Doom: Extended Edition

Written by:

Dave Callaham & Wesley Strick

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Directed by:

Andrzej Bartkowiak

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Release Date:

2005

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, another video game movie!

Doom can't be as bad as Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within though, surely? Well according to Rotten Tomatoes, 44% of critics came out of Final Fantasy feeling like it brightened up their day, compared to just 19% for Doom. But to be fair, Spirits Within is currently about the highest rated video game movie on the site (second only to Angry Birds), so Doom's actually a mid-tier VG adaptation.

No one could say a bad word about that logo though! Except that they've left a massive gap between the O's and bled all the colour out of it. But they stayed true to the games and I always respect a movie that respects its source material. Trouble is, at the time this was made the Doom games had already had one reboot so there were conflicting sources. Not to mention the comic and the books.

Still, as long as the movie's about a lone Space Marine who fights his way through the warped and broken corridors of a research base located on or around Mars, killing cyberdemons and his possessed comrades on his way to Hell itself, they couldn't really screw it up!

I'm going to be going through the Extended Edition, so you'll be getting 15 minutes of extra SPOILERS. I might even spoil the games too if I can think of any plot to spoil. Not the brand new one though, because while everyone else has been enjoying playing it, I've been busy writing this crap up instead.

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within

Written by:

Al Reinert, Jeff Vintar

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Directed by:

Hironobu Sakaguchi

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Release Date:

2001

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Welcome to Ray Hardgrit's Sci-Fi Adventures, review #001: Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.

My past self thought it'd be a great idea to start a new website about science fiction movies and TV shows in addition to the Super Adventures site I already have going, but now it's me, my present day self, that's stuck writing content for it! Still, there's nothing more sci-fi than starting a spin-off.

Speaking of beginnings, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was the debut movie from Square Pictures, the video game company's new computer animated film division. And it was also the last, because it bombed so hard. They'd would only work on one more project, the Final Flight of the Osiris short for the Animatrix, before being shut down. I guess if you keep using 'Final' in your titles it will eventually come true.

I'm not sure the movie failed because it was based on a video game though, because I've seen this before and I know full well that it ain't based on any 'Final Fantasy' games I've played. But this isn't a case of a movie studio taking a brand name and doing their own thing with it, as it was conceived and directed by 'Final Fantasy' creator Hironobu Sakaguchi himself! His very first film in fact, and also his last.

Despite its utter failure, Spirits Within was a pretty important milestone in cinema, as it's the first full-length 'photorealistic' motion captured animated movie. A proper big-budget serious cartoon aimed at adults starring humans, four years in the making! To give it a bit of context, it came out 6 years after Toy Story (the first full length CG movie) and around the same time that 'Final Fantasy X' hit the PlayStation 2. So yes, it really is 15 years old at the time I'm writing this.

(I'm basically going to go ahead and spoil this entire movie one scene at a time now, so please stop right here unless you're okay with that).