Sunday 31 December 2017

Review: Star Wars - The Last Jedi (seventh-pass)





Star Wars: The Last Jedi (seventh-pass / 2D / SPOILERS!)
Cert: 12A / 152 mins / Dir. Rian Johnson / Trailer


Previous reviews: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6

Okay, I've touched on this in an earlier review, but the more I watch The Last Jedi, the less I'm buying this thing about Rey's parents being drunk/junk-traders*1. The whole issue surrounding our heroine's lineage is focused on so much in this film that the brush-off of 'they're nothing / you're nothing' just screams of Ben Solo's wrong-headedness. And as I've also gone into previously, most of the central characters in The Last Jedi are pretty much wrong, pretty much most of the time.

Especially Ben Solo.

Now, more than ever, it is my belief that Rey is the daughter of Han Solo and Leia Organa. Previously hidden to keep her out of harm's way, fate has intervened (as it so often does in the GFFA) and reunited Rey with the ones she's destined to protect. And/or destroy. Often interchangeable in this timeline. My full list of character-foundations for Rey's lineage is in this Force Awakens review from last year, but I'll take a moment to reiterate these points in the earlier film:



26m30s: The opening notes of Luke & Leia's Theme from Return Of The Jedi play here.
Before we've met Luke in the film, before we've met Leia
.



41m46s The opening notes of Luke & Leia's Theme from Return Of The Jedi play here. Again.
We're on the Falcon, but it's before we've met Luke in the film, before we've met Leia
.
The score then goes into Rey's own theme immediately afterwards.


Now although my points so far would seem to suggest that Rey is the child of Luke or Leia (do be quiet at the back), I think it's notable that John Williams used this sequence with the new heroine, rather than just the Force Theme. Anyhow, there's another tie to the Princess…


1h57m02s: And we get a full-on Han Solo & The Princess motif in this scene, heavily suggesting that Rey might have something in common with the pair of them.


So, according to my internal-logic (no, don't laugh), unless Leia had a relationship with someone else around twenty years before the events of TFA/TLJ (unlikely since Solo only appears to have left the scene once Ben starting wearing a silly hat; ten years ago at most, according to the TLJ's Jedi Temple flashbacks), then it stands to reason that Han would be her father. Again, plenty of reasons for that in my previous post.

But that's all in the past, of course. What does The Last Jedi have to bring to this party? Well, in the scene on Luke's hideaway planet, Ahch-To, where Rey skips off at night to investigate the Seaweed-Encrusted Dark Side Well and kneels down to look into the aperture, we get a very brief first-couple-of-notes of either Han Solo & The Princess (as above), or Princess Leia's Theme, both of which point in the aforementioned direction (and for obvious reasons I have neither a time-code nor screenshot of this point in the film).

But surely, Ben's revelation that Rey's parents were lying in a pauper's grave in the Jakku desert holds some new revelation, no? Not really, no. Because when Ben and Rey touched hands through their Force-Time connection, Rey claims she saw Ben's future and that turned out to be… well, momentarily accurate albeit wildly open to interpretation. And Ben's already a great source of reasoned balance, truth and wisdom, given that his recollection of that night Luke Skywalker confronted him is notably different from both of Luke's re-tellings. Ben Solo can't be trusted to relay his own past, never mind provide insight into anyone else's. And this is before we factor in that the whole Force connection was orchestrated by Snoke. ie, the one guy who showed them both exactly what Snoke knew would bait them into action.

No, Ben Solo knows for sure who Rey's parents are in the same way that he confronts Luke Skywalker, not noticing that the blue lightsaber his former master ignites is the same one Ben himself helped to tear apart twenty-five minutes earlier. Ben is the unreliable narrator.

Back at the tail-end of the prequel trilogy, Luke and Leia were separated for their protection. And while I realise they aren't twins, a sibling relationship - direct descendants of the Skywalker bloodline - would account for Ben and Rey's pre-existing connection and unconscious familiarity. This would be precisely what the Organa-Solos were trying to avoid by hiding Rey (although why this would have occurred 8-10 years before Ben went bad is open to speculation). Han didn't get round to telling Rey the truth before he died, instead offering her a place on the family ship she'd already bonded with. By the time Rey returned to the Resistance base on D'Qar, she already knew enough about the troubled Ben/Han/Leia relationship that Leia didn't feel she could burden the girl with more responsibility. Instead she sends Rey off to uncover Luke, the training with her uncle hopefully being the ideal precursor to a family reunion further down the line. For Rey to know of her sibling in the meanwhile would compromise any action she had to take against him, and is something Ben would thoroughly exploit, in turn.

And for the record I don't think Luke knew about Rey's identity, certainly not until he reconnected with the Force at any rate. Although Yoda's conversation with Luke by the fire seems to be an unspoken 'there is another' moment. Yoda knew she'd taken the books off-planet, after all, his knowledge is greater than the sum of his dialogue.

The most telling thing is that the whole situation still isn't resolved, one more movie down the line. We'll see what Episode IX brings. In the meanwhile, if you needed it all spelling out any more clearly…



I'd love to be proved wrong about all this. But having Ben Solo garble some hot-take on a deliberately obscure vision he's been fed isn't settling anything…





So, watch this if you enjoyed?
The Star Wars.


Should you watch this in a cinema, though?
Yes.


Does the film achieve what it sets out to do?
Yes.


Is this the best work of the cast or director?
It's strong.
It's very strong
.


Will I think less of you if we disagree about how good/bad this film is?
That all depends on how wrong you are.


Yes, but is there a Wilhelm Scream in it?
There is.


Yes, but what's the Star Wars connection?
Level 0: It is Star Wars.


And if I HAD to put a number on it…


*1 In my mind, Drunk, Junk Traders is a daytime TV programme which airs the Galaxy Far, Far Away, more than likely hosted by Dom Littlewood. It's what Luke's been watching all these years in exile because the island caretakers love it. No wonder the man's grumpy. [ BACK ]

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: Star Wars - The Last Jedi (sixth-pass)





Star Wars: The Last Jedi (sixth-pass / IMAX 3D / SPOILERS!)
Cert: 12A / 152 mins / Dir. Rian Johnson / Trailer


Previous reviews: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

"Heeded my words not, did you; 'pass on what you have learned'*1. Strength, mastery? Hmmm. But weakness, folly, failure also? Yes, failure, most of all. The greatest teacher, failure is..."

~ Yoda.


So. As well as being a parable on change and narrative torch-passing, The Last Jedi is a film about failure. Namely, getting us to accept that our heroes - however much we've venerated them into untouchable demigods - can be fallible.

This is a movie about watching your heroes get shit wrong. A lot. And we all expect a little second-act tension, but here it's repeated and brutal. And yeah, that's probably going to upset people.

The bad guys are always great at being cack-handed of course, and The Last Jedi is no exception. The supreme leader of the whole organisation displays exactly the same blithe assumption and careless posturing which proved to be Palpatine's downfall (and which he presumably lived through, even if this was at a distance). His main henchmen are both quick to learn but emotionally unstable pawns, demonstrably unable to anticipate enemy moves in the heat of battle. As such the First Order strikes, like the Empire did, with brute force rather than calculated precision. So how was that ever going to end?

But our heroes... we haven't seen them stumble so blindly before, and it's a theme which continues to divide audiences. Because this isn't Disney 'not getting' Star Wars; everything we see in Episode VIII is entirely deliberate. And it all began (arguably) when Han Solo thought he could talk round his son on the Starkiller Base, before being proved disastrously wrong. And with The Last Jedi, Rian Johnson picks up that ball and sprints, full-tilt, toward an uncertain future. To wit:

‎Luke is morally wrong to have abandoned his responsibility and gone into exile while Kylo Ren still lives to make matters worse.
Luke has failed Ben (and the Jedi/Alliance/Republic/Resistance) before we even start.
‎Rey is mistaken in claiming he hasn't.
Luke is misguided in tossing away the Bespin-lightsaber and for an entire first-act of grumpiness*2.
‎Luke recognises the failures of the Jedi Order, but fails to apply those lessons going forward.
Rey leaves her (formal) training incomplete, jaunting off on a whim because of psychic messages from a known arsehole (familiar, Luke?).
Meanwhile…
‎Leia fails in successfully commanding Poe Dameron during a critical battle.
‎Poe's plan to take out the dreadnought succeeds, but he fails the bombing crew in executing it.
‎Poe fails in his mutiny to 'protect the fleet'.
‎Vice Admiral Holdo fails in her plan to get all the transports safely to Crait.
Meanwhile…
Finn fails to escape the cruiser Raddus to aid Rey's safe return.
Finn and Rose fail to secure the services of the master codebreaker.
Finn and Rose fail to secure transport to escape Cantonica.
‎Finn and Rose fail to disable the hyperspace tracker.
‎Finn fails to take out the battering-ram cannon.

Yet we know that Luke, Leia, Poe, Rey, Finn and Rose have what it takes to win. With the exception of Rose Tico, we've met them all before and know they have the hearts of victors. Even in the short amount of time we spend with Rose, we see she's clearly going to be on the new Rebellion's A-team. So why is all of this stinging a particular section of fandom*3 so much?

Our heroes fuck up here, continually, yet we love them anyway. We know why they're failing and we know why they were trying in the first place. The lesson is not to stop failing but to keep trying. Look around you, put the news on. The message of The Last Jedi is the same as the one which Star Wars taught us in 1977. If the delivery seems jarring, that's more a reflection of the times we live in.

The entire film is a lesson of perseverance through failure. And that is how The Last Jedi succeeds. Even Yoda didn't get it right all the time.

"Try again. Fail again. Fail better."
~ Samuel Beckett*4.


+ + + + +

Oh, and the IMAX was fantastic as always. Thundering sound and a glorious picture which really underlines how regular 3D light-loss will affect a movie with dark, night-time scenes. If you get the chance to see this The Last Jedi in IMAX, go and see The Last Jedi in IMAX.


So, watch this if you enjoyed?
The Star Wars.


Should you watch this in a cinema, though?
Yes.


Does the film achieve what it sets out to do?
Yes.


Is this the best work of the cast or director?
It's strong.
It's very strong
.


Will I think less of you if we disagree about how good/bad this film is?
That all depends on how wrong you are.


Yes, but is there a Wilhelm Scream in it?
There is.


Yes, but what's the Star Wars connection?
Level 0: It is Star Wars.



And if I HAD to put a number on it…


*1 "Mate, Rey's been here for literally a day. Do I like like I'm finished? Do I look like I know *so little* it can be packed into one 'An Afternoon With Luke Skywalker' seminar? Really, Yoda? Really? It's precisely this kind of shit which caused me to flounce off in a strop in the first place, don't show up now wagging your finger and smacking me on the head with your stick, I've got a library to burn down..." [ BACK ]

*2 While I'm on though, when Luke vaults over that chasm to spear the fish, is he really going to keep the pole upright and balanced when retrieving it from the spike? And how is he going to get back over when he's also carrying the fish? Or does he vault back over first and bring up the pole onto the flat-side? In which case why did he even leap over there in the first place? Why not just spear the fish from the side he was on? What the hell is in that blue-milk, Luke?? [ BACK ]

*3 I use the term 'fandom' wearily and loosely, [ cf ]. [ BACK ]

*4 1) Not the one from Quantum Leap, 2) Yeah, I know that quote isn't as glibly optimistic as it initially sounds. I don't care, I'm trying to make a point about Star Wars here and it fits my narrative drive to distort the original meaning. Look, this is 2017, have you not been paying attention? That's definitely how we do things, now. [ BACK ]


DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: Star Wars - The Last Jedi (fifth-pass)





Star Wars: The Last Jedi (fifth-pass / D-Box 3D / SPOILERS!)
Cert: 12A / 152 mins / Dir. Rian Johnson / Trailer


Previous reviews: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

I heard you don't like The Last Jedi. Good.

The Jedi themselves said it from the start, 'don't get too attached to shit'. But did you listen? The lightsaber which Rey uses to help cut down the Praetorian Guards? That's the same one Anakin used to murder a room full of children. It's not good or evil, it's just an object, a tool to be used as the wielder sees fit. Obi-Wan stressed its importance to Anakin, and now Anakin's son throws it away like a fork arriving with the soup-course. He was mistaken in this action of course, and that's one of the things you didn't like; having to re-evaluate your heroes. Star Wars: The Last Jedi is about re-evaluation. And change. I heard you don't like change. Good.

Really though, you shouldn't get too attached to shit. The idea that the old-school, one-thousand-generation order are the arbiters of truth and static wisdom in a changing galaxy? Well, we know how that turned out around fifty years before the time of TLJ. The idea that you knew where a Star Wars movie was headed before seeing the BBFC/MPAA card? Well, like I said; I heard you don't like The Last Jedi. The past of the monastic order order may be a done-deal, but the future isn't. And although The Force Awakens took a safe path in bringing audiences back to the Galaxy Far, Far Away, TLJ takes the steps its forebear probably should have in not only shuffling the deck, but playing with new cards altogether. I get that you were always going to be upset by this.

And although I certainly don't want to pull rank on any section of fandom, good. While certain restrained words posted on social media hold fast and true in principal, at the same time… no. If you're going out of your way to incoherently badmouth the film on social media*1 and sign petulant petitions, you're not a fan of Star Wars. You may well be a fan of Some Of The Star Wars Films, but you're not a fan of Star Wars. The day I walk out of a cinema and 'hate' the Star Wars movie I've just watched is the day I hang up the lightsaber*2. I still won't be signing a petition.

The Last Jedi is a film about change. About passing on the baton. Kenny Baker is no longer with us as Artoo, Chewbacca is played entirely by Joonas Suotamo this time round, and Anthony Daniels' Threepio has a distinctly supporting role*3. Two of our main, central heroes have bought the farm in-universe, and the third won't be around to film the next episode. This is a story about letting go of all you've been taught, and yet trusting The Force all the same. The path is uncertain, our heroes are fallible (more on that next time). We can trust that good will prevail, but it's going to have to really try this time round...

If The Last Jedi isn't what you expected, that's fine. It's an amazing film, deep into its own entrenched franchise, which makes the audience re-evaluate why they're sitting there. Yet at the same time, this is quintessentially The Hero's Journey. It's just not the hero's journey some were expecting. Or wanting. But if you don't get goosebumps watching a kid grasping a broom-handle and gazing into a night sky full of possibility, like millions of us did when we were eight years old, then you've missed the point of Star Wars and I can't change your mind.

I heard you don't like The Last Jedi. Good.

That means I'll have less trouble booking my seat for the Solo movie in May…


+ + + + +

Oh, and the D-Box was great as always, but I was a little surprised the film was playing to fewer than 20 people. Even on the last shopping-Saturday before Christmas, in a location which isn't exactly a 'pass-through' (the O2 arena), and in the earliest screening of the day. Still, no matter.


So, watch this if you enjoyed?
The Star Wars.


Should you watch this in a cinema, though?
Yes.


Does the film achieve what it sets out to do?
Yes.


Is this the best work of the cast or director?
It's strong.
It's very strong
.


Will I think less of you if we disagree about how good/bad this film is?
That all depends on how wrong you are.


Yes, but is there a Wilhelm Scream in it?
There is.


Yes, but what's the Star Wars connection?
Level 0: It is Star Wars.


And if I HAD to put a number on it…


*1 Start a blog, write a review. Write several reviews. Of the same film if needs be, or of different films. Share your reviews on social media, by all means. You want to hate what you've watched? Fantastic, just think about exactly why you hated it. That makes you examine your opinions on movies a lot more closely, trust me. No matter how concentrated your rage, I assure you that 140 characters isn't enough to adequately express it, and a signature on a petition (for which you will be widely and justifiably mocked) certainly isn't. [ BACK ]

*2 I seem to come out of every first-pass of a Star Wars film unsure, whether I've indulged in spoilers or not. That's not that I don't love what I've just witnessed, just that I can't process everything in one sitting. It's only my ridiculous, self imposed blog-rules that dictate I type up a review for every separate showing I see. [ BACK ]

*3 And start bracing yourselves now because there's a distinct probability that next May's Solo movie may well be the first branded*4 Star Wars movie without an appearance by R2-D2 and C-3PO. I mean, Rogue One was pushing it, frankly. How small do they want us to think the galaxy is..? [ BACK ]

*4 The two Ewoks movies are a curiosity of course, as they were Lucasfilm-made (and clearly set on the same Endor as Return of the Jedi) but didn't feature the actual Star Wars branding until the 2005 DVD release, despite characters appearing in official encyclopaedia-type references until the 2012 'Legends' reboot. [ BACK ]


DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Monday 18 December 2017

Adaptation: Doom



The A-word.
It's the bane of cinephiles, everywhere.

That book you love; the comic you remember; the show you used to watch; the game you lost an entire summer playing? Oh, someone's adapted it and it's getting made into a movie! Whether a cause for pre-emptive celebration or foreboding caution, it leads to only one thing: expectation. And expectation is the death of the 'clean' movie-viewing experience; no matter how closely the film sticks to its source material, or how much it tries to distance itself, it will be faced with the hurdle of comparison.

And while the movie industry loves the pre-built marketing buzz of 'now a major motion picture!', they loathe the comparative references which will be made from the first review onwards. Because many punters will expect to get exactly the same reaction from a completely different medium, to a story they already know. And therein lies the problem.

In this monthly series, we'll look back at some of the most respected and best-loved properties which have made the perilous journey to the big screen; often with some controversy, and almost always with far too much hype. This isn't so much a review of the films themselves, more an appraisal of their suitability as an adaptation.




Doom (DOS / SNES)
Doom (DOS / SNES)
ID Software (1993)

Onwards and upwards; consoles are out, computers are where it's at now, grandad! The mid 90s saw game developers begin to properly harness the power of machines which had previously been used primarily as office tools. And while the advent of the Windows operating system made these more accessible, early games were still in good old DOS*1. The console-format wasn't dumped for good, obviously, and would be taken to the next level with Sony's Playstation, but the boom in PC gaming coincided (not that it was a coincidence) with the growth of domestic internet connections. Not only could titles be shared down a phone line (!), but programmers could distribute their own levels, upgrades and amendments ('mods') via the same method. And we'd only ever dreamed of remote multiplayer matches before. All of a sudden, we were living in the future. All that was needed was the right game to seize the possibilities…

Back in the late 80s, we'd had Freescape, an engine which allowed players to wander around three-dimensional environments, solving puzzles and the like. Technically impressive (given the hardware limitations of the Spectrum/Amstrad/Commodore generation), but sedate. Shortly after came the first flurry around virtual reality, in which the non-gaming civilian populace suddenly became aware of how immersive computer software could be. Again, fine, but it wasn't really accessible to home-tech users and something was missing for those of us who'd already been playing in other worlds for years. And that something was Shooting People In The Face™. Hard.

And so, back to living in the future. The memories of your first job. Sitting in the back-room of a high street print-shop after hours with a couple of colleagues and some beers from the offy next door, taking turns on the one solitary Windows 3.11 computer, skulking round the corridors of a military base on the moons of Mars and shooting imps and demons*2, letting up only when it was time to leg it for the last train home. Okay, they're memories of my first job, although I don't think I'm entirely alone in recollections like those.

All of this is idealistic nostalgia, of course. How does classic Doom actually hold up in 2017? Well, once we're installed with full functionality*3, pretty bloody well I'm happy to say. Sure, the game is pixelly in its visuals and basic in its mechanics, but it runs with a smoothness that was almost unheard of in 1993. Much like last month's Street Fighter II, the key thing about Doom is that the backstory is essentially irrelevant*4. Some stuff about being the last surviving human on a military base on Phobos, one of the moons of Mars, holding off hordes of monsters emerging from a portal to Hell. Scenes.

But this is all in the manual. There's no in-game catchup, no cut-scenes or cinematics, just one nameless space-marine ploughing through levels against increasingly tough foes with increasingly ridiculous weaponry. All the player actually needs to know is how the movement, firearms and switch-systems work; find the exit to the next level, kill anything which gets in your way. That's it. The door/key and switch combinations present some basic puzzle-solving, but if a player makes a point of clearing each room as they come across it, the game more or less solves itself. Also similar to last month's entry, Doom wasn't the first game of its kind, but it quickly became the most popular, the most iconic and the benchmark by which all others were measured*5.

1995 saw the release of Doom on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System*6, one of the last titles for a console on its wind-down and converted for the cartridge by Ocean Software. It's a noble effort. The smoothness of movement around the maps is maintained by reducing the play-area on the screen substantially, and this is even blockier than its DOS forbear. Movement is aided by the controller's L and R buttons becoming strafe-directions, but these can't be employed at the same time as turning so there's very little 'sliding into a room and letting rip with the chain gun'. Speaking of which, collision detection is absolutely atrocious here. That's handy if you're shooting into a crowd of zombies as they'll be picked off one at a time with barely an aiming-action from yourself. It's less handy if you're in the room with more than one adversary, since you start being injured as soon as they're there, irrespective of distance or line-of-sight. Surrounded by the hordes of Hell? Forget it. It's this element, unfortunately, which makes the SNES port barely playable. In fact I'll go further - if you're not familiar with Doom at all - the maps, the enemies, the wanting to actually see the thing which is spanging ten health-points off you every three seconds - the SNES port will be unplayable*7. I love that this version of Doom exists. I'm even more glad that it's not the only one I've got.

But the bottom line; Doom's still got it where it counts.
If you can live with the pixels...






Doom (movie)
Doom
Andrzej Bartkowiak (2005)

And so, the million-dollar question*8 rears its ugly head once again: how do you make a movie from a game with no narrative?

Well, there are going to be changes. The portal between Phobos and Hell becomes one from Mars to Earth, and the zombies and imps aren't the manifestations of Hades, but the product of Evil Nasty Scientists Meddling With Things They Don't Understand™. The last surviving marine treading the line between carnage and insanity becomes a squadron, called in to investigate a distress-call from the UAC research-base on Mars (ie, not its moons, Phobos or Deimos), and there's an awful lot of human interaction for a property which was essentially about isolation and agoraphobia.

Naturally, the team we're following all have their own distinct personality-traits, but these are amplified to the point of psych-defects, where not a single one of them would be selected for active duty in any armed unit. And while we're on, despite an impressive array of firearms, none of the team are wearing any protective headgear or night-vision equipment to go padding around darkened corridors in a locked-down military base. Although you get the impression that troops like these wouldn't bother with either anyway. But since the film follows the marines as a group-unit, it stands to reason that there's not really a central character to root for (which is the very opposite of the game-mechanics). And since these characters all inherently ittitating, it really doesn't matter when they start being picked off by the undead remnants of UAC office staff.

The brawn-end of the flick is headed up by Dwayne Johnson (at the time, still being billed as The Rock) and Karl Urban, with Rosamund Pike picking up the 'brainy scientist' reins as Karl's estranged sister. A bunch of familiar faces with ludicrous squad-nicknames make up the numbers, and the rest is autopilot. There are still nods to the game with weapon-types, but everything else about this suggests a screenplay that was sitting in a cupboard, hastily re-tooled when Universal called with the news that they'd got the license from ID Software. It often feels like a mid-80s action movie that's been made with a mid-00s budget and technology. In fact it's probably not unfair to say that screenwriters Dave Callaham and Wesley Strick owe so much to Aliens and Predator that they've had to take out a loan from Resident Evil just to keep up the repayments. The film's self-congratulatory First Person Shooter centrepiece sequence doesn't happen until an hour and a half in, and even then it's only five minutes long and executed at an oddly sluggish pace.

The movie is nowhere near as awful as the Rotten Tomatoes score would suggest, but expectation killed its chances faster than the BFG-9000. If anything, Doom feels more like a prequel or lead-in for the game, albeit one which dismantles the plot before the main event. The film certainly plays like a bunch of the stitched-together cutscenes which the first two games never had, at any rate, and while it makes a decent screen-adaptation of the squad-based shooters from later years, it's just not Doom. Yet at the same time, it's hard to imagine a viable screenplay that would be…*9

Although hats off to the bit where the marines are denoting areas they've cleared with fluorescent marker on the doorways. I like the thought of a bunch of trained killers being subject to an impromptu stationery audit…






Doom (novel)
Doom: Knee Deep In The Dead
Dafydd ab Hugh & Brad Linaweaver (1995)

Firstly, a disclaimer: I have read this novel before, some time around 2005. And while that puts it before the beginning of this blog, an ongoing exercise which has trained my brain to think more critically about the content presented to it, I have to say that I recalled it as being passable tie-in fiction based on a game with no real story. With that brief in mind, and much like the film up there, the authors have pretty much carte blanche to do as they please, so how could that go wrong, yeah? Reader, I have to tell you that the Doom novel is fucking awful. Things don't get off to a great start when you realise this aspires to be a hard-nosed military thriller, seemingly written by people whose sole experience of the armed forces comes from Ross Kemp documentaries and an unhealthily thumbed collection of Andy McNab novels.

With our central hero ('Flynn Taggart', a name which couldn't have much more testosterone if his middle name was 'Bollocks') being a grizzled marine from Florida who finds himself shipped to Mars while on an insubordination charge (of course he fucking does), the book is obviously deliberate in how over-the-top it is. Unfortunately, I can't work out if it's deliberate in how bad it is. When it's not all muscles, guns and decapitating demons, our hero is also given to musing about the opposite sex, and coming off like Alan Partridge in the process…

Doom: He's got an eye for the girls…
He's got an eye for the girls…



…but a couple of pages later once the gore began to kick in, it occurred to me that this is textbook Garth Marenghi, and that's the inner-monologue voice which stuck thereafter…

Doom: …and an eye for the GUNS!
…and an eye for the GUNS!


There are human characters besides Flynn and his lust-object colleague Arlene Sanders of course, but everyone somehow manages to be less likeable than the invading hordes of the netherworld. Naturally, being A Guys' Book for The Guys to read like The Guys would, the authors (and they're each authors of other stuff as well, mind - it's not like they knocked this one out and were never published again) have added dashes of wry humour to break the otherwise inescapable tension of their tome…

Doom: And reader, neither will you...
And reader, neither will you...


The first undead soldier our hero runs into when he's on Phobos is called William Gates. Yes, Bill Gates. I think this is what passed for hilarity in 1995. And it's not just the corny nature of the asides which caused me to recoil in horror, as we get to play Spot The Grammatical Error, too…

Doom: Proof-readers? Where we're going we don't need… 'proof-readers'.
Proof-readers? Where we're going we don't need… 'proof-readers'.


This, as well as glaring internal inconsistencies...

Doom: Help! Come quickly! The moon is SHRINKING!
Help! Come quickly! The moon is SHRINKING!


I guess that's what happens when you have two authors who don't have each others' phone number. That said, Phobos is actually an irregular shape, which could allow for the confusion. Except that I don't expect the novel to be an encyclopaedia. Make it any fucking size you like guys, just choose one and stick to it. That's what you're being paid for. But better than all of the above is this absolute beauty…

For an author to not know the definition of 'literally' is unfortunate. To demonstrate one's corresponding unfamiliarity with 'proverbial' ON THE SAME PAGE is catastrophic…
For an author to not know the definition of 'literally' is unfortunate. To demonstrate one's corresponding unfamiliarity with 'proverbial' ON THE SAME PAGE is catastrophic…



I've read a few game tie-in novels before, none of which have been as inept as this. Reader, I do not mind admitting that I gave up on Doom: Knee Deep In The Dead before finishing it*10. A bad movie takes the same amount of time to watch as a good one. A bad book is like slow-motion self-flagellation for the brain. Ridiculous.

There are, apparently, three more of these novels. Sweet Christ…






Doom (comic)
Doom: Knee Deep In The Dead!
Steve Behling & Michael Stewart (1996)

Well, it's shorter. If the Doom comic has one thing going for it, it's that the Doom comic is shorter than the Doom novel. I mean, it makes less sense to the point where it's not even trying to be coherent, but the whole thing will only take fifteen minutes off your life. If you read it twice. The opening page credits-panel bears the words "Vol.1 Issue 1" in a way which suggests that writers Steve Behling and Michael Stewart have no comparative references for the words 'optimism', 'hubris' or 'delusion'. No further issues were produced (and if anything, this went on to become something of a collector's item, albeit for the wrong reasons). The credits-page also claims that the publication has been edited. Although given the fifteen pages which follow, one dreads to think what manerial didn't make the printing press…

Doom: Reader, this dialogue was actually published...
Reader, this dialogue was actually published...


The story is still on Phobos. Well, I say 'story'. The events of this comic take place on Phobos. Well, I say 'Phobos'. The events of this comic take place in an industrial/military complex filled with the bad guys from Doom and the guy in a green combat suit running around taking them all out. Well I say 'comic'. It's sixteen pages long, whereas standard-format is twenty-two. Comics are a primarily visual medium, but they are supposed to be about visual storytelling. Leaping in medias res with not so much as a location-card, Knee Deep InThe Dead! is a series of barely connected, sketchily drawn panels, narrated by a character with no character and by writers who confuse word-count with meaning. If the novel tries to create a story out of nothing, the comic shovels in dialogue where none should exist at all…

Doom: I'm glad this panel has so many words, because I have none...
I'm glad this panel has so many words, because I have none…


With such a slight pagecount, it's almost admirable that the writers don't try to create a plot where none exists, but to think that two people are responsible for the babbling which fills the vacuum as a result is incredible. You'd think that the art would take centre stage in a comic-adaptation of an iconic game. Ah. Tom Grindberg's*11 loose,sketchy style is heavy on the ink meaning all that's needed for the colours is mostly flat blocks behind the linework. The end result looks very cheap and with a final product like this it's hard to know if that's aesthetically intentional or just budget constraints. Although credit where it's due, Tom clearly enjoys drawing the monsters from Doom. Even if he's as slapdash at that as he is everything else.

Doom: Our protagonist appears to be from Newcastle, which could explain a lot of you think of this as Biffa Bacon on absinthe, viagra and mescaline…
Our protagonist appears to be from Newcastle, which could explain a lot of you think of this as Biffa Bacon on absinthe, viagra and mescaline…


The Doom comic is every bit as bad as the Doom novel, although mercifully far more brief. It's perhaps telling that the live-action movie spinoff wouldn't see the light of day until nine years after this.

If you remain to be convinced, you can read the comic here. You can say you were sent, but you can't say you weren't warned…*12



Is the original thing any good, though?
Uh-huh.
It is the best thing
.


Is the film-version any good, though?
It's better than you've heard, but not as good as you'd hope.


So, should I check out one, both or neither?
Game, definitely.
Movie, probably.
Comic, not likely.
Novel, not at all
.


Oh, is there a Wilhelm Scream in it?
Not in the game and not in the movie that I heard.


Yes, but what's the Star Wars connection?
Level 1: The film's got General Antoc Merrick in it.




*1 Note for younger readers: since a significant amount of processing power was allocated to running the operating system alone on those machines, not leaving a lot for the dynamic demands of full-screen slaughter, we had to exit Windows completely and launch the game by typing a command line. It sounds prehistoric now, but bear in mind that when we switched the computer on in the morning, we also had to start Windows with a similar typed command. You kids don't know how lucky you are with your PinPods and your PlayBox 4's… [ BACK ]

*2 In The Face™. Hard. [ BACK ]

*3 Note for non-Steam using nostalgists (or readers landing here from a Google search): If you happen to be loading up the game from the Doom Collectors Edition CD, you'll need to create a DPLAY.DLL file after installation, and you'll have the Doom95.exe executable, which doesn't include mouse-support in Windows XP or higher. While it's technically possible to play the game without using the mouse to look left and right as you strafe with the keys, that's not a fun experience. You can download David Kay's Ultimate Doom mouse-installer at the link on this page, and it's an absolute godsend. It should also be noted that I'm including this link for my own future reference, since I'll probably have lost the link by then. Truth be told, I lost the link between installing the game and drafting this paragraph... [ BACK ]

*4 And all the more irrelevant because of how much sense it doesn't make. Think for example, how impractical this military base would have been before the portal opened and the aliens invaded.
"How do I get though this door, Terry?"
"Oh, the unlock-switch is three quarters of a mile away, down one of those similar-looking corridors there…"
"Standard…"
[ BACK ]

*5 The same colleague who installed Doom on the works-computer also procured, at a later date, a mod which swapped out all the bad guys for Stormtroopers and Imperial Officers from Star Wars. You can imagine my excitement. You can also imagine how far apart my mind was later blown by playing Lucasarts own bandwagon-jumper, Dark Forces, to this day one of my favourite Star Wars games. [ BACK ]

*6 Which, much like Mario Bros and Street Fighter II, I happen to own, hence my appraisal of it for Adaptation. And yes, in scheduling the gaming-section of this series, I did essentially just open my drawer of SNES games and go "right, which ones of these have been made into movies?". Although I bought the PC version of Doom from off of Ebay. Come on, it's not like I put no effort into this… [ BACK ]

*7 I managed to get to the end of Command Control (level 4 of Knee Deep In The Dead) before sacking the whole thing off and going back to the PC version. Although I've never been known for my patience as a gamer... [ BACK ]

*8 Well, in the case of the Doom movie it's more of a $60 million dollar question, since that was its budget. But hey, at least it made back $56m of that, right..? [ BACK ]

*9 I, for one, cannot imagine for a second why Universal decided not to create an 18-rated gorefest full of Satanic imagery and literal, non-rational demons. It's not like they completely nerfed the project by making it a 15-cert starring an ex-wrestler, they just removed the uncompromising cornerstone of what made the original so entertaining… [ BACK ]

*10 And I did not do this lightly, having only ever abandoned two books before (Alan Dean Foster's 1979 Alien novelisation - the book transforming a masterclass in cinematic tension into an almost indescribably boring shopping-list of events, and James Frey's A Million Little Pieces - a borderline illiterate and attention-seeking memoir from a confessed fantasist and liar). That said, since I've read the Doom novel to completion in the past, I suppose it doesn't really count as part of that list after all… [ BACK ]

*11 Tom Grindberg is his real name, by the way, not some amusing gory-pseudonym adopted especially for the comic (he's listed as Tom "Gallows" Grindberg on the credits-page). He's actually a proper comic-book artist. He's worked for Marvel and DC and 2000AD and everything. Without having looked into his wider canon, I'm going to assume the Doom project was a pad he kept down beside the toilet. [ BACK ]

*12 And again, thanks for reading all these. Twelve footnotes may seem excessive, but this has been a long post. Although if it's any consolation, nowhere near as long as the 'research' which went into writing it. And look on the bright side: This is the final Adaptation, so you won't have to wade through any more pieces this unwieldy. Well, probably… [ BACK ]




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