From Console to Screen: Doom (2005)
- Michael Field
- Jul 5
- 2 min read
First-Person Mayhem Meets Big-Screen Mediocrity
All good things must come to an end — even a podcast series dedicated to questionable video game movies.
This week on From Console to Screen, we take one final dive into the pixelated abyss with our friend and guest Russ Lyman to talk about Doom, the 2005 sci-fi action adaptation that dared to ask:
What if we made a movie about one of the most influential first-person shooters of all time… but forgot to make it any fun?
Starring a pre-mega-stardom Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Karl Urban before he became the internet’s favorite curmudgeon in The Boys, Doom is a movie with exactly one idea everyone remembers: that first-person shooter sequence. You know the one. And yes, we’ll get into whether five minutes of creative camera work can save an entire film from the bargain bin of video game adaptations.
We also break down:
Why Doom’s monsters, corridors, and pseudo-science just don’t translate to the big screen the way you’d hope.
The bizarre character arcs, including The Rock’s turn from tough-guy hero to unhinged villain (spoilers, but… come on, it’s Doom).
How Karl Urban somehow manages to give this thing a straight face.
And whether this movie is actually worse — or slightly more entertaining — than some of the other adaptations we’ve endured in this series (looking at you, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation).
Mostly, we ask the big question: Does the first-person scene actually justify everything else? Or is it just a cool gimmick in an otherwise forgettable movie?
It’s the end of our limited series, and what better way to wrap it up than with a film that so perfectly embodies everything baffling about video game movies in the 2000s — big names, big guns, and somehow… no sense of fun.
Catch the final episode of From Console to Screen wherever you get your podcasts or watch it on YouTube. And remember: no matter how bad it gets, at least you don’t have to actually play through Doom the movie.
Listen on your favorite podcast platform!
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