When one thinks of the FPS classic, Doom, images come to mind of facing down the hordes of hell with nothing but a shotgun and some elbow grease.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the feature film adaptation of that beloved game. However, we do have movies that capture the mood and tone of Doom.
Here are the top 15 movies like Doom and none of them feature Dwayne Johnson!
15. Aliens (1986)
While Aliens may be more associated with Halo, the film introduced the trope of the “space marine” which has been present in gaming culture ever since.
In James Cameron’s follow-up to Alien, a group of Colonial Marines face off against a hive of Xenomorphs straight out of H.R. Geiger’s bad acid trip.
These marines are no match for the Xenomorphs, and only Miss Ellen Ripley (played by Sigourney Weaver) has the balls to take down the Xenomorph Queen in the best fight scene to take place inside a hangar.
Sigourney Weaver was nominated for Best Actress at the Oscars in 1987, making her the first actress nominated for a science fiction film.
14. Predators (2010)
Predators is the third movie of the Predator franchise but the sixth movie in the joined Predator/Alien franchise. If you are confused by that chronology, all you need to know is that film director Nimrod Antal successfully captures the displacement felt in the first level of Doom. A group of humans is dropped into a jungle game preserve to be hunted by the Predators - a motley crew of fierce individuals that includes black-ops soldiers, convicts, and . . . Topher Grace? The human survivors, led by an unlikely Adrian Brody, slowly come to the realization that the alien hunters may not be their only adversaries on the planet.
Nimrod Antal also directed the Metallica concert/zombie film, Through the Never in 2013.
13. Predator (1987)
This is the last entry from the Alien/Predator franchise on this list, I promise. In the decade of the 1980s, there was no other movie that embodied unbridled testosterone more than Predator. The film featured a cavalcade of greased up beefcakes, two of whom would become U.S. governors, no less! Strip away the memes and classic lines like, “I ain’t got time to bleed,” and you are left with a tight little sci-fi action movie where a group of soldiers face off against an alien threat with far superior technology (this will become familiar). Any one of these characters could have been the ultimate “Doomguy,” but our man, Arnold, is the clear inspiration for sweaty man-meat fighting the armies of Satan.
Director John McTiernan was convicted of lying to the F.B.I. and spent 10 months in a prison camp.
12. Men in Black (1997)
I know you may be asking yourself, “what does an action-comedy featuring a sharp dressed Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones have to do with Doom?” For starters, the weaponry in Men in Black is clearly influenced by some of the more over the top guns you see in Doom. The Noisy Cricket is a distant cousin to the BFG 9000, as both cause lifeforms to explode with a mere press of a button. MiB also features a clandestine organization protecting the Earth from unsavory creatures beyond. Finally, Tommy Lee Jones’ Agent Kay is what Doomguy might have been had he gone into the administrative side of government.
Men in Black is based on a little-known comic series published by Aricel Comics that ran for three issues in 1990.
11. Pandorum (2009)
The first response one has when playing Doom for the first time is dislocation and confusion. In the original game, your character starts out in an empty waiting room on the moon. The story of the game is revealed piecemeal as you find out about what experiments are really going on. In Pandorum, that sense of tension lasts throughout the entire movie. The main character, Corporal Bowers, wakes up – after an undetermined time in hyper-sleep – covered in goo. As he explores the bowels of the massive interstellar vessel he is on, he quickly realizes that something has gone a little ca-ca. Mutants, cannibal chefs, and Norman Reedus covered in motor oil are just some of the encounters Bowers has as he tries desperately to recover his memory of an ill-fated mission.
Pandorum was produced by the director and studio of the Resident Evil franchise.
10. Spectral (2016)
One of the few movies on this list where science saves the day rather than creates the problem, Spectral features a covert unit of special forces fighting insurgents in Moldova. The gear used by the soldiers is reminiscent of the space marine aesthetic seen in Doom. Our hero in this tale is a scientist who at the beginning is shown developing tools to evaporate an enemy’s water supply. This knowledge comes into play later as soldiers witness spectral beings killing troops on the battlefield. After a siege and consequent escape, these “ghosts” are explained and dealt with by SCIENCE! . . . And pulse rifles.
Spectral was Netflix attempting their first in-house blockbuster with a budget of 70 million dollars.
9. I Am Legend (2007)
There have been multiple adaptations of Richard Matheson’s novel, I Am Legend, first published in 1954. The movie featuring Will Smith is by far the most successful of those adaptations and shares some striking similarities to Doom. Both feature a protagonist in isolation fighting off subhuman creatures. The main difference between the two is that I Am Legend takes place not in a claustrophobic space station or moon base, but rather in New York City post apocalypse. There are plenty of frightening creatures currently lurking about the subways of NYC so imagine what a plague would do to them. Good luck, Will!
The first big screen attempt at adapting I Am Legend starred Charlton Heston in the Will Smith role and was released in 1971.
8. Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008)
The character of Hellboy is a switch of roles concerning the traditional Doom Guy. Instead of a super soldier taking on the Barons of Hell, you have a wise cracking, cigar chewing, demon that’s fighting the forces of evil. In Hellboy II, Hellboy finds himself fighting against a rogue elvish prince named Nuada. Nuada’s mission is to restore the beings and elements of the natural world to their rightful place. With evil blue faeries, trolls, and the Angel of Death, Hellboy II borrows from much of the same source material that inspired Doom.
While the Hellboy franchise never took off for director Guillermo Del Toro, the Mexican born director did receive long overdue Oscar for The Shape of Water. A reboot of Hellboy released in 2019 starring David Harbour of Stranger Things.
7. Overlord (2018)
The most recent movie on the list, Overlord not only shares commonalities with our beloved Doom, but also the granddaddy of FPS, Wolfenstein 3D. Overlord starts off as a typical WWII movie with a group of soldier troops attempting to blow up a radio tower just before the invasion of Normandy, only to find that those pesky Nazis are up to their occult shenanigans again, trying to raise the dead and all. The movie does a great job of slowly revealing the horrific experiments going on underneath the local church and some of the creatures look straight out of Doom. Like a combination of Resident Evil and The Dirty Dozen, Overlord fuses genres in a way not seen this side of the Atlantic.
Overlord takes its title from the codename, Operation Overlord, which was the name for the Allies invasion of Normandy in 1944.
6. Dredd (2012)
Much like Doom Guy, Judge Dredd is a man whose only impulse is completing his mission, no matter the odds. In Dredd, (not to be confused with the 1995 Sylvester Stallone debacle, Judge Dredd), Karl Urban plays the title character as a literally faceless warrior intent on mowing down the hordes criminals in his way. Borrowing elements from The Raid: Redemption, we see our protagonist in a futuristic apartment block, making his way floor by floor to the cartel queen who resides at the top. The structure of the film feels like a video game with the progression through levels culminating in a boss fight. Unlike the first version of Judge Dredd, when this Dredd utters the line, “I am the law,” the required pants-wetting follows.
Like the British comic it is based on, the character of Dredd never reveals his face and keeps his helmet on the entire film.
5. Riddick (2013)
Riddick is more in the style of the original Pitch Black than the confusing Chronicles of Riddick. With this “back-to-basics” approach, the film successfully captures the sardonic brutality of the title character and asks the question, “what if Riddick had a dog?” The first third of the movie contains virtually no dialogue as Riddick is stranded on a planet that he was told was Furia, (spoiler, it’s not). Needing to catch a ride, he sends out a beacon that draws the attention of two groups of bounty hunters and gory good times are had by all. Vin Diesel would make a good Doom Guy in a reboot as showcased here with his physical presence and muted facial expressions carrying the film. If the film followed the plot of the game, Diesel wouldn’t even have to mumble his lines.
Vin Diesel prepares for another night of D&D…
4. Resident Evil (2002)
One of the few video game movies to spawn a franchise, Resident Evil was a strong reflection of the video game industry at the time: mad science run amok, corporations mutating people for profit, zombie dogs, and, perhaps worst of all, Nu Metal. Milla Jovovich plays Alice, created for the film, as a combination of Doom Guy and Ripley from the Alien franchise. Little did anyone know that this would be only the first in a six-film franchise.
Milla Jovovich liked her director so much she married him in 2009.
3. Resident Evil: Extinction (2007)
By the third film in the Resident Evil franchise, Alice is a fully realized badass who takes no shit from hillbillies in a Utah TV station or the undead. While many legitimate criticisms have been made of the Resident Evil films, Milla Jovovich’s charisma is undeniable in these movies. With this entry, the series breaks away from the video games and begins to forge its own identity. Extinction follows the events of Resident Evil: Apocalypse and has much more of a Fallout kind of vibe with Alice wandering the desert wasteland after the T-Virus has wiped out most of the planet. Like the UAC in the Doom games, Umbrella Corporation can’t leave well enough alone and keeps experimenting with the undead. What ever happened to the traditional company funeral?
The end of civilization is no reason for a woman to cast away her garter belts…
2. Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
Edge of Tomorrow (or Live, Die, Repeat depending on your region), is the culmination of the mechanized super soldier seen in video games over the past 25 years. What makes Edge of Tomorrow unique is that the protagonist is a public relations officer for the US Army and not the grim and gritty super soldier we are accustomed to (that role is instead played by Emily Blunt). Tom Cruise plays Major Cage as an individual in over his head as his squad prepares for a second Normandy Invasion in exoskeleton suits. This hardware is a combination of Ripley’s powerlifter from Aliens and the mech suits worn in The Matrix: Revolutions. As powerful as this technology may be, the movie makes a point to show that it becomes a coffin when in the wrong hands. Like the experience of playing Doom for the first time, Edge of Tomorrow follows Major Cage as he learns the alien army’s pattern through dying and starting over twenty-four hours prior to his demise. This leads to some hilarious death scenes as we see the main character come closer and closer to his objective with each attempt.
While not the box-office smash the studio was hoping for, Edge of Tomorrow did receive a lot of praise from those who saw it and a sequel is currently in pre-production.
1. Blade (1998)
It is somewhat fitting that our list concludes with the movie that gave birth to not only the modern superhero genre, but the current style of action movies in general. Blade came out a full year before The Matrix and at the height of Doom’s popularity. By 1998 Doom had spawned multiple sequels, been ported to multiple consoles, and offended multiple parental watchdog groups. Blade capitalized by using a little-known Marvel character to launch a film franchise centered around a vampire hunter who protects humanity from the evil, bloodsucking underbelly of vampire clans bent on taking over the world. Oh, and he has guns, lots of guns. Watching Wesley Snipes as Blade mow down and cut apart faceless throngs of nosferatu is a treat for action and horror fans alike.
Wesley Snipes spent three years in a medium security prison from 2010-2013 for tax evasion.
