Doom for June Gloom
The latest rash of unbearable heat to hit Southern California has reduced me to a lethargic blob, unable to leave the house for even the most menial of tasks. What results from this is I have an inordinate amount of time to sit on my ass and watch the cable TV channels play the same movies over and over again. I must've seen Troy about 15789 times in the last couple weeks. One movie I took the time to watch the other night was Doom, starring The Rock (not yet going by the Dwayne Johnson moniker), and Karl Urban. Doom, of course, is based upon the revolutionary video game where a guy on Mars shoots up a bunch of hellish demons. The movie was universally lambasted by critics upon release. So much so that to this day I don't know a single person who's seen it. Well I saw it...

... and kinda liked it.

Our opinions on things in life are so heavily dependent on our expectations going in, of which I had none for this movie. And for what it is - a mindless, thrilling, blow-up-monsters action movie - it gets the job done.

Doom follows the same basic formula first set up by Aliens and copied by, among others, fellow video game movie Resident Evil:

1. Group doing research in remote location loses contact with civilization.
2. Soldiers with enormous guns sent in to decipher problem.
3. Soldiers attacked by mutated monsters.
4. Mutated monsters discovered to be spawned from said research group.
5. Climax at final battle between protagonist and ultimate mutated baddie.

Granted, Doom is no Aliens (the undisputed masterpiece of the genre), but it isn't unwatchably bad. It's a perfectly fine way to kill an hour and a half, which is easy for me to say since I didn't drop $10 on a ticket for this thing. I see no reason for it to be ridiculed to the level it has been. It's just a dumb sci-fi action movie. For anyone to expect anything more out of it is completely ridiculous.

*SPOILER ALERT*
One thing about the movie I found a little disappointing happened about halfway through when I realized The Rock isn't really the star of the movie. Karl Urban is. I have nothing against Karl Urban. I think he's good and should be a bigger star than he actually is. I'm just a little sad the Rock turns out to be the bad guy when he's the only real big name draw to the film. If you haven't seen Get Smart, the same thing happens. The Rock turns out to be the bad guy.

When he first left the WWF, the Rock was supposed to become the next great action star. When will the huge-summer-Arnold-Stallone-super-blockbuster-action-movie starring the Rock as the protagonist happen? I'm sorry, the Rundown just didn't really cut it. Is the Rock's star, once rso promising, now lying stagnant on the B-list level? Say it ain't so.
*END SPOILER ALERT*

I will now go back to watching all the movies I can until this blasted heat eases up. By next week I'll have seen tons of movies I otherwise had no desire to spend time on, all formatted to fit this screen, edited for content, and to run in the allotted time, of course.