Doom and Doomer:
Doomkopf.com Movie Reviews

Fin Fang Doom, Jim Doom and Doom DeLuise discussed the film adaptation of the Frank Miller graphic novel.

JIM DOOM: Well I’ve never read 300, so I can’t assess this movie as an adaptation. But as something that sought out to be a testosterone-fueled action and fighting movie, I thought it was awesome.

And as something attempting to bring the energy of comic book art to life, I thought it was amazing.

FIN FANG DOOM: 300 definitely succeeded as an action movie. The battle scenes were just great fun to watch. But I felt it was trying to be much, much more than just an action movie, and in that respect it didn’t live up…

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Jim Doom and Doom DeLuise sit down to discuss Marc Webb’s Spider-Man reboot.

DOOM DELUISE: So, it’s been awhile since The Amazing Spider-Man came out.

I thought the special effects are great in this thing, better than they have been in any previous Spider-Man movie, and I like Andrew Garfield’s portrayal of Peter Parker / Spider-Man. However, the small tweaks they made to the plot leave this movie as possibly the worst adaptation of Spider-Man in any media I’ve ever seen.

JIM DOOM: I do want you to explain what you mean by that, but before we jump too far into specifics, I just want to open by saying I enjoyed this movie quite a bit, but I have probably an odd way of assessing that, which I’ll happily go into later. But yeah, overall, I liked it.

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Jim Doom and Doom DeLuise bicker about the latest installment in the build toward The Avengers, Captain America: The First Avenger.

DOOM DELUISE: I don’t want to be rude, but it was like you were ignoring half of what I was saying and then faulting my logic and trying to catch me in contradictions.

JIM DOOM: Is this the start of the review?

DOOM DELUISE: …while fully ignoring almost everything I was saying.

JIM DOOM: Well, I wasn’t trying to catch you in contradictions. I thought you were contradicting yourself, and I couldn’t latch onto what your actual problem with the movie was. So there was no trying to catch contradictions. They were landing in my lap.

Perfect segue — I wasn’t understanding you, so why don’t you say “Okay, let’s talk about some specifics.”

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Doom DeLuise, Jim Doom, Colonel Doom and a bunch of other people join in a discussion about the highly-anticipated sequel to Batman Begins.

DOOM DeLUISE: I didn’t feel it much during the movie, but after I left and realized we had about two hours worth of travel time ahead of us to get home, it dawned on me. That movie was really friggin’ long.

Still, though, that was really enjoyable. A great experience.

JIM DOOM: I’ve thought of a lot of things that didn’t make a lot of sense or were kind of flimsy in their logic in the 6 hours since coming home, but that was only after thinking about what I had just seen. While I was watching it, I was totally wrapped up in it. There were a few times I became aware of how long the movie was getting, but on the whole it nearly fulfilled my unrealistic expectations…

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Jim Doom and Doom DeLuise sit down for a frank discussion of the highly anticipated conclusion to Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy.

DOOM DELUISE: Ok, so Nolan’s Batman Trilogy is over. I don’t know about you, but this conclusion isn’t at all what I expected, but we can get back to that.

Overall, all things considered, would you say this is a satisfying final chapter, or did you leave the theater wanting more from it, or, at least, something different?

JIM DOOM: My gut reaction was disappointment. I won’t say necessarily that it’s not what I wanted, but I wanted to leave with the feeling I left with after seeing The Dark Knight, and I didn’t get that. That said, the more I thought about it, the more I guess I appreciated it as the closing chapter to the trilogy.

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Jim Doom and Doom DeLuise discuss the Nicolas Cage take on the motorcycle-riding spirit of vengeance.

JIM DOOM: Well let me say that I have lost all sympathy for Mark Steven Johnson. I watched Daredevil, thought it was entertaining but bad, but then I watched the DD Director’s cut where he talked about all these lame stuff that the producers wanted to add in to make it more “Hollywood.”

DOOM DELUISE: Like a plot?…

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Doom DeLuise and Jim Doom take on the Incredible Hulk’s return to the big screen after the 2005 movie that never happened.

DOOM DELUISE: The new Incredible Hulk movie sought to reinvigorate a character that was pretty bungled in his first go ’round in movie form, ala Batman Begins’ attempt to reboot that character a few summers ago. Batman Begins was successful for a variety of reasons, and the sequel to that, The Dark Knight, is one of the most anticipated movies of the summer. Do you think the Incredible Hulk succeeded in what it was trying to accomplish, and do you think sequels will be in the wings, or was this just another big green dud?

JIM DOOM: Well, yeah, it definitely rebooted the character…

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Jim Doom and Doom DeLuise discuss Iron Man’s cinematic debut.

JIM DOOM: A few days ago, you left me a voicemail that said that “I just saw Iron Man, and not to spoil anything, but it’s my favorite movie of all time ever, and it’s the best thing that’s ever been created by mankind, even better than everything.”

Care to elaborate?

DOOM DELUISE: Certainly. Human beings, aka homo sapiens, evolved over many generations from monkeys. Since their development, they’ve come up with many amazing inventions, creations, works of art, etc. The wheel stands out as a good one, for example. The movie, “Iron Man,” starring Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark, is, to date, the greatest accomplishment humans have achieved…

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Jim Doom and Doom DeLuise discuss the original animated feature, released to DVD in February 2010.

DOOM DeLUISE: So last week, Jim Doom and I watched the newest movie from DC Animation, “Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths.” Big picture, overall, what were your thoughts? Better or worse than previous efforts from DC’s animation department?

JIM DOOM: Big picture, I’d say that I keep hoping for DC to learn from the faults of previous movies, I keep going into these movies waiting for this to be the one I enjoy, and I keep coming away from them hating them for the same reasons.

I feel like we are long past the point of broken-record status on these things, but once again, we’ve got a DC animated movie that thinks you can make a really stupid story mature by adding blood, death and sexual references…

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Doom DeLuise and Jim Doom discuss the animated adaptation of Darwyn Cooke’s “New Frontier” miniseries, released to DVD in March 2008.

Doom DeLuise: Hello, everybody. Welcome to our latest joint review of the new WB-produced direct-to-DVD animated version of the Darwyn Cooke story “New Frontier.” I’m here with my fellow blogging cohort Jim Doom to discuss our thoughts on the flick.

To start with, going into this movie, what was your knowledge of the New Frontier story? Had you read the miniserieseses? I suppose my question is, what were your expectations upon sitting down?

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Jim Doom and Doom DeLuise discussed the film adaptation of the Mark Millar graphic novel.

DOOM DELUISE: A couple of nights ago, you sent me a text message that read, “Holy crap, Kickass is amazing.” Care to expand on that? What do you think worked so well about this movie?

JIM DOOM: Well, to start with, I think if we’d have had this discussion Saturday night instead of right now, things would be a little different.

But I can’t deny that I loved the movie and more specifically, I loved the experience of watching the movie.

I knew nothing of the source material. I don’t have the grudge against Mark Millar that many seem to have, but I’m no huge fan either. But something co-created by John Romita, Jr. doesn’t exactly inspire me either. So I’d never had even the slightest interest in picking up the books…

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Jim Doom and Doom DeLuise discuss the latest and not-so-greatest reboot of the Punisher franchise, starring Ray Stevenson as the title character.

JIM DOOM: DeLuise — you are one of the few fans of the previous Punisher movie. I didn’t see it. Overall, without getting into too many specifics yet, how would you compare this take against that one? Was there anything about this movie in a big-picture sense that struck you as Marvel’s rationale for rebooting the Punisher film franchise?

DOOM DELUISE: Yes. While the last one featured a brooding Tom Jane as the title character, the rest of the movie was, tonally, pretty brightly colored. This one seemed to want to distance itself by taking the setting to NYC (instead of Miami) and making everything darker and grittier and more violent…

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Fin Fang Doom, Jean-Claude Van Doom, Colonel Doom and Jim Doom discuss the third installment in the Spider-Man movie series, released in May 2007.

Arguably the biggest movie of the year, Spider-Man 3, opened last Friday to record numbers. Naturally, all of us Doomers took in the spectacle. What’d we all think? Well, here’s what four of us thought, at least.

Jim Doom: My criticism is that the movie lacked the depth and sophistication of the previous two movies. Spider-Man 1 and 2 were good movies, whereas Spider-Man 3 was good for the modern genre of the superhero movie. Its level of unnecessary camp and emotional shallowness was more reminiscent of Fantastic Four or X-Men 3 than either of the first two Spider-Man movies…

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Jim Doom and Doom DeLuise discuss the adaptation of Will Eisner’s creation, as written and directed by Frank Miller, released in theatres at the tail-end of 2008. It was not a pretty sight. Proceed with caution.

JIM DOOM: So. We just saw The Spirit.

DOOM DELUISE: Unfortunately, you are correct.

I want my money back.

JIM DOOM: I would imagine that its December 25 release date inadvertently resulted in a record for the highest number of people to curse Jesus on his birthday.

DOOM DELUISE: Happy birthday, Jesus. Hope you like crap!…

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Doom DeLuise and Jim Doom discuss the animated adaptation of the Death of Superman storyline, released to DVD in September, 2007.

DOOM DELUISE: You didn’t think we could pass up doing a “Doom and Doomer” on a movie with Doom in the title, did you? Jim and I even sat through 75 minutes of this so we could bring you Doomkopf’s “Doomsday” Doom and Doomer.

Ok, to start off with, let me ask you, what were you expecting from this movie going into it?

JIM DOOM: I was expecting the Superman equivalent of “Mask of the Phantasm.”

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Jim Doom and Doom DeLuise discuss the latest lead-in to The Avengers film, starring Chris Hemsworth as the God of Thunder.

JIM DOOM: So Thor.

I’m not sure what to say to open this other than that I didn’t read much of anything Thor related ever except for when he’d show up in big crossovers and get killed or something.

So I feel that my thoughts are solely based in reflections on Thor: the movie and not Thor: the comic book adaptation.

What’s your Thor background going into this?

And feel free to be long-winded because I need another beer.

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Fin Fang Doom and Jim Doom discussed the Turtles’ CGI-fueled return to the big screen in March, 2007.

JIM DOOM: I came into TMNT with the background of being someone who never read the comics, loved the cartoons, and thought the live action movies were pretty awful. And while there were things about TMNT that I didn’t like or wish would have been done differently, I thought it was trying to be a fun kids’ action movie and did a great job of it.

When you’re looking at franchise adaptations, one of the big things is “Did it kill the characters?” The live action movies did for me. This definitely didn’t.

FIN FANG DOOM: I think the main reason i TMNT succeeded is what you just pointed out: the creators of the movie knew what kind of a movie they were making and played that up. TMNT was a kids movie, and instead of trying to bog it down with an overly-complicated plot or unneccesary character development, they just leapt right into a fun action adventure…

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Jim Doom and Doom DeLuise discuss the Zak Snyder-directed big-screen adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ masterpiece.

JIM DOOM: So I already wrote about what I thought Tuesday night. Want to give me a similar overview of what you thought and we can jump into specifics after that?

DOOM DeLUISE: Sure. Like you mentioned, virtually every important part of the comic book is in the movie, oftentimes word-for-word or shot-for-shot. The amount of effort it took to hit all the high notes should be pointed out, to begin with, and applauded. Also, the fact that Snyder was able to convince the studio to go through with the ending, to give him so much leeway in terms of what he got to throw on screen, is also very commendable…

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Doominator and Doom DeLuise discuss the latest direct-to-DVD animated DC feature, this time starring the Amazon Princess Diana in her feature-length film debut, released in February of 2009.

DOOMINATOR: So, Doom, we recently perfectly legally watched the direct to DVD Wonder Woman movie.

I find myself with a few words swimming in my head.

DOOM DELUISE: Felony?

DOOMINATOR: None of them are “Oscar.”…

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Doom DeLuise and Doom, Where’s My Car discuss the origin story of the X-Men, starring James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender.

DOOM DELUISE: This past weekend, X-Men: First Class came out, and the two of us went and saw it together on Sunday. Immediately after leaving the theatre, what were some of your initial impressions, as far as what worked, what things you enjoyed, and what you felt came up short?

DOOM, WHERE’S MY CAR?: Well, overall I’d say it was a good movie, very enjoyable, but a bit too long.

DD: It clocks in at 132 minutes, for the record.

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Jim Doom and Doom DeLuise discuss the origin story of the enigmatic X-Man; reprising his role from the X-Men franchise, Hugh Jackman stars as Wolverine.

DOOM DeLUISE: So Wolverine came out on Friday, and I think it’s safe to say that most people had some serious reservations about it, considering all the negative reviews the bootleg had received. Now that you’ve had a few days to think about it, what’s your general reaction to the movie?

JIM DOOM: Well I think it’s worth stating that I had extremely low expectations for this, based on X-Men 3, the previews I’d seen, the reviews that I’d read and my attitude toward Wolverine’s origin. I thought X-Men 3 was terrible; the previews made this look like it was basically going to just be another X-Men superhero team movie when it’s supposed to be about Wolverine’s origin – which I’d consider more “black ops” oriented; the reviews I’d read criticized what they saw as excessive attempts to inject humor in the movie, which I hate; and I always thought one of the best things about Wolverine was the mystery surrounding his past….

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