DOOM

US, 2005, 105 minutes, Colour.
Karl Urban, Rosamund Pike, The Rock, Ben Daniels, Dexter Fletcher.
Directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak.

Doom is a video game. The film follows the trend to make live action features out of popular video games. It does this sleekly with the full range of special effects. But, as one watches it, one is forced to ask who the film is for and what good it will do them.

One of the difficulties in watching the film is the constant, pounding action. It is certainly violent. It is also brutal and ugly, inviting the audience to revel in bone and gut crunching mayhem and deaths. The classifications board consumer advice (which makes no moral judgment, simply informs) is rightly, ‘strong violence, gore and language’.

Doom is about soldiers, weaponry (really big guns which should get psychologists going), the ethos of trained killers – although at one stage is does make a point about disobeying ruthless orders. Otherwise, this is an appeal to an extreme macho sensibility (which, in fact, is under fire as more and more stories come out of Iraq or Guantanomo Bay about military torture and abuses).

For the movie buff who wants to abstract from the violence, it is a variation on Alien themes, then Resident Evil and other video game movies followed by The Night of the Living Dead. Former cinematographer Andrez Bartkowiak has become a specialist director of this kind of film with Romeo is Bleeding, Exit Wounds, Cradle to the Grave, violence vehicles for Jet Li, Steven Seagall and The Rock.

1.The popularity of films from video games? The video game transferred to a big screen – but the audience not having any control over it, merely responding?

2.The violence of video games, the brutality? The ingredient of death? The settings for this kind of struggle and death?

3.The colour photography, the re-creation of Mars, the planet, the vehicles to get there, the time portals? The station on Mars? The laboratory? Earth? The special effects – especially for the action sequences, the massacres, the mutants and their disfigurement? The musical score?

4.The mission, Mars in 2046? The recruiting of the research team to go, Sarge being in charge? John Grimm and his history, reluctance? His sister being on Mars? The portrait of the eight marines, their expecting vacation, their talking together, personalities, style, tough? Their agreement to go on the mission? Their being beamed up?

5.Samantha, her place on Mars, the research? Her wanting to get the computer data? John and the tension with Samantha? The lack of contact for ten years? The marines and their reaction to Samantha? Sarge and his suspicions?

6.The initial massacre, the mutations, the destruction of the scientist – and the scientist refusing to allow the other one to come in to safety? The marines and the puzzle? Getting the data? Pursuing the mutants? The information about the benefactors, the corporation, biological experiments, the criminal subjects, the results of this kind of biology – and their being on the loose?

7.The monsters, the stalking of the marines, the nature of their deaths? The return to Earth? The monsters and the killing of people at the research base?

8.Samantha, her explanation about the virus, the nature of the mutation, those having psychopathic genes? Sarge and his absolute obedience to orders, killing the survivors, shooting the marine for insubordination?

9.The dead returning to life, the killing of the marines? Sarge and his being taken – and infected?

10.Samantha, her change of attitude, John and his wounds, her giving him the injection? His surviving, saving Samantha? Sarge and his reappearance, mutating? John killing him?

11.The film’s attention to delineation of character – at what level? John as having a secret, as heroic, as leader of the survivors? Samantha and her alienation from her brother, presence on the planet, loyalty? Sarge, seemingly genial, turning into the absolute authoritarian, mutating? The different marines, Duke, Destroyer, Goat, Portman, The Kid? Their struggles with each other? The character of Pinky – being a mutant, only half a body? His behaviour at the end – and letting people through?

12.The popularity of this kind of entertainment? With whom? Adults thinking the material was too juvenile? Adults thinking it was too brutal? Adolescent boys and the gung-ho gun and video game culture? Judging these just simply as action adventure films? Or elements that were reprehensible?