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Doom Takes A Shot At Gamers
The Washington Post has a piece discussing the suck that is a movie based on a videogame. From the article: "At the heart of this competitive marriage is this question: How do you successfully turn an interactive experience (playing an Xbox game) into a passive one (watching a movie version of an Xbox game)? For whatever reasons, the recent crop of video game movies -- including 2003's 'House of the Dead' and this year's 'Alone in the Dark,' both helmed by the German director Uwe Boll -- have consistently disappointed gamers. Someone even started a Web site called Uwebollsucks.com. Is it for real? A joke? No one is sure."
The first Resident Evil movie should get lots of props. It took the RE world, but altered the plot dramatically. It put characters in difficult, complex situations. A woman wakes up in a house full of guns, and is smuggled down into an underground laboratory she didn't know existed trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Characters make mistakes that other characters have to pay for. They choose between killing one of their own or facing death together.
Most of the actors were pretty good. And let's face it, some of the moments, like the laser dicer machine, were pretty cool.
The problem seemed to be that a few of the actors were distractingly bad, and the CGI monster was ATROCIOUS. Laughably bad. It looked like something out of a cheap CGI fan hentai. Really, if there was a moderately competent sense of dread that the director managed to get out of the great scenario writing, it was killed every time that giant plastic tongue came on screen. Sure, the dogs covered in prosciutto were distractingly bad too and should have been cut from the script. But at least they weren't recurring characters.
RE: Apocalypse didn't have as strong a scenario, writing, or anything else really. But it did drive the characters forward and did succeed in making RE: 3 the Movie look really, really appealing. At this point, it would make a great serial drama for the sci-fi channel.
I wish someone would go back and re-do RE:1 with the love and skill it deserved. It was definitely a problem of one or two weak links in an otherwise strong chain.
The ______ Agenda
"A college "gaming club" that meets weekly for an hour to discuss gaming. Wow. I bet those are some popular guys on campus." ... said the guy posting on Slashdot on a Friday night.
"Derp de derp."
The Washington post is supposed to be a reputable newspaper with a reputation for reliable informaiton. So why was this article not basic fact checked by anybody?
That is, anybody before us.
Come 'on everybody! Let's all pile on to poor Jose Antonio Vargas and point out everything he just plain got wrong.
I'll take the obvious ones.
1. Tron was not a videogame-turned-into-a-movie. It was an original movie about games in general. The videogame followed.
2. Doom cannot be categorized as an Xbox game. Doom has seen basically all of it's sales on the PC for about a dozen years, with the occasional port.
3. Console gaming and movies don't "crave" the 13 - 25 year old male audience. According to the Entertainmetn Software Association the average gamer age is 30, and 43% are female. This skewes a little lower on consoles, but the numbers are far better than the shallow stereotype Vargas passes as journalism. And hasn't box office gold been Date Movies?
Arguable points
1. Doom is not the Granddaddy of FPS games. Wolfenstein 3D is. Wolfenstein 3D begat Doom. There were other FPS games before Wolfie, but it was the first to see real commercial success.
2. Half-Life was based more on classic adventure games than Doom. It certainly didn't "follow the Doom model."
3. He points to Spielberg signing a deal to create 3 franchisable games for EA as a sign that the industry is at a crossroads. However, Spielberg has worked on games many times before, though his LucasArts and Dreamworks Interactive studios. Don't get me wrong, I'm excited to see him spend more time trying to alter the craft, but it's still nothing he hasn't done before.
As a side note: Movies are about why you do something. Games are about how you do something. Movies about "how" are hollow, and games about "why" are boring.
The ______ Agenda
Just saw Doom tonight with friends and mixed company. We had a nice little demographic cut there, ranging from PC game geeks (like myself) to total noobs. And chicks, OMG!
:P
:P), but i'm probably trying to read into something that isn't there. :P
Anyways, if you're not a gamer, have never played Doom, or aren't the least bit interested in gratuitous violence - don't go. One guys girlfriend actually fell asleep during the movie, which was suprising to me given the abundance of loud noises, screaming, and overamped bass. However, if you are a gamer, have played doom, enjoy gratutious violence, and have a sense of humour - then by all means, go see it! You can skip the fancy theatres, just grab as many geeky friends as you can find, load up on your choice of alcohol/drugs/sugar, and HAVE FUN at the theatre. Yes its bad, but its bad in a good way. As long as you can let your expectations go, relax, and just revel in the stupidity, you'll have a blast. I sure did!
Now on to specifics.
Plot & Script: Yeaaaah there isn't much of a plot, as you might expect. 'Something Bad'(tm) happens on Mars. The 'RRTS' (good-guys) teleport over there, more stuff goes bad, people die, etc etc etc, curtain. What plot exists has virtually nothing to do with the videogame - no portal to hell, no 'demons', none of that - though references to hell are scattered throughout. The actual plot ends up being a lot more like Resident Evil. That is to say, bio-engineering + lack of ethics = zombies and other mean things. It's really fairly pointless, and although the movie does try to tackle the idea of Good vs Evil, Right and Wrong (and almost, ALMOST succeeding for a nanosecond), it just ends up getting in the way of shooting more stuff.
The script, unfortunatly, is just as bad. It doesn't even score points for having cool one-liners you can shout at friends later. For the most part its uninspired and just stupidly obvious. That, or its all screaming/yelling. Heck, the only real line I remember from the movie was "He has a condition. He's dead." or something to that effect. Its more like reading a cookbook than it is cool or poetic. Shucks.
Characters: The characters are a little hit and miss. There are about 11 major-ish characters in the movie (8 are marines), all fleshed out to various degrees. Some have lots of screentime but zero backstory (like Sarge), others feel more human (Reaper - this is intentional i'm sure). Some are funny/pitiful (The Kid), others just there for show & violence (Destroyer), and yet others who could have been completely cut out of the script with no ill effects (Mac). A big but expected dissapointment for me was the utterly horrible intro/outro of the characters. You basically have one scene that introduces all of the marines at once, yet doesn't explain jack about who they are. Then throughout the movie, people die, dissapear, and die again. The Samantha character literally crawls out of the movie and is never seen again 5 seconds before the credits. Oh well.
One thing the movie failed to do, or did very well (depending on your point of view), is leave the morality of some of the characters quite obscure until late in the flick. Is Portman evil or just stupid? What motivates Sarge? Is Duke a badass or a tender-heart? I found myself questioning the characters at times, which was both interesting and kind of revealing (asto how pointless many of them really were
Acting: Karl Urban (John 'Reaper' Grimm) is one of my favorite actors, and IMO he does pretty good with such an utterly craptastic script. Doom definitly does not feature some of The Rock's (Sarge) best acting however. A couple lines seem like they were almost flubbed but left in anyways due to the length of a cut. Overall however, he does get the "grrr soldier badass!" feeling out to you. Rosamund Pike (Samantha Grimm) is one of the best actors in the movie IMO, though i'm not sure if its because of
I had fairly low expectations, and there were even some plans in palce to guide me away from any press after the premier if I didn't like the movie, so I wouldn't say something "unproductive", but I was pleasantly surprised.
No, it isn't an oscar movie, but it definitely isn't Super Mario Brothers / Street Fighter / Double Dragon.
I do wish they had kept the true satanic / hellish theme, but I think they did a credible job with their alternate direction.
John Carmack