Doom (film)

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Doom is a 2005 science fiction horror film, loosely based on the Doom series of video games created by Id Software. It was directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak.

After option deals with Universal Pictures and Columbia Pictures expired, id Software signed a deal with Warner Bros. with the stipulation that the movie will be greenlit within 12 months. Warner Bros. lost the rights, which were subsequently given back to Universal Pictures who started production in 2004.

In an interview with executive producer John Wells, he stated that a second film would be put into production if the first was a success at the box office. Ticket sales for the opening weekend totaled more than US$15.3 million, but promptly dropped to $4.2 million in its second weekend and the story for a sequel was never written.

Tropes used in Doom (film) include:
  • Ankle Drag: Duke is killed by an especially gruesome version of this.
  • Asshole Victim: Arguably Sarge. Up until he was infected, he really was just following the rules like any good soldier. Whether or not the UAC's rules should have been followed is another story.
    • Portman, far less arguably.
  • Bald Black Leader Guy: Sarge.
  • Big Freaking Gun: Sarge liberates one from the armory.
  • Black and White Morality: Chromosome 24 seems to have this. It turns good people into supermen and bad people into monsters. Furthermore, the mutants choose who to infect based on this, preferring to infect bad people, to grow their numbers and not give their prey an advantage.
    • It's worth noting that Sarge was infected, but remained human/superhuman for an extended period of time. He only began turning during his final fight with Reaper, when he tried to impale Reaper through the mouth with a metal spike. It seems that Sarge's morality tipped to black during that moment, and Chromosome 24 shifted him from superhuman to monster.
  • Body Horror
  • Chivalrous Pervert: Duke.
  • Dirty Coward: Portman, though he has several moments of Lovable Coward, too.
  • Distress Call: Dr. Carmack sends one in the opening scene, though it wasn't so much a distress call as it was a command to initiate the containment procedures.
  • Doing In the Wizard: An element of the adaptation being changing the antagonists from demons from hell in the original game, to mutants created through splicing some Lego Genetics learned from alien ruins.
  • Doomed by Canon: Broken, but alluded to. Sarge, prior to being dragged off to certain death, screams "I'm not supposed to die!"
    • Fans of the game will have known what will happen to Pinky the moment they heard his nickname.
  • Epic Fail: Mac spends the first half of the movie guarding the Ark. When he is finally called into the facility, his head is ripped off pretty much instantly. Not once did he fire his weapon, nor did he likely even see a demon.
  • Epic Flail: During his fight in the prison pit, Destroyer uses a computer monitor in this manner.
  • Fail O'Suckyname: Invoked by Samantha when she asks about her brothers' nickname 'Reaper'.
    • The Kid invokes this when he is assigned his nickname.
    • Does 'Goat' qualify?
  • First Person Perspective: Perhaps the best scene in the movie involves Reaper slaughtering waves of zombies and demons in the games' first person perspective.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Goat is killed by an Imp, and infected. He comes back to life early in his mutation. Realizing he is turning, he makes a sign of the cross, before smashing his head repeatedly against a bulletproof window, killing himself.
    • This is actually VERY interesting when you think about it. It's established that Chromosome 24 only infects 'bad' people. Why would it infect someone good and noble enough to kill himself before he can be used to harm others? He must have done some pretty bad stuff in his life to cancel THAT out.
      • Goat DID seriously imply he had done jail time in the past in a conversation early in the film.
        • Except that Sam's explanation of how Chromosome 24 works is that it reacts with genetic markers for evil behavior and only turns the people that have them into monsters. Thus, Goat could have had an innate genetic potential for evil, but not have acted on it. His extreme religiousness may have even been how he kept himself in check.
  • Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Anyone Chromosome 24 refuses to infect. Reaper and Destroyer are confirmed as this.
    • Mac may have been this, considering the demons killed him instead of infecting him.
  • Kill'Em All: Sarge orders this word-for-word as the fate of the surviving UAC personnel.

Sarge: "We kill 'em all. Let God sort 'em out."

Pinky: "You don't look like a 'Mac'."
"Mac": "Katsuhiko Kumanosuke Takahashi."
Pinky: "So... 'Mac'."

Reaper: "It means he went to one galaxy and his ass went to another."

Pinky: "Aw, there's something behind me isn't there!?"

  • Rule of Cool / Rule of Scary: Despite the obvious need to safely contain Chrromosome 24 experiments, one would think the UAC would come up with something a little more practical than a massive pit with electrified walls.
    • Especially considering, with how much that thing must have cost, they opted for a bare bulb hanging by its cord as the only source of light in the damn thing. I guess that's what happens when your contractor doesn't plan his budget beforehand.
  • Surprisingly-Sudden Death: In the middle of holding off a group of infected scientists, Duke is suddenly yanked through a floor grate by an imp.
    • Mac. In terms of time actually spent in the facility, he lasted the shortest, by far. Never even saw his killer, never saw a demon, never fired his weapon.
  • Teleportation Sickness: Using the Ark isn't shown to be that pleasant an experience.
    • But it used to be far worse, subject to turbulence.
  • Undignified Death: Portman. Granted, he wasn't USING the toilet, but yeah.
  • The Not Love Interest: Sam to John. The reason is obvious, they're siblings (non-identical twins in fact), but otherwise she and he love each other very much and share some tender moments. In fact, they used to be the picture for TV Tropes version of the trope, using a screenshot of when he carries her in his arms.
  • The Virus: Chromosome 24. Visible in the blood, and transferred via parasitic tongue of the mutated.
  • What Could Have Been: Solid budget, big-name draw, and despite its flaws, the movie is pretty good. But it has next to NOTHING to do with the actual Doom storyline. If they made it about demons from hell instead of genetics, who knows, this might have been the first ever decent movie made about a videogame.