Doom staring the ROCK and Karl Urban who was Eomer from Return of the King.  Of course I didn’t recognize him I only read later who he was, all those white guys look like Tom Hanks to me.  Doom gives you exactly what you wanted out of a Doom movie, tons of kick ass zombie killing violence, some gross out scenes with some pretty messed up anatomy and of course monsters, scary monsters.  Oh, they got me with that monkey thing.  The Faux scare early on, of course I should have known but I jumped!  There is even a first person sequence to give you a cinematic feel for playing the game.  Is the story any good?  Diehard unswerving fans of the game who don’t know about things like artistic license won’t be able to handle the dynamic changes to the story and yeah they’re pissed off that they abandon the supernatural and Hell idea for a purely scientific extraterrestrial genetic experiment basis for the story.  Hell would have been more plausible but I guess they didn’t want to mix any religion with their story.  But the science was pretty shaky.  According to the movie we humans came from Mars through that teleporter thingy they discovered in Arizona.  I don’t want to think too hard on that aspect of the story, it ruins it for me when stories try to tidily explain very complex questions like the origins of mankind.  Mission to Mars with Tim Robbins and Tom Hanks did that and it was a horrible ending on an otherwise decent movie.  But, if your as squeamish about Hollywood science as I am, cover your ears when the blonde chick talks, she’ll try to make you believe we went back on our genome mapping project, completed in 2003 and dismissed 10% of the work.  She will try to convince us that a Marine can recognize how many chromosomes are visible on a slide and will give a cheesy line like…”What was the first thing dad taught us.”  Owch, dad must have been an overachiever, drilling DNA mapping into his kids heads.  But forget about any semblance of a story.  All the story you need is in Rock’s tattoo as the movie opens…. Semper Fi! The only other part you need to know is that the BFG stands for Bio-Force Gun, but Rock will call it something else and when he does you should shout in your loud disruptive theater voice.  “YEAH!!!”

Would I recommend this movie to anyone who doesn’t play the game?  As long as you know it’s a mindless action flick with some terrific action.  The characters are all quite plastic, the only pre-designed to be somewhat plausible is Karl Urban who plays the Marine with smarts, wait, did he was plausible?  I guess I take that back.  What’s the big deal with Marines in the movies anyway?  There was a trailer for a movie about the Marines that looked to me like a recruitment drive, and Jamie Fox was in it and I think that was Tom Hanks in there also. 

Doom takes place in claustrophobic corridors, well armed Marines walk along planks with a grill pattern underneath that ring metallic and hollow with their footsteps, the perfect place for genetically mutated boogey men to grab you from below.  When they’re doing surveillance of an area, flashlight sweeps, of course they never consider including the floors as part of their surveillance no matter how hollow the floors sound or how many times they’re ambushed from below or from the obligatory air vents above.  But oh well.  The monsters were well done, the scares were scary, the mutated albino pig looking thing was particularly creepy.  Oh and the Rock, he was good.  I like the Rock, you holier than me real  film fans can dismiss him as an action icon.  I think he’s a good actor, if limited he plays a likable and believable character.  He’s the new Arnold but he’s actually a better actor than Arnold in humble opinion.

So, go see Doom!  And quitcher cryin’ about how they changed the story, I’ve read way too many complaints on the internet about it.  You make a movie to appeal to computer geeks and they still get bent out of shape.  Here’s an important tip though, stick around after the credits roll for some great retro-CGI real time hallway clearing too.  A NIN tune kicks in and the remaining credits are run over a FPS perspective.  It’s a treat for those of us who don’t have to rush out of the theater at the first sign of text.

You talkin' ta me?  Sound off on the forums if you have any feedback on a post here.  I was getting spammed and had to take down the comments, sorry about that.  Make an account and tell me how full of crap I am, I could use a good lesson, and thank you.  Someday I might fix the forum so I stop getting spammed.  Just as soon as I attach these wings to this pig I've been working on.