallways, I wouldn't exactly call it true to those original
Doom games that appeared in the early- to mid-1990s. Doom (the
movie) feels more like yet another Aliens
clone, but with some action movie conventions thrown in: the climax has two
marines fighting it out whereas at the end of Doom you had to battle
Lucifer himself. A distinct letdown.
THE DISCS: Some featurettes of varying interest, plus some trailers
of other Universal Studio fare such as the much better
Battlestar Galactica TV series (just when
is the rest of Season Two coming out on DVD?).
WORTH IT: Fans of the game would be disappointed, and non-fans will
find themselves facing a generic but unabashedly violent and gory soldiers-running-around-shooting-up- things
flick which isn't a bad thing in itself - if it wasn't for an ending
that can only be described as "kinda dumb" . . .
RECOMMENDATION: After watching the DVD and some of the special
features I felt like uploading those old Doom games for the heck of
it, but just knew that I'd probably have problems with the various old DOS
software drivers. Point is: play the games; they are much more fun than this
big screen adaptation . . .
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