They Didn't work the Nail-Gun Enough...

So this post has been a long time in the making and due to the length will be split into two parts. Spurred by the viewing of the id software vehicle Doom last night, I got the inspiration back to finally make this a post and begin the debate for the '06 Elections.

So for part one, we're going to review Doom and try and apply the altered video-game to big screen scale of ratability. For those not savvy with the most popular first-person shooter this side of Wolfenstein 3D , here’s a little recap from our friends at Wikipedia:

"The player takes the role of a nameless space marine (who is affectionately referred to as "Doomguy" or "Doom Dude" by many fans), "one of Earth's toughest, hardened in combat and trained for action", who has been deported to Mars for assaulting a senior officer when ordered to kill unarmed civilians. He is forced to work for the Union Aerospace Corporation (UAC), a military-industrial conglomerate that is performing secret experiments with teleportation between the moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos. Suddenly, something goes wrong and creatures from Hell come out of the teleportation gates. A defensive response from base security fails to halt the invasion, and the bases quickly get overrun by demons, all personnel getting killed or turned into zombies. At the same time, Deimos vanishes entirely. A UAC team from Mars is sent to Phobos to investigate the incident, but soon radio contact ceases and only one human is left alive — the player, whose task is to make it out alive."

That’s it in a nutshell…little more complex than Pitfall, not as much as Zelda. The movie doesn’t cover as much ground as the video game and really, I don’t think anyone is really asking for it. Dave Callaham (1st screenplay) and Wesley Strick (Wolf, The Saint, Arachnophobia) co-wrote the screen play and Andrzej Bartkowiak (Exit Wounds, Cradle 2 the Grave) directed. I will say that the group did a pretty damn fine job with the $70 million budget they were given, and a good move at promoting the Rock, but handing the movie over to Kiwi Karl Urban (Eomer from LOTR) and perky-Brit Rosamund Pike ( Bartkowaiak apparently took a queue from the Jackson/Lucas school of casting).

Film develops exactly how you think it would, with a team of futuristic Marines, (there's even a hooo-rahh thrown in) all representing the different personalities that James Cameron established in Alien. Good effects in places, and as MCP mentioned in the comments from earlier this week, the 4 minute one-person shooter scene makes the film watchable. Overall it plays out like a $70 million dollor Sci-Fi Channel movie without Anthony Michael Hall.

So, how do you rate a film like this you say? Well, you have to apply what I believe is the proper rating scale in order to give the film a valid rating.

Explanation: Using the classic 5 star, or whatever system you have for judging the quality of a film, you must immediately take 20% off the top for a Video Game Movie (VGM). So the top rating that any VGM can achieve is a 4 star, clams, bones or whatever you call them. Now, why 20%? Well I figure at the very least the writers will inevitably have to embellish on the original plot line of a video game, especially those done prior to the 21 century. Don’t get me wrong embellishing is fine, Oliver Stone has several houses to prove this, but the difference between Sphere and Doom isn't the mind-blowing special effects or a mailed-in Dustin Hoffman preformance, but the ability of the writers to develop an original idea, and that my friends is worth 20%.

The movement between Video Games and Movies is a dual-sided blade. One that usually doesn’t create quality when either medium decides to try on the other, with the exception being the LucasArts series with EA, which is debatable at best. My hope is that the Zelda movie decides to transcend my skepticism and bring home the Oscar (this will happen the same year Husky Fball brings another National Championship back to Montlake).

A little background on the rating system: 4 being Resident Evil…0 being Super Mario Brothers and Mortal Kombat I, rating somewhere in between. So with that being said, I nominate a three-star rating to Doom, which given the systems makes it a damn fine film, even though the Corleone Formula could've applied and sent it to a possible 4. What's the Corleone Formula, well that's coming in Part II.