Yes, I did. This might be a review, but I doubt it. It’s more of a reaction piece. There shouldn’t be any real spoilers.

Have you ever heard the doughnut joke? I can’t tell it here really, because the joke’s humor is entirely in the delivery. I can barely do it in real life anyway. It has a long setup that involves completely letting down the person you’re telling the joke to. It’s crushing. It’s the worst anticlimax ever. But, once that’s over, you give them a completely unexpected payoff.

Doom is like that. Somewhere near 70% of the movie is a setup for what happens in the last two or three scenes. At the end, the movie’s style changes completely to something I’ve never seen done before in a movie. I won’t spoil the joke… er… ending.

The rest of the movie though, really pissed me off. It was pretty typical October movie fare. Crappy “science”, lame acting, plotholes, the Doom world being turned into a bad zombie movie; generally, anything that could offend me did. (i use “piss off” and “offend” here are as general terms of dislike… um, probably because i’m not actually a fan of the genre. so don’t get pissed off or offended. XD)

I was ready to walk out of the theater at the end wishing that I’d just played Castlevania for a couple more hours. But by the end, it all balanced out. The end really explained and made up for the rest of the movie. The acting improved drastically, probably because there was actual real plot going on. It all made sense.

Just like the doughnut joke. If you’ve never heard it before, you’ll have to find someone to tell it to you. Just not me. I crack up after a couple lines of it, and generally botch the operation badly. Doom dosen’t though. I didn’t see any previews/commercials for it or anything, but I was taken completely off guard right at the moment where it turns. It’s as if the whole cast appears onscreen, grinning, and yells “PSYCH!”

In the end, it evened out to be an enjoyable experience. Plus, as my friend noted, they were using good animatronics instead of CG for monsters (when there wasn’t a whole lot of action), which made them look more realistic.

It didn’t do anything for video game movies, but making a movie about a video game is like dancing about architechture.

[Note: this post has ID number 64! That’s 2^6! I’ve posted a lot! Will I make it to 2^7? Who knows!]