trickofthehand
10-23-2007, 12:48 PM
I'll start this off with a quote
"Ticket sales for the opening weekend totaled more than 15.3 million USD, but promptly dropped down to approximately $4.2 million, which mystified Universal executives"
Translation? Universal made a complete piece of crap out of one of the most legendary game series of all time, and excited fans bought tickets on opening weekend hoping against hope that even though they knew the original story had been completely discarded, the movie still wouldn't suck. After sitting through 2 hours of complete and utter suck they went home, called their friends, blogged online and nobody else went to see it.
How do you screw up Doom? It's honestly mind-boggling. At first I thought that Universal had once again decided to discard the very popular and highly succesful source material lore, and went with their own idea which they always seem to think is more marketable. If a game sells millions of copies, spawns hundred of thousands of fan sites, redefines the 3-d first person shooter genre and goes Gold from pre-orders alone, why in blue hells would you want to re-write the story?!
Apparently though, possibly for the first time in Hollywood history this wasn't the case with Doom. The real reason for the re-write of Doom was the simple fact that Universal didn't want to upset religous sensitivies since the game's story revolves around portal technology that accidently opens a portal to Hell.
If Universal had been in charge of Harry Potter the movies would have been about 3 british kids eating truffles for 2 hours. Harry Potter received tons of negative attention from religious zealots who claimed that it was promoting witchcraft, yet it went on to the box office to make enough money to feed every starving child in the world.
God forbid we offend anyone, our movie might not make hundreds of millions of dollars because a few religious nuts complain about the concept of Hell. Event Horizon showed clips of people being tortured in Hell, and it went on to win 1 award and be nominated for another. I also don't recall throngs of people protesting in front of theatres.
I don't remember the last time negative publicity kept me or any of my friends from seeing a movie. If anything, it only made us want to see it more. The most surprising part however is the fact that this came from a studio which did End of Days, easily a MUCH more controversial film than one about space marines blowing up demons.
So for fear of hurting a few people's religious sensibilites (people who seek to do nothing but attention whore themselves, afterall if you are so secure in your faith why would a movie bother you? Unless you're muslim apparently) Universal decided to resort to a generic, bland storlyine of genetically mutated monsters and blah blah blah blah. Yaaaaaaaawwwwnnnnnnn. I liked it better when it was called Resident Evil. The movie disappointed on all fronts. The monsters were generic and uninspired, the action was on a level with senior citizen lawn bowling, the story was blasphemous and an insult to the source material, and the much publicized 'big twist' at the end with the Rock was total crap.
The single worst sin, other than Universal having a critical shortage of testicles and rewriting the story, was the first person shooter content. I've only met two people who liked it. They both said it was 'refreshing' and 'fun'. I buried both in the middle of the Nevada desert.
The first person shooter scene was not fun, or refreshing, or cool in any way shape or form. It did nothing but discredit the videgame movie adaptation genre (although admittedly it didn't have much of a reputation anyways, read above about how Hollywood likes to change storylines around) and make it that much more likely that people will not turn out to theatres to see new movies of the same genre. I almost walked out of the movie theatre when that scene came on, and this is coming from someone that sat all the way through The Tuxedo. Andrzej Bartkowiak has gone stark raving mad to even allow such crap into his movie, but I guess when your movie is already that crappy what's a bit more? Oh wait he's not crazy he just sucks.
Andrzej Bartkowiak needs to go back to cinematography. He actually worked on some decent movies, it's his recent switch to director that does not work at all. Lets compare some of his cinematography credits with some of his director's credits:
Cinematography- US Marshalls, The Devils Advocate, Dante's Peak, The Mirror Has Two Faces, Falling Down
Director-Street Fighter 2: Electric Boogaloo, Doom, Cradle 2 the Grave,Exit Wounds, Romeo Must Die
Streeth Fighter 2?! Cradle 2 the Grave?! Exit Wounds?! Truly a Martin Scorsese in the works. Go back to Cinematography and leave the directing to the talented.
Lessons learned from this story?
1. Quit changing the story. If it worked well enough to make millions as a game, it'll work well enough to make millions as a movie.
2. Do not cross the fans.
3. If religious groups did not protest a highly popular video game, they probably aren't going to protest a movie on said videogame.
4. Even if they do, nobody cares. Look at Harry Potter.
5. Everyone at Universal has a vagina, and there's only 2 women that work there.
6. Not only do all employees of Universal have company-issued vaginas, their producers are completely and utterly incompetent. To not capitalize off wildly succesful sales of Doom 3 by releasing a true-to-lore film a year after is lunacy. It's almost as if Universal hates making money.
7. Andrzej Bartkowiak is an untalented director, and has a vagina much like one half of the Wachowskis now.
"Ticket sales for the opening weekend totaled more than 15.3 million USD, but promptly dropped down to approximately $4.2 million, which mystified Universal executives"
Translation? Universal made a complete piece of crap out of one of the most legendary game series of all time, and excited fans bought tickets on opening weekend hoping against hope that even though they knew the original story had been completely discarded, the movie still wouldn't suck. After sitting through 2 hours of complete and utter suck they went home, called their friends, blogged online and nobody else went to see it.
How do you screw up Doom? It's honestly mind-boggling. At first I thought that Universal had once again decided to discard the very popular and highly succesful source material lore, and went with their own idea which they always seem to think is more marketable. If a game sells millions of copies, spawns hundred of thousands of fan sites, redefines the 3-d first person shooter genre and goes Gold from pre-orders alone, why in blue hells would you want to re-write the story?!
Apparently though, possibly for the first time in Hollywood history this wasn't the case with Doom. The real reason for the re-write of Doom was the simple fact that Universal didn't want to upset religous sensitivies since the game's story revolves around portal technology that accidently opens a portal to Hell.
If Universal had been in charge of Harry Potter the movies would have been about 3 british kids eating truffles for 2 hours. Harry Potter received tons of negative attention from religious zealots who claimed that it was promoting witchcraft, yet it went on to the box office to make enough money to feed every starving child in the world.
God forbid we offend anyone, our movie might not make hundreds of millions of dollars because a few religious nuts complain about the concept of Hell. Event Horizon showed clips of people being tortured in Hell, and it went on to win 1 award and be nominated for another. I also don't recall throngs of people protesting in front of theatres.
I don't remember the last time negative publicity kept me or any of my friends from seeing a movie. If anything, it only made us want to see it more. The most surprising part however is the fact that this came from a studio which did End of Days, easily a MUCH more controversial film than one about space marines blowing up demons.
So for fear of hurting a few people's religious sensibilites (people who seek to do nothing but attention whore themselves, afterall if you are so secure in your faith why would a movie bother you? Unless you're muslim apparently) Universal decided to resort to a generic, bland storlyine of genetically mutated monsters and blah blah blah blah. Yaaaaaaaawwwwnnnnnnn. I liked it better when it was called Resident Evil. The movie disappointed on all fronts. The monsters were generic and uninspired, the action was on a level with senior citizen lawn bowling, the story was blasphemous and an insult to the source material, and the much publicized 'big twist' at the end with the Rock was total crap.
The single worst sin, other than Universal having a critical shortage of testicles and rewriting the story, was the first person shooter content. I've only met two people who liked it. They both said it was 'refreshing' and 'fun'. I buried both in the middle of the Nevada desert.
The first person shooter scene was not fun, or refreshing, or cool in any way shape or form. It did nothing but discredit the videgame movie adaptation genre (although admittedly it didn't have much of a reputation anyways, read above about how Hollywood likes to change storylines around) and make it that much more likely that people will not turn out to theatres to see new movies of the same genre. I almost walked out of the movie theatre when that scene came on, and this is coming from someone that sat all the way through The Tuxedo. Andrzej Bartkowiak has gone stark raving mad to even allow such crap into his movie, but I guess when your movie is already that crappy what's a bit more? Oh wait he's not crazy he just sucks.
Andrzej Bartkowiak needs to go back to cinematography. He actually worked on some decent movies, it's his recent switch to director that does not work at all. Lets compare some of his cinematography credits with some of his director's credits:
Cinematography- US Marshalls, The Devils Advocate, Dante's Peak, The Mirror Has Two Faces, Falling Down
Director-Street Fighter 2: Electric Boogaloo, Doom, Cradle 2 the Grave,Exit Wounds, Romeo Must Die
Streeth Fighter 2?! Cradle 2 the Grave?! Exit Wounds?! Truly a Martin Scorsese in the works. Go back to Cinematography and leave the directing to the talented.
Lessons learned from this story?
1. Quit changing the story. If it worked well enough to make millions as a game, it'll work well enough to make millions as a movie.
2. Do not cross the fans.
3. If religious groups did not protest a highly popular video game, they probably aren't going to protest a movie on said videogame.
4. Even if they do, nobody cares. Look at Harry Potter.
5. Everyone at Universal has a vagina, and there's only 2 women that work there.
6. Not only do all employees of Universal have company-issued vaginas, their producers are completely and utterly incompetent. To not capitalize off wildly succesful sales of Doom 3 by releasing a true-to-lore film a year after is lunacy. It's almost as if Universal hates making money.
7. Andrzej Bartkowiak is an untalented director, and has a vagina much like one half of the Wachowskis now.