Doom (The Movie)

Ok, give me a second to explain. I know that Doom isn’t a zombie movie. It’s really just a scifi/monster/action movie that gave the Rock entirely too many opportunities to flash his trademarked “raised-eyebrow” expression. However, the film does have scientific research gone awry, soldiers and scientists rising from the dead, and battles against homicidal hordes. Yes, I know that still doesn’t quite qualify it as a zombie flick, but the story does bring up some relevant discussion topics, and well, I was just in the mood for Doom.

*Warning* Spoilers

First off, I should admit that the characteristics of this scenario’s contagion seem pretty far fetched. Much like Resident Evil’s T-Virus, an agent that can initiate such rapid and radical genetic change seems like a serious stretch of the imagination. Also, like we saw in Resident Evil, this particular agent had the ability to produce varying results. Some of the infected turned into rather ordinary ravenous undead (with middle-of-the-road mobility), some turned into remarkably large muscle covered monsters, and one, that being our handsome-but-dark-and-brooding-but-still-good-on-the-inside protagonist managed to pick up super-human strength, reflexes, and healing, all the while avoiding any homicidal urges or unsightly changes to his outward physical appearance. Some people just have all the luck. Yeah, not really buying the likelihood of that scenario.

[CORPORATE INTERESTS]

Moving on to a somewhat more believable aspect of this scenario, I’d like to point to the use of government military personnel to clean up a private corporation’s mistake. Much like Resident Evil’s Umbrella Corporation being allowed it’s own private army, it isn’t hard to imagine us reaching a point where private interests are so deeply imbedded into our governmental infrastructure, that they can call on on the USMC to clean up a small mutant-zombie-scientist snafu. Whether it’s weapon contracts, security contractors, or research into super-soldiers, government and corporate interests are increasingly becoming one and the same.

[OUTBREAK CONTAINMENT]

Another point of interest in the movie is the action taken to contain the spread of this contagion. Despite the rather reckless nature of their experimentation, the last standing scientist at least had the wisdom to initiate a quarantine lock-down before their rather angry guinea pig could escape. Now while this did then allow the other dead scientists time to reanimate and mutate into further killing machines, it was certainly better than letting these monsters spread out into the greater bulk of the civilian population at the base.

Sending in an elite commando squad seemed like a fairly appropriate response, given that they didn’t have any idea what was going on. However, that woeful lack of intel is what doomed them straight off the bat. I’ve got to say, I really don’t get why such an advanced research station would have such a limited surveillance system. Given the importance of the scientific and military research being conducted, I would expect a place like that to have a system similar to that which we saw in The Hive (though maybe without the homicidal AI). There was some sort of surveillance system in place that the character Pinky was monitoring, but it didn’t seem to be able to pick up any more information than what was coming through the soldiers’ gun cams. This seems pretty ludicrous to me because it shouldn’t have required anything more advanced than some basic motion or heat sensors for Pinky to track the monsters and give the soldiers the info they needed to execute an effective coordinated attack. Well, it made for a more exciting movie, but lets hope that facilities conducting ridiculously dangerous research find a decent middle ground between all-seeing homicidal supercomputers, and a couple of low-end web cams duct-taped to rifles.

The most interesting aspect of this film’s take on containment was the soldiers’ course of action after quarantine had been breached, and one of the monsters had escaped through the Arc to the Earth side of the facility. It is interesting because this completely changed the rules of the game for the commander. As long as the risk of this threat getting back to Earth was at an minimum, he was willing to do what he could to save the civilians. However, once it was on Earth, every person in that base was a potential carrier that might bring the contagion up to the surface. The commander was under orders to eliminate the threat at all costs, and logic made it clear that simply killing every last living person was the surest means to guarantee containment.

Obviously this poses some moral dilemmas. I can’t say that there is really anything to argue with the logic behind this choice. This was an extremely dangerous threat that could potentially wipe out the human species. Who’s to say that killing a few dozen people is not a worthy sacrifice for the protection of the species. However, as some of the more morally conscious soldiers stated in their objections, there were at least some groups of surviving civilians that could have been spared, while still ensuring an acceptable level of threat containment. This is an interesting point because it raises the question of how are we supposed to assess that fine line between making the moral choices that define one’s humanity, and making the logical choices that ensure one’s survival. I don’t know what the answer to this question truelly is. You could probably ask a hundred people, receive a hundred different answers, and not one of them would be any more or less correct than the others.

So, with that little dilemma to ponder, I’ll call this a wrap. Yeah, this wasn’t really a zombie flick, but it does raise some interesting questions, and well I just like a good monster movie. I also have to admit that I have a soft spot for any homage to what I once considered the game of gods, Doom 2.