A few days ago I grabbed a screener of Doom, but it was just that bad that it would have ruined the movie to watch it. Luckily, with uni largely out of the way (excepting exams from next week) I was able to persuade a few of my fellows to join me in seeing it in the cinema. While the consensus was largely negative, I quite liked it. The storyline of course doesn’t follow the games in any particular fashion, and there were a few things that didn’t mesh all that well – like why the facility on Mars has guns up the wazzoo, yet back on Earth they’ve got jack shit, and can’t defend themselves against a single measly monster – all ninety or more of them.
They also didn’t explain exactly how the original monster escaped from it’s little pit… I guess it jumped or climbed out, but still… you’d think with all the damn guns they had lying around, they could post a bloody armed guard. Or a guard at all.
I was also disappointed a bit by the lack of variety in the monsters – you had your zombies, your generic Aliens-cross-werewolf guys, and that one bull thing. And some psychotic monkey. And that was about it. Pretty poor… I at least expected the Rock to turn into something fierce, but no, he remained largely human.
I’m also a bit annoyed at the ending… they’re clearly setting it up for a sequel; they get to the surface only to find more corpses – oh oh, something escaped up the ventilation shafts (or whatever piss-poor excuse they make up). Or hangs onto the bottom of the elevator. Whatever; I’m sure it’ll happen. The ending line, “we’re almost home”, just screamed unfortunate irony. Yep, Karl Urban ain’t done yet. :)
Despite all that, it was largely good… a little predictable – why oh god why do the persist on splitting up, and sending plebs off on their own?!? sigh…. but it was fun. It was worth the $9.50 for the ticket, and it was good otherwise to catch up with those that came along to see it, so it was all good.
