Doom (2005)

It's an old question, but it's one that bares repeating. And the main reason it bares repeating is that we keep getting subjected to movies that serve only to make the audience shamble out of the theater scratching their heads and asking it aloud to each other throughout the car ride home. They are not out of line to ask, either. In fact the question is quite logical, but may be unanswerable because reality does seem to defy common sense in this case.

"Why are video games so hard to make into movies?"

I don't have the answer for you. I really don't. It seems to me that video game movies, particularly the games of this current generation of consoles would be easy, at least from a script standpoint. Most games nowadays are pretty much interactive movies anyways. Have you ever played any of the obnoxiously numerous "Call of Duty" games? Those things are Michael Bay movies that let you choose when stuff blows up, which is often because out of the 8 buttons on the controller, 6 of them call in a napalm strike on the area directly ahead of you. As for the other two buttons, one of them spawns an ethnic person, and the other makes their head explode.

What I'm saying is at that point, all the hard work is pretty much done for you. Just play the game and write down what happens. BOOM. Script. If that's what they actually did it would save me a lot of annoyance, since I could just spend 2 hours watching a piece of crap like "Call of Duty" and get it over with relatively quickly instead of having to play it for 6. It would be cheaper, too. Having to choose between $9.50 for a movie ticket or $60 for a game isn't a tough call, especially when you know it's probably going to suck either way.

And shut up about multiplayer. If I wanted to get called a "fag" by 7th graders while they beat my ass I'd buy a time machine.

Oh, he may look tough. But s00perKrunk69 can't even drive yet. And he has zits. Lots of zits.

Video game movies have rightly earned a really bad reputation for their crap. Out of all the movie adaptations of popular games, and there's been a lot, you could count the passable ones on one hand. Which ones those are is subject to debate, and there would probably be a lot of changes to the list depending on who you asked, but I seriously doubt anyone's number would ever go past 4 or 5 movies. If that. I'm guessing most people would struggle to think of more than 3 video game movies they consider decent.

As for myself, I can only list 5 that I thought were decent. One of them is a movie you probably didn't know existed, "Oni-chanbara," a Japanese film adaptation of the "Bikini Samurai Squad" games, which in a reality shattering perversion of common sense was actually pretty good. I liked "Silent Hill" alright, "Mortal Kombat" from back in the day was kooky fun, and I don't care what anyone says, the Van Damme "Street Fighter" was frigging awesome. That movie is one of my "feel good" standards. From Jean-Claude's indecipherable accent to the late great Raul Julia chewing so much scenery you could have finished a basement with the contents of his lower intestine, it's fantastic. And I will duel to the death any who say otherwise.

He is so American. Just look at that tattoo. That's the most American arm I've ever seen. Yup. America.

The other movie is "Doom." Yes, I know, it's an unpopular opinion, but I actually thought that "Doom" was a reasonably solid action flick with a (very) light sprinkling of horror elements, and I would argue that it's one of the better video game movies I've seen up to this point.

I know that the biggest argument against "Doom," and indeed the argument that is always leveled at video game movies, is that it wasn't faithful to the source material. In that regard, I'm going to go ahead and disagree, but only to a point. First off, it's obvious that the tone of the film is more in line with "Doom 3," which was not as action-packed and mindless as the original games, in which you hit the ground running and never stopped pulling the trigger. "Doom 3" was more about atmosphere and anticipation of what's ahead, with fewer enemies and more horror elements as opposed to straight action. I'm not saying that makes "Doom 3" better, but that's the tone they went for.

"Doom" is obviously going for the "Doom 3" tone, and in that regard they succeeded. If they hadn't done that, and had gone for the original game's style, the whole movie could basically have been an hour and a half of that scene from "Predator" where Arnold and everyone else fires like 40,000 rounds of ammunition into the jungle. The only difference would be replacing every tree and bush with demons, and have them keep coming at them like clowns piling out of a car until there's a pile of them 90 feet deep. Not a single word would be uttered during the proceedings.

I dunno, maybe that could have worked.

Another argument against "Doom" was that there were no demons, and yes, here's where I will concede that they got it wrong. Instead of a portal to Hell being opened and all manner of gross stuff pouring out of it, they give us genetic mutations and gene augmentation which for some reason is attracted to evil. You see, in this movie, a race of humanoids on Mars created a 24th pair of chromosomes, which made them super intelligent and super strong. If they were good, that is. If you were bad, it still did all those things, but it also turned you into a bloodthirsty monster. Since in this movie there's a gene for the soul which labels you as "good" or "bad." So apparently "Doom" is Calvinist.

Okay, I can't really defend that. I'm not even going to get into describing all the why of how that's dumb, because you don't need me to. And yeah, it's the biggest problem of the movie, and the one point against it that I totally agree with and can't understand the purpose of. Was the phrase "Portal to Hell" just too much for the writers to comprehend? Seems to me that not only would that have made it more dark and disturbing, but it could have been more interesting and entertaining as well. Plus with a bit of clever writing you could tie it into "Event Horizon," and that would have been awesome!

I would have loved to have seen Karl Urban blasting his way through Hell. I can see him covered in offal and gore, bringing his shotgun up to shoot a winged demon in the face, its black viscera and brain matter splattering on Karl as he then proceeds to kick it in the chest, sending it tumbling over a precipice to plummet into a roiling lake of fire. I'm trying to think of a movie that's done anything close to that, and I'm drawing a blank. You'd think that if there was ONE movie that would have jumped on that idea, it would have been "Doom." It's enough to make a guy start writing fan-fiction. Ah well.

I think my favorite thing about "Doom" is the cast. Everyone knows I'm a huge Karl Urban fan, but I like The Rock, too. He's ridiculously entertaining and a legitimately good actor for the stuff he does. If you want him to be a badass, say no more. The man's 6' 4", like 500 lbs of muscle and can squint really well. He can be funny, and he's even got a fairly good dramatic range on display in stuff like "Faster." I don't mean this to sound condescending, but especially for a professional wrestler, the man's a shockingly good actor.

Karl and The Rock work really well together in "Doom." They gave what I found to be surprisingly good dialogue between them a lot more depth than you would expect. The Rock's character Sarge and Karl's character, Reaper, obviously have great respect for each other. When that starts getting interesting is in the back half of the film when Sarge and Reaper start having very different ideas on how to deal with the situation on Mars, because both of them are right in different ways.

Karl should have known The Rock would turn heel. After all, he is a wrestler.

Sarge, being the one in command, is doing precisely what his orders told him to do, even if it means killing everyone there and sacrificing himself and his entire squad if need be. Reaper is more emotional and refuses to go along with the script once Sarge starts issues orders akin to fighting a hangnail by cutting off the arm, very much in a "Let God sort 'em out" way. And what I liked about that was that honestly, Sarge is the one making the most sense.

I'm not saying it's not cruel and terrible or that I could ever do it, but if you were facing a situation with an outbreak that would potentially kill everyone on the planet, and it came down to making a choice between saving every single person regardless of their condition, or making damn sure that there was no way it could get out, and so be it if everyone there dies, you have to admit that the later is the more logical, if admittedly crueler choice. If you really think about it, Sarge, despite turning into the bad guy at the end, is doing far more to save the world than Reaper, our hero is. In fact, by surviving and escaping at the end, he's very likely putting the world in mortal peril.

An action hero surviving an action flick. What a jerk.

The end of "Doom" also has some of the best dialogue between the two as well. My favorite exchange in the movie comes right before their showdown, when they come to the decision that they're probably going to have to kill each other. Sarge asks if Reaper is planning on shooting him, to which Reaper casually replies "I was thinking about it, yeah." It's very John McClane, and it showcases why I love Karl Urban. He can deliver on the action movie lines, and that's no small talent.

That being said, I wasn't a fan of everyone in the movie. Richard Brake as Portman, the impossibly sleazy creep is pretty annoying, and his character doesn't get taken out near quickly enough. Portman is what you would get if Christian Slater and Iggy Pop merged and crapped out a rapist who started doing his best "Perverted Master Roshi" impression. It's unpleasant. Ben Daniels as the super-religious whack job Goat wasn't as annoying because he shut his mouth and wasn't up in everyone's face about it, but like Portman I had a hard time understanding why this guy is on the active duty roster for a Special Forces team.

If you carve a cross into your arm every time you blaspheme, a Section 8 should be an option.

Those were really the only two annoying characters though. The rest were basically stock and unmemorable with no real defining characteristics, and it was easier to know them by their cliche niches than their names. There was The Rookie, The Pervert, The Religious One, The Quiet Ethnic One, and finally The Big Angry Black Guy and The Smaller Friendly Black Guy, or alternatively Bill Duke and LL Cool J. Okay, it's not actually Bill Duke and LL Cool J but the resemblance is uncanny.

That's about the level of depth we're talking about. But it never seemed like an issue to concern yourself with because you knew they were all going to die anyway. That's how these movies roll. And there's nothing wrong with that. I only had three problems the characters, the first being that Porter The Pervert is around way too long. Although I love that during his death scene Sarge, without a second's hesitation, completely annihilates both the monster and Porter with the BFG without bothering to even attempt a rescue of Porter, whom at that point could have easily been potentially still alive.

The second thing was that Mac, The Quiet Ethnic One, does precisely nothing of value, and has but a single line before being randomly decapitated. I felt bad for the actor because he got screwed. At least Sonny Landham got to look badass by cutting himself with a machete.

Not saying it helped matters, but still, that was awesome.

Third, I hated the scientist, Dr. Carmack, played by Robert Russell. This freaking guy was near unwatchable. I know what he was going for, playing a beyond freaked out guy who has lost his mind and is in a constant state of hyperventilation, but he's so damn annoying with it. He's got this thing he does with his tongue darting in and out, and between that and him puffing his cheeks with his rapid fire breathing he looks like a sweaty rodent. About the only cool thing he did was pull off his own ear. That was sweet, but the stupid tongue thing just drove me up the wall. It was the same thing David Tennant did in the forth "Harry Potter" movie. And they get the camera SO close to his mouth while he's doing it. So annoying.

Finally we have the matter of the First Person Shooter sequence, which I've heard many people label as the moment where it finally keeled over and died. This was the final straw for some audience members. This was Fonzie on skis right here. For them, the 5 minutes where we are looking through Reaper's eyes wasn't so much a tribute to "Doom" as it was tea-bagging its corpse.

Oh yeah. Such a betrayal. This looks nothing like "Doom."

Honestly, I think those people are nuts. The FPS sequence for me was possibly the best highlight of the film, if not certainly the most memorable. More than anything in the rest of the movie, that part was the most fun "Doom" got, and I think it could have used a lot more of that hokeyness, because "Doom" should be before anything else, fun. As I understand, an early concept for the movie was to have the entire film be in first person like that. I'm not sure if that would have worked, but I would have loved to have seen it.

Look, I know I'm not going to convince anyone that "Doom" is a good movie. I'm not naive. If you're not into that kind of movie or genre, or if you think it's too big of a betrayal and can't look past its faults, then yeah, it's going to be painful to sit through. But if you're like me, and can see it for what it is, which is a cheesy sci-fi action flick that plays it safe but competently, at the very least you have to admit that it's trying. And for what it set out to do, it succeeded with at the very least a C+.

After all, it could have been worse. It could have been PG-13.

Check and mate, "Doom" haters.

THE BOTTOM LINE - I like "Doom." I like the two leads. I like the look and feel of it. I like that they actually gave a story to what is a game with literally no plot besides "Mars. Demons. Shoot." Is it a great movie? No. Did it ever have a chance to be? Not really. Is it better than your average video game movie? You're damn right it is.

Batman Begins (2005)

Let's go back in time a bit. It's 2004. It's been 7 years since George Clooney and Joel Schumacher took Batman, one of the most iconic superheros of all time, and gave him a fluorescent makeover complete with his very own absurdly niche-market credit card. His most worthy opponent had been reduced to a mute, brainless, walking slab of ground chuck in a luchadore mask, and even Arnold Schwarzenegger, the King of The Awesomely Bad One-Liners, was unable to utter a single sentence that didn't physically hurt. But while the pain of Chris O'Donnell whining about wanting a Robin-Signal in the sky has finally begun to fade, still, there is a lingering sadness hanging over nerd culture.

Oh, true - "Spiderman 2" was still being fawned over by pasty comic book geeks everywhere, at least whenever they could spare a moment to stop arguing over important things like if they got Peter Parker's hair parted on the correct side. But for every "Spiderman" movie that didn't make nerds want to bludgeon things to death with their mint-condition Spider-mobile, there were movies like "Daredevil." Movies like "Catwoman." Movies like "The Hulk." And soon would come movies like "The Fantastic Four" and "Superman Returns." Truly, this was a time for some despair.

And beneath it all, that lingering sadness remained. Beneath everything else, hitting harder and cutting deeper than any other betrayal was that one sad, heartbreaking fact: They had done it. They killed Batman.

This paid for the funeral.

Then we start hearing things. They're bringing him back. Instant fear seeped down the pant leg of many a nerd as the 'Nam flashbacks of Alicia Silverstone donning the Batgirl costume rushed back, threatening to drive many to madness. I know that I was one of them, rocking back and forth in the corner of my room in the fetal position as echos of Clooney's fourth-wall desecrating line "This is why Superman works alone" bounced around in my head.

But then we started to hear other things. Things about this guy barely anyone had heard of named Christopher Nolan. The only thing anybody seemed to know about him was that he was "that one guy who made that one movie that went backwards, or something."

Well, I for one knew exactly who he was, and the name of that movie was "Memento." He had also done a movie with Al Pacino and Robin Williams called "Insomnia." I had seen both of those films, so I looked at "Batman Begins" with a new sense of hope, because after seeing those two films, I knew that Nolan was a guy who knew what the hell he was doing. And as more information came out, it became clear that finally, at long last, they were taking Batman seriously again for the first time since 1989.

I just going to come out and say it, "Batman Begins" is the best superhero origin story ever made. Period. Now, some may argue that the first Sam Raimi "Spiderman" was the best. I would say that while it's true that "Spiderman" was a great origin story, I have to give it to "Batman Begins" simply because to me, it made the most sense out of any origin story I'd ever seen. Most of this came from the first part of the film showcasing the often forgotten fact that Batman is, in fact, a ninja.

For all of you blowing a gasket at that, think about it. Bruce Wayne is trained in the mountains by people, who as we plainly see, are ninjas. He employs diversion, mind games, and stealth to take out enemies without being seen. He wears black and stays in the shadows whenever possible. He throws shurikens for crying out loud. Oh, true, he calls himself "The Batman" instead of "The Ninja-man," but if it looks like a ninja, moves like a ninja, and fights like a ninja, odds are it's a ninja.

No, nothing ninja-esque about this dude at all...

What that does is make Bruce Wayne a more realistic and interesting superhero. Let's compare Peter Parker and Bruce Wayne.

Peter Parker is a normal kid. Whether or not he's really super smart depends on the movie you watch (I'm not up on my comics, so I don't know what he's like in those), but for all intents and purposes, he's normal. Then he gets bitten by a radioactive spider and hey presto he has superpowers. These powers are just heaped on him without him really having to work to get them. Oh true, he has to fall off an occasional building before he masters his web shooters, but all of a sudden, he's doing back-flips and kung-fu battling villains like a madman, despite him never learning how to fight. He can just do that now.

Because spiders are natural warriors?

You wouldn't think it, but this dude holds 3 MMA championships.

Bruce Wayne trained his ASS off. There was not a single "power" he has that was given to him. He worked for every single bit of skill that he has, and every cut, every broken bone, every concussion, every single injury he sustained was willingly taken out of his obsession with stopping the crime that took his family away from him. And at the end of the day, he's human. And more than any other superhero, the physical strain that he goes through is clear to see. He's not a superhero, he's just an exceptional man who has no special powers to fall back on when he's in trouble.

For my money, this is a far more interesting character to follow than someone like Peter Parker, or god help me, that goody-goody two shoes Clark Kent. I've just always loved the fact that Batman has to leg sweep a guy once in a while, you know?

"My plan? Well, I was thinking about flying really fast and picking something up. It's all I seem to do."

More than any other "Batman" films, the Nolan series starts off by showing what Bruce Wayne actually went through to become Batman. Every other time it was just the prerequisite "dark alley gunshots" and Mr. and Mrs. Wayne lying on the wet sidewalk in a flashback/dream sequence. In this movie, his struggle seems more poignant because we see the buildup to those struggles, which is something the other films all lacked entirely.

I love Christian Bale as an actor, but out of everything I've seen him in, I think his turn as Batman is going to be what people remember him for, which is a good thing. I liked Michael Keaton as both Bruce and Batman, because he was the only guy to play Bruce Wayne like he was crazy enough to dress like a bat and fight crime. I even thought Val Kilmer was a great Bruce. He just wasn't great under the mask, frankly. But Christian Bale is the first guy who's played a good Bruce Wayne while still looking like he could be Batman physically. The way he carries himself and the way he is crazy ripped leaves little doubt that he could actually do these things. You look at Val Kilmer as Batman and wonder if he's worried about his hair getting messed up under the cowl.

As far as the rest of the cast goes, it's only one cast member away from perfect. Having Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Morgen Freeman, my unapologetic man-crush Liam Neeson, Cillian Murphy, Ken Watanabe, and even frigging Rutger Hauer in "Batman Begins" basically makes it a movie composed of a respectable chunk of my favorite actors. And then there's Katie Holmes. Her performance is tolerable enough I suppose, but when she's on screen with actors like Michael goddamn Caine, it's like watching Homer Simpson boxing Drederik Tatum: the best she can hope for is her corpse still looking vaguely human after he pounds into a meat-flavored pile.

"Now den. Oym gonna 'it ewe wiff dis bat, an' ewer gonna take it. 'Cause oym Muwhyco Caine."

Oh, quick side note, be on the lookout for future royalty on the streets of Gotham. 

Psychotic, inbred future royalty...

If there was a short coming with "Batman Begins," it was probably that I felt that it waffled slightly when it came to the question "Who is the bad guy in this?" Now, this is simply a matter of the movie pulling some twists on us, obviously, but it did feel on occasion that there was no central villain for the good middle hour of the film. And I must say that I was upset that Cillian Murphy's villain, The Scarecrow, was essentially made a non-issue about forty minutes after it appeared that he was the main bad guy. Of course, they work him into the main villain, Ras al-Ghul's plot, but he's really just a pawn in a bigger scheme. And he has what is undoubtedly the least dignified and most unsatisfying send off for a Batman villain that I remember seeing. Getting tasered in the face by Katie Holmes? Really? That's the resolution of that one? Lame.

I also wasn't a big fan of how the effects of Scarecrow's "fear-gas" were implemented. The visions that people are seeing when they are under its effects really don't seem that terrifying. I mean, most of the time, other people are just appearing as having glowing eyes. I suppose when Scarecrow sees Batman while suffering its effects it kind of works, but really all Batman looks like is a drooling gargoyle. Not really that scary. Now, if they were rotting, decaying, grotesque corpses or something, that I can see being scary. But how far could you push that and keep a PG-13 rating? Who knows.

Those little nitpicks aside, I loved "Batman Begins." I had been a fan of Christopher Nolan before, but his rescuing of The Dark Knight earned a spot in my favorite directors file.

And to think, we thought he knocked it out of the park on this one. If we only knew...

THE BOTTOM LINE - This was more of a retrospective than an actual review, I know. This is mostly because honestly, if you haven't seen "Batman Begins" yet, what the hell are you doing? It's one of the most important comic book movies ever, being the beginning of what I would call the best superhero trilogy ever made. Very Highly Recommended.