A Lump of Muscle

“Doom” opens with the standard sci-fi mumbo jumbo: It’s 2026, a mysterious portal to Mars has been discovered, there’s trouble at the research facility on the other side, and so on. Within five seconds we’re racing through under-lit hallways as panicked scientists flee an intergalactic terror. Cue orchestral menace and the Universal logo bathed in Martian murder red. Doom! (But for whom?)Next we meet a lump of muscle named Sarge (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) in the middle of debriefing. Cut to a rec room full of grunts and their macho shenanigans. Sarge barges in, tells them they’re back on assignment: “We’ve got a new game, men!” Cut to the soldiers as they strap on humongous weapons (a gentle pause here to stroke the barrels), jump in a helicopter, and arrive at the Martian portal.They call it the Arc, and it consists of a floating blob with the texture of cheap hair gel. What it is and how it works is never explained, but whatever. It sucks everyone up, beams them through space, and spits them out the other side together with a spray of puke.And so, in about the time it takes for your average PC to reboot, “Doom” has literally cut to the chase. The movie seems to acknowledge its comprehensive lack of originality and compensates by wasting no time in getting down to business: mega-decibel sci-fi mayhem. Such economy is admirable, but it comes to a quick end. Downshifting from breathless cliche to endless incomprehensible idiocies, “Doom” becomes the most inept Hollywood film of the year.Here is a nonsense scenario so random and unintelligible it’s almost sci-fi dada. Continuity has been left on Earth. The actors (a who’s who of nobodies) strain to credibly move their limbs. Entire sections of the plot appear to be missing; what made it onscreen suggests notes for an “Alien” knockoff sketched on a beer-soaked napkin at final call.The Martian complex, ostensibly state of the art, is equipped with a fully functional lighting system no one bothers to use, hallways covered in inch-thick grime, and a medieval sewer system. The origin of the slime creatures has something to do with the engineering of a “24th chromosome” gone wrong, but that doesn’t explain why the resultant lizard zombies (?) infect people with tongue parasites, nor their occasional mutation into what can only be described as a demonic manatee on wheels.None of this would matter had “Doom” the competency to blow one or two things up with flair. A shocking revelation: The same cinematographer did “Howards End.” Poor man, has he started to go blind? Mired in dismal storytelling, Sarge keeps asking the right questions: “What are we looking at? What’s going on here?”This irrelevant film is based on one of the most consequential moving image experiences of our time: the “first-person-shooter” video game. Offered up to global consciousness in late 1993, the “Doom” game transformed the computer screen into a set of eyes, immersing the player in a circumscribed, ultra-violent virtual reality.(Deploying the same first-person perspective, though far more benignly, the mystery game “Myst” arrived almost simultaneously.)The McLuhan-esque point of view of the first-person shooter had long been anticipated by the movies, notably in David Cronenberg’s prophetic “Videodrome” and a tradition of serial-killer mise-en-scene stretching from “Peeping Tom” to “Halloween” and beyond. The device is at least a half-century old: Critic Ed Halter has drawn my attention to “Lady in the Lake,” a noir from 1946 shot entirely in the first person.This video game/movie circuit loops in unexpected places. Gus Van Sant’s experimental trilogy is officially indebted to avant-garde European cine ma, but the spatial dynamics of a movie like “Elephant” are equally related to contemporary game paradigms. “Russian Ark” is “Doom” via “Masterpiece Theatre.” Action scenes in the Thai flick “Ong Bak” closely mimic “Mortal Kombat”-style fighting games.The film “adaptation” of the “Resident Evil” game, a first-person shooter heavy with horror-movie tropes, closely approximates game combat and structures.Following another loop of the circuit, the first-person shooter is deeply indebted to the “hallway berserker,” a subgenre exemplified, in modern times, by the “Alien” franchise and its endless imitators. The object of the “Doom” game is to frag an endless horde of hell-spawned creatures while navigating a labyrinth. The “Doom” movie barely satisfies that level of narrative: The fragging is whack, the creatures are silly, and production values are appallingly cheap.The game is better lit.Strange that a movie adapted from such geometrically restrictive source material should be executed with such spatial incoherence. In a momentary flash of clarity, we’re actually shown a schematic of the entire layout: laboratories, weapon rooms, hallways, everything. But the movie ignores the map, lurching helter-skelter through whatever director Andrzej Bartkowiak wants to arrange in front of the camera that moment. Quick, go grab those leftover wall panels from “Species 3!”The problems of “Doom” have nothing to do with their source. People who bemoan the convergence of video games and movies are missing the point. Gamers will balk at this ugly frustration, then rush home to engage with an audio-visual excitement that respects their mental dexterity. Game structures are as valid as those of any other medium appropriated by the cinema.Look at the digital perspective of “Russian Ark,” with its rejection of montage and the proscenium. Or the hyper-linked plot gauntlet of “demonlover.” Such movies lay groundwork for the future forms of a rich digital culture inseparable from the evolution of video games.The incompetence of “Doom” is strictly 20th-century.

A Lump of Muscle

A Lump of Muscle

More from the New York Sun

A View From the Porch

Emmanuel Macron’s West Bank Whopper

Trump Offers Historic Optimistic Vision at UN, Trumpeting Freedom, Prosperity, and Peace — and Giving Iran a Bad Day

Rabbi Criticizes Democrat for ‘Empowering Antisemites’ by Sharing Stage With Mahmoud Khalil at Yom Kippur Service

Top Ten Billionaires Are All Yanks

Big ‘Get’ Boosts ‘60 Minutes’ in Second Episode, Easing Fears Over Ratings Slide

The High Life of Aristotle: A Philosopher’s Brush With Pharmaceuticals

Democrats Back Republican Senator’s Call To Subpoena Donald Trump Jr. in Corruption Investigation

More from the New York Sun

A View From the Porch

Emmanuel Macron’s West Bank Whopper

Trump Offers Historic Optimistic Vision at UN, Trumpeting Freedom, Prosperity, and Peace — and Giving Iran a Bad Day

Rabbi Criticizes Democrat for ‘Empowering Antisemites’ by Sharing Stage With Mahmoud Khalil at Yom Kippur Service

Top Ten Billionaires Are All Yanks

Big ‘Get’ Boosts ‘60 Minutes’ in Second Episode, Easing Fears Over Ratings Slide

The High Life of Aristotle: A Philosopher’s Brush With Pharmaceuticals

Democrats Back Republican Senator’s Call To Subpoena Donald Trump Jr. in Corruption Investigation