Doom Movie Scriptwriter Speaks!

This guy demonstrates all the good sense of making a Tomb Raider movie adaptation in which the main character is a man. And, of course, the movie has nothing to do with tombs or artifacts.

Why didn't they just base the screenplay on the first Doom book instead? If there's a Doom story worth filming, it'd be the Doom book. Plus, Flynn "Fly" Taggart is a better name than John "Reaper" Grimm.

I'd rather have the hellspawn replaced by My Little Ponies than have the film based on the novels.

Slink said:

Why didn't they just base the screenplay on the first Doom book instead? If there's a Doom story worth filming, it'd be the Doom book. Plus, Flynn "Fly" Taggart is a better name than John "Reaper" Grimm.

Not in a thousand years.

Oh come on! I'd like to think a movie based on the first novel to be something along the lines of a sci-fi version of Evil Dead, only with 2 main characters instead of one.

Isn't that what Doom is to begin with? A sci-fi version of Evil Dead?

I think Doom owes more in attitude and style to Evil Dead 2 than it does to Aliens anyway. If you try and get all technical by explaining the sci-fi aspect of the story, it becomes both laughable and distracting. I mean, seriously, the Doom story is fascinating, but it's still too silly for words. Logic has no place in the Doom universe. Did you guys ever take it seriously when you were playing it, or did you play Doom so you could blow the everliving crud out of hordes of monstrous hellspawn?

I think a movie that fails to realize this and distracts us with bullshit sci-fi apologetics (which the novel series did, but not until parts 3 and 4) is missing what Doom is all about. Didn't Doom have a sense of humor (I don't mean a campy sense of humor but a black-humored one)? Wasn't it funny to watch the monsters kill each other? Wasn't playing Doom fun? That's one thing the novels managed to get right.

Sadly, Doom 3 contented itself with ripping off the look and feel of Resident Evil (which wasn't scary because it was way too deliberate) and iD cynically hired some sci-fi author to write the story for them. Too many games try too hard to be mature/serious/dark/gloomy or whatever when they fail to realize this is no substitute for depth, and have no sense of humor or curiosity about themselves.

So I say a little less Aliens (a logically developed and horrifying sci-fi thriller) and a little more Evil Dead (a demented, atmospheric, and ultra-violent existential fantasy) would go a long way.

Of course, with the news we've heard, it will probably fail to be either, both in ambition and execution.

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Smart man speaks the truth. I completely agree.

Dodge said:

Oh come on! I'd like to think a movie based on the first novel to be something along the lines of a sci-fi version of Evil Dead, only with 2 main characters instead of one.

Yeah right - all that happens in the first novel is that he runs about and shoots aliens while looking for his pal, they meet up, then run about and shoot demons together.

That and the ideas conveyed in the first novel was absolutely ludicrous (not talking about the names here, although they were certaibly bad enough).
I've said it before and I'll say it again: I've seen fanfics that owned the soul of the first Doom novel and which would make far better movies than that piece of retch ever could.

That's one thing the novels managed to get right.

What exactly, may I ask, did the novels manage to get right? The monsters fighting one another? Been done in several fan fics - it's not a hard thing to include.

Slink said:
If you try and get all technical by explaining the sci-fi aspect of the story, it becomes both laughable and distracting.

I think a movie that fails to realize this and distracts us with bullshit sci-fi apologetics (which the novel series did, but not until parts 3 and 4) is missing what Doom is all about.

I read the first novel and it was rife with such apologetics, such as the blasters on the monsters' wrists and other assorted and drab explanations.

Well that stuff did suck, but in the first novel at least, there was enough ambiguity that it could be ignored.

What exactly, may I ask, did the novels manage to get right? The monsters fighting one another? Been done in several fan fics - it's not a hard thing to include.

No, but that was a nice touch. What I think the first novel "got right" was the sense of fun and humor I mentioned earlier. It would have been boring if the main character were a humorless Schwarzenegger clone, or if the novel were told in 3rd person. It gained so much mileage from it's narration and main character. You can only take the story so far before it becomes implausible, which is why it's good to have characters who seem to know how absurd their situation is (and however character-focused it might have been, the first one didn't derail from the plot either, but don't get me started on the others). It made the novel more interesting than it had a right to be.