#don’t even ask me about the year John Cena had in 2004

[are-we-really-doing-this]

Word Life, y’all 🧼

[mikemoon]

( choi yeonjun, cis man ) have you seen MICHAEL “MIKE” MOON ? i heard HE is a COMPUTER SCIENCE MAJOR at SAN VERTO COLLEGE and an EMPLOYEE at HALL OF FILM. they’re 22 years old and they’ve been living in san verto for 6 YEARS. they tend to be CARE-FREE & ADVENTUROUS, but rumor has it they can also be GRUMPY & CLUMSY. [ tally, 25, gmt+4, she/her ] @foolsstarters​

tw // mentions of depression, cheating, divorce, underage drinking and smoking

michael moon, born myungjun moon –– choi yeonjun fc

birthday: september 9, 1998 - 22 yrs old ; virgo

cis man, he/him, bisexual

born and raised in philadelphia, pennsylvania

mike grew up being an only child, and always around the company of his mother in their house. his father was always traveling back and forth from south korea to the states for work. his parents have met at work on one of his father’s trips to the states, and they fell in love. his mother being american-born, she couldn’t really leave philadelphia. she loved it there. so they decided to keep it a long distance relationship.

sometime during those fleeting meetings, she had gotten pregnant with michael. and of course, his father spoiled them both, giving them everything they wanted. he never left them to fend for themselves. when the boy was born, his father named him myungjun, and his mother decided to name him michael for his english name. the nicknames jun, mike, and sometimes junnie were often heard whenever his parents or childhood friends called him.

up until mike was five years old in 2004, he’s lived with his mother, while his father was leaving and coming back for a week or two. but that year, he’s finally moved to the states and stayed with them for longer nights. he even finally married michael’s mother. of course, he still disappeared for a few days or weeks on end for work.

but that was also the year michael’s mother found out that her husband was with another woman. michael has never seen his mother break down like that before. sadly, the young boy was peering into the room when the fight happened and witnessed everything. his mother made her partner choose between the two women, and he eventually told her that he was going to divorce his first wife for her, and appeared to have gone through with his promise. because after that incident, he’s been around more often.

by early 2015, when michael had just turned 16, his mother had gotten a teaching job in ashdown academy, which resulted in their move to san verto, california. meaning, new school and new friends for mike. meanwhile, his dad was still traveling a lot for business and coming back whenever he could.

michael has grown up as a cheerful and energetic child. his friends at any school he went to would tell you how much of a great friend he is, how trustworthy and caring he is. it was so easy for him to make friends anywhere. he was the type of friend who would smile at you and listen to you talk on and on about whatever you liked, and the type who would cheer you on with anything you want to achieve. he wanted everyone to feel included and loved.

so it wasn’t that hard for him to get along with new people once he moved to town. he was a very social person. 

he was also the type of teenager who was out there doing things he wasn’t supposed to. he missed his old friends and his old home, but he wanted to have fun with all the new kids he was befriending. that simply resulted in him going to house parties as an underaged teen to ‘have fun’. his mother didn’t approve of him coming home very late at night, clearly smelling like smoke and alcohol. 

internally he was a depressed mess. of course, no one is completely happy as they grow up. his family was a mess, even if it appeared as fine to everyone else. his family life affected him so much while growing up. mike sometimes could disappear for a few days in his room, and it was always during some of his bad spells.

what made it worse was the day he found out the truth.

it was 2017 when michael walked into his father’s office in their house, looking for him to ask him about something. and instead of finding the man, he found a stack of papers poking from underneath his father’s laptop. upon closer look, they appeared to be divorce papers. michael’s heart sunk, thinking his parents were breaking it off.

michael is a curious kid, he couldn’t help but close the door and read the papers. but what he saw wasn’t his mother’s name, it was another woman. his heart raced, as he put things back where they were and immediately left the room. michael had found out one of his father’s many secrets. he never divorced his first wife all those years ago. he lied and somehow stayed with both women without suspicion... well, until now. clearly the other woman was breaking it off for a reason. 

michael couldn’t help his curiosity. he came back to the room later that night and snapped as many pictures as he could of evidence he could find. he even found his father’s phone (which was easy to figure out the password of) and found a plethora of pictures of the man with a different family, different kids and a different partner. he airdropped the pictures to himself to avoid leaving any traces behind and quickly left again.

a quick search on facebook, and he managed to find the first wife. it was easy with the name and pictures he had. if anything, michael prided himself on being a good internet detective... or stalker. he spent everyday trying to find the rest of the family on the internet. he found the woman’s young daughter on instagram and twitter, along with her older son’s accounts as well. it felt weird. it was a constant “now what?” for michael. he’s found them. what was he going to do now? he couldn’t just message them and tell them everything. and he couldn’t break his mother’s heart by letting her know.

except he had to let her know. he could never live with the fact that he knew his father was betraying her this entire time. and so michael told her everything, and after comforting her all night when she broke down yet again, she immediately ended things and asked for a divorce. now it was just michael and his mother, all alone. and for once, having to get by on their own.

thankfully they were safe, with his mother’s amazing money management skills, and the job she got at the academy, they managed to live their regular lives despite the heavy feeling of a broken family looming around them. the two just wanted to be happy again.

michael spent the next few years trying to lead a normal life. his mental health had gotten worse after everything he’s found out. he went to college, and he continued trying to do well in school. he really wasn’t the best when it came to grades, but he was trying his best.

and truthfully, he couldn’t help but make a few spare accounts on some social medias to follow his father’s other family.

but he eventually decided to just let it go, assuming they definitely knew about his mother and himself, which would explain the first divorce. so he decided to put it in the past and move on.

his mother has moved on as well. she found herself someone who actually cares about her so much (mike’s stupid ass has done a secret background check to make sure this dude wasn’t another cheater lmaoo) and now mike isn’t an only child anymore. it’s been 2 years since his little sister yuna was born, and he loves her so much. he still isn’t used to the idea of a new fatherly figure in his life, but he’s.... getting there. 

little dumb hcs

mike majors in computer science at san verto college, with a concentration in game development and design

hes a lil gamer boy,,, u KNOW he’s that annoying dude with a gamer chair that has a sound system in it khjkh

he posted a few videos on youtube but rly just ditched the channel after like a month. he still posts whenever he feels like it tho and it’s usually just.... messy gaming videos or opinions no one asked for

his dad’s dumb ass still doesn’t know it was mike who exposed him to his mother. he thinks she found the divorce papers on her own. therefore.... mike still gets money from his dad on a monthly basis and gets to keep the car he bought him for his 18th birthday lmaooooo a win 

you probably heard me say this before but.... theres a hc that mike is allergic to eggs. simply bc the idea of him shopping in the vegan section is funny to me 

this boy has a love for frogs ? idk where the obsession came from but you bet you’re gonna see a cute lil frog sticker on everything he owns. he doodles them on everything too ? it’s a habit at this point. he also knows random little facts about them and tells them to anyone who didnt ask for them 

. embarrassing but.. this dude... omg.... a big sana stan.... he has a photocard collection.... he went to a twice concert like 5 times.... dont be surprised if you see a feel special sana photocard in his phonecase.... im embarrassed of him 

he also has a hyunjin mcdonalds hashbrown photocard framed that a friend gave to him for christmas bc.. it’s a rare card,,, and you can see it on a table by the door when you walk into his apartment 😭

mike also has a habit of buying things he doesn’t need ?? he has a plushie collection that has been growing since he was young, and now is getting bigger with the rise of squishmallows

there’s this random hc where he drunk bought a cardboard cutout of john cena ,,,, don’t ask,,, it’s currently guarding his room back at his mom’s house djfhdj

can you tell mike is my most embarrassing , most chaotic character,, 

also he moved out after graduating school and when he started to attend college,,,, gimme some roomies pls

connection ideas ??

michael’s childhood friends; could’ve gone to the same school back in philly before he moved away ?? 

friends he made when he moved to town?? mike is very social and was... kinda popular in school, i’d say. he made friends with basically anyone he found interesting

michael’s ex; they could’ve ended on a bad note, or even on a good one and ended up being friends. im really up for plotting anything.

michael’s best friend; PLEASE i love wholesome best friend plots. it doesn’t matter if they met in san verto or philly

roomies pls !!! i would love it if he could have some roommates who have to deal with his very . peculiar decorating habits 

co workers ?? customers ? regulars ? he works at hall of film ! 

like this to plot or hmu !

[rawiswhore]

*Insert Male Wrestler* x Fem Reader- “Party On Your Pussy”

What male wrestler?

Find out.

________________________________________________________________

Usually, you hate facial hair.

It sometimes makes a man uglier, especially handlebar and porn moustaches, and hides their gorgeous features, and you even wonder what one of these men would look like without facial hair.

But, there are a few men out there who are surprisingly handsome with facial hair.

Who are they?

Shawn Michaels, Jeff Hardy, Christian, Test, CM Punk, Rob Van Dam, Val Venis and Brian Pillman.

And they all just so happen to be wrestlers.

Even though you prefer Shawn without facial hair than with it, sometimes when he returned to the WWF in 1999, like when he cut a promo at Triple H and Chyna, and when he stood in the ring with Debra and Sable during an evening gown match while he was dressed in black, how HOT did he look? Oy vey.

Jeff doesn't have that much facial hair besides those sideburns, but during his original run in TNA in 2004 and 2005, he had a little soul patch of facial hair in a vertical line going down his chin.

Test and Brian Pillman are who you wonder what they'd look like without facial hair.

Rob Van Dam and Christian barely have any facial hair, but they have the perfect amount of stubble to chafe your skin.

Val Venis looks sexier without facial hair than with it, though he looks hot with that goatee as well.

Before CM Punk grew a beard and really blew up in popularity with that pipe bomb he made at John Cena, he was an up and coming wrestler in both the WWE and the revived ECW in 2006, and how hot was he during the late 2000's? Oy vey.

One night in 1999, when Shawn returned to the WWF for a brief period, you invited him back to a hotel room and told him what you want him to do to you.

In the summer of 1999, when Val had a lot of facial hair, you invited him to a hotel room and told him what you want him to do to you.

If it's Jeff, Test, Christian, Brian, Rob, or CM Punk you want, for Jeff the year is 2005, Test it's 1999/2000, Christian is 2000, Brian is 1996, Rob is late 90's/early 2000's and CM Punk is late 2000's.

Jeff didn't have any face paint on his face, Christian and Test had their long hair hanging down and not tied up in a ponytail.

When you explained to him what you wanted, you pressed your body on his, slowly swaying your body left and right, putting both of your hands on Shawn/Christian/Rob's facial stubble.

Your thumb rubbed across the top of Val/Test/Brian's goatee.

You could feel his erection pressing through his pants and trying to poke you in your vulva.

When you got into bed, you didn't have any bottoms on: no pants/skirts and definitely no underwear, and had your legs spread wide open.

He was lying on his stomach on the mattress in between your legs, his face was buried in your pussy, and you could feel his rough facial stubble/facial hair on your vagina.

Shawn/Christian/Rob's short, sharp facial stubble was poking and chafing your twat, but you didn't mind it.

Jeff/Brian/Test/Val/CM Punk's facial hair was chafing and tickling your vagina, Brian/Test/Val/even Jeff have facial hair that feels like an unkempt toothbrush.

The tip of his tongue poked into your twathole, where a gooey, salty white cream was inside your cunt.

The tip of his tongue could taste that salty white pussy juice in your twat, and he wanted to it that up.

You could feel his tongue inside your pussy, but you didn't mind it.

Your hand was behind his head, your fingers buried through his hair, and pulled him into your twat.

His nose could smell and inhale the scent of your pussy, your cunt smelled salty but delicious.

He flicked his tongue a bit when his tongue was up your pussy hole, tasting that little cream in your vaginal hole.

He probably isn't going to put his entire tongue inside your cunt hole, but maybe later.

His tongue slid backwards a few inches until it left your pussy hole, only for his tongue to lick up the middle of your vagina, to where your clit is.

Your clit was in between his lips, in his mouth, and he proceeded sucking on your clit.

He kissed your clit like it was your lips, making out with your clitoris.

Jeff/CM Punk leaned their faces until their facial hair was touching your pussy, Jeff's bristles were rough and dry.

"Ohhhhhhhhhhh, ohhhhhhh yeaaaaaaaaaaahhhh" you moaned and cried, your eyes closed and your fingers grabbing his hair, but not too hard "Just suck my clit!"

Val groaned while he sucked your clit, his lips made your clit buzz and vibrate from that groaning.

He could nearly confess what he feels about your pussy, how juicy and yummy it is.

Brian/Val has such thick hair, perfect for your fingers to get lost into and grab onto.

He unwrapped his mouth off of your clit, which bugged you, but he began to flick the tip of his tongue on your clit, licking it, licking under your clitoral hood.

You can feel the sensation while he licks your clitoris.

"Mmmmmm!!!" you mumbled, biting your bottom lip as he licked your clit. "Don't stop!!!"

Even though he's licked your pussy many times, he can't wait until his tongue travels and roams all over your twat, tasting your juicy cunt.

His tongue rolled over your clitoral hood, sometimes in a vertical line up and down, other times horizontally across.

Your fingers were gliding down through his hair, your fingers messing up Rob's ponytail without pulling his hairtie off.

Your pussy's getting wetter and wetter while his tongue strokes your clit, and blood has been filling your clit up even before you took your bottoms off.

You feel like you can feel your vagina getting wetter, like it wants to release these drops through your vaginal pores.

His mouth is lubricating your clit with his saliva, sometimes he's leaning into your clit so much to kiss it, either by puckering up and kissing your clitoris, other times to put your clit in his mouth and suck on it.

"Ohhhh God, Daddy!!!" you whined and whimpered.

You hope the people next door won't hear you sexually moaning while he's trying to make you cum.

Test/Val's facial bristles above his lip are draping over your clitoral hood, chafing it, his bristles feeling rough over your hood.

Test, Val, Shawn, Christian and even Jeff Hardy and Triple H were in the WWF at the same time they had facial hair, and what if they all one night, were going to "run a train" on you where they all eat your twat out while they chafe your pussy with their facial hair.

He may as well confess it, since his tongue was up your pussy hole...

"You taste so fucking good" he confessed, his voice husky and warm, like a purr. "I can't wait to eat you out"

As his tongue caressed your clitoris, his hands caressed and stroked up and down your thighs, you could feel chills and tingles when he caressed your thighs.

Chills were running down your spine, whereas your head was arching back and forth.

You weren't faking this orgasm, he really did make you feel this way.

As you're moaning over and over, Brian Pillman is tempted to pick up the phone by the bed and call his friends, proving to them that he really is giving you cunnilingus.

CM Punk's hair was a little greasy while your fingers ran down his hair, whereas Christian's long locks were so silky, perfect to run your fingers through.

Brian/Val growled and groaned a bit while his tongue licked your clitoris, Brian acting like the crazy madman he plays not just in the WWF, but also ECW.

His growls made your clit buzz and vibrate.

"Press your tongue on my clit!" you ordered him to do.

He listened to you, where he pressed the tip of his tongue down on your clit, where your G-spot is underneath your crotch.

"Could you lick while pressing your tongue?" you asked him.

He could try to do that, and that's what he tried.

Did it work?

A little.

"You're so fucking hot" you moaned and expressed. "You're making me so fucking horny!"

He grinned a little bit hearing that.

Even though you have a sensitive clitoris, your nipples and areolas are even more sensitive, and it feels so good to rub and scratch them.

You're tempted to rub your nipples and areolas while he's eating you out, maybe it might even make you cum, though your fingers are already in his hair.

Sometimes, he even nibbled a little bit on your clit, not biting it too hard, but biting it gently.

Your clit and your vagina is so squishy and soft, like a mattress.

He was really building you up when he licked and sucked your clit, you felt like you were getting higher and higher with every lick he made, until you reached the very top.

"I-I'm gonna cum!!!" you cried out and exclaimed, feeling like you've reached the top of the hill.

Pretty soon, you creamed and squirted out of your twat, not enough to squirt like in some porn, but you did cum, and your vaginal hole leaked and poured some white gooey cum out, your clit pounding and beating like a heartbeat afterwards.

You cried when you came, wonder if he can feel the cum on his facial hair/goatee?

He's got a beard, well, you're tryna wet it.

Your fingers grabbed onto his hair when you came, though you didn't grab his hair too hard enough to hurt him.

Now there's only one place for his tongue to go...

Since you had came, his tongue lolled out of his mouth  and licked up and down the middle of your twat, licking up that salty, clear cum.

His tongue roamed on your pussy, licking up your left pussy flap, feeling the rough texture in that flap, only to shift and slide across your clit and drag the tip of his tongue down your right pussy flap.

Brian's tongue was zigzagging all over your pussy, licking your twat like the madman he plays in the WWF.

He was trying to not be too rough when he ate your twat out.

Test's tongue stroked your pussy very slowly and lovingly, caressing it, he licking your pussy like the mellow character he plays in the WWF.

Shawn/Jeff/Christian/Rob/Val/CM Punk's tongue ate you out normally, their tongues licking your pussy, making sure to taste your twat and make it last on his tongue.

You probably tasted better before you came, but whatever.

His tongue licked up and down the sides of your vagina like a Popsicle, like a paintbrush brushing a picket fence up and down.

Sometimes, the tip of his tongue licked across your pussy back and forth in a horizontal line.

It didn't just lick the sides and corners of your pussy, but also the middle of your twat, licking up and down over and over.

When his tongue was eating your pussy out, he was trying for his facial stubble/goatee to also touch your pussy as well, and sometimes it did.

His facial hair has been rough on your cunt and you want something to ease the pain.

Though, should he move his face a few inches away from your pussy until his facial hair isn't touching your vagina, that way his tongue will lick the parts poked by his facial hair?

Ah well.

There's a reason his face is buried in your pussy right now and not someone whose clean shaven.

Jeff's tongue was licking where his little soul patch was in between your vaginal flaps, his tongue easing the pain when he licked where his facial hair previously was.

Shawn could nearly invite Triple H over to eat your twat out, and Triple H was starting to grow some facial hair again in the summer of 1999.

Trips did look pretty hot in 1999, when Shawn cut a promo at him and Chyna, at least Triple H in the summer of 1999 looked better than he did in 2005/2006 when he had that handlebar walrus moustache.

"You taste so fucking sweet" he expressed, his voice husky, warm and sexy. "So tender, so juicy"

Val was trying to say this like his iconic porn star character he plays in the WWF, his voice gravelly but smooth.

Val groaned and took a deep inhale like he sometimes does when he cuts promos in the WWF, you taste that damn good to him.

That groan and growl he does is kinda unsexy though...

He remembered how his tongue tried to poke inside your twat hole, so he directed his tongue over to your pussy hole, where you creamed and came.

The tip of his tongue poked into your pussy hole, tasting the salty insides, and he managed to try to insert his tongue up your cunt hole.

His tongue curled and rolled together as it entered your pussy hole, feeling the sides of your vagina.

This was very strange, your eyes were bugging out and growing wild.

It's not his penis in your pussy hole or his finger, but his tongue.

Your eyes looked down, only to find him trying to penetrate his tongue in your vaginal hole.

He tried to make the sides of his tongue uncoil and separate while it was inside your twat hole, his tongue was stretching your pussy walls apart.

He tried to also make his tongue thrust back and forth inside your pussy hole like it was his own actual penis.

He gets an A for effort.

[aion-rsa]

What Went Wrong With Dwayne Johnson’s Doom Movie?

https://ift.tt/2W5DgTk

When Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson took to the stage at the Amway Arena in Orlando, Florida on March 29, 2008, few could have predicted what would come next.    

The budding action star was there to induct his father and grandfather into the WWE Hall of Fame, however, at times, his speech felt more like an impromptu comedy roast.    

“There was big controversy with the WWE and illegal torture,” one convoluted gag began. “Apparently they would find Iraqi insurgents, tie them up and make them watch DVD copies of The Marine.”    

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

John Cena, who starred in The Marine, was in the audience that night and took the ribbing in good humor, with his exaggerated on-camera reaction spawning what would come to be known as the “John Cena oh s**t gif”.  

Johnson wasn’t finished though.  

“By the way I made Doom. Did you ever see Doom? Well, you probably didn’t and it’s okay because nobody else did either.”    

Cue laughter.   

Nearly three years on from its release, The Rock could finally laugh about Doom. No one had been laughing when the film first debuted in October 2005 to rank reviews and a poor box office return. 

Film critic Richard Roeper was among those to tear into the film.  

“The performances are awful, the action sequences are impossible to follow, the violence is gratuitous, the lighting is bad and I have my doubts that the catering truck was even up to snuff.”   

He had a point.   

Largely filmed in a series of identical-looking and poorly lit corridors of a generic space station, Doom had the look and feel of a bad Alien knock-off.  Worse still, it bore almost no resemblance to the source material.  

Johnson may be the biggest film star in the world today but back then he was still just another wrestler trying to make the leap into movies. In truth, he was fortunate that Doom didn’t torpedo his chances in the way countless misfiring movies had for other aspiring wrestlers-turned-actors.  

So where did it all go wrong?  

Arnold Schwarzenegger and ILM

Film adaptations of popular video games are famously fraught with difficulties.   

You could probably count the number of good video game movies on one finger – Paul W.S. Anderson’s Mortal Kombat, before you ask.    

But id Software, the developers behind the pioneering Doom franchise, had been hopeful of bucking the trend back in 1994 when Universal first purchased the film rights.   

“I think Doom would be easier to write a script for than, say, Street Fighter,” business manager and co-owner Jay Wilbur told PC Gamer.   

Wilbur’s vision for the movie certainly sounded appealing.   

“I see Arnold Schwarzenegger with all the Doom garb on, Industrial Light & Magic supplying the special effects and the story would be something along the lines of Arnie stationed on Mars when the dimensional gateway opens up and demons flood in…So everybody’s dead – well maybe not everybody, you need a little human interaction and comic relief going on. But mainly, just non-stop seat-of-your-pants sweat-of-your-brow action.”   

Fusing elements of Commando, Total Recall, and the later Arnie effort End of Days, Wilbur’s sketch of a Doom movie sounded perfect – but there were issues from the start.  

According to former CEO Todd Hollenshead, several potential scripts were vetoed by id Software for failing to stay true to the source material.  While Schwarzenegger was approached, plans for the project were ultimately shelved in the wake of the Columbine High School massacre and negative press it generated around the game.   

Doomed Casting

It would be almost a decade before interest in a movie version would be rekindled by producers Lorenzo di Bonaventura and John Wells, who obtained the rights after footage from Doom 3 was shopped to agents from Creative Artists Agency.   

Di Bonaventura enlisted David Callaham, then a novice writer in Hollywood, to pen a script based loosely on a handful of ideas he had pitched during a chance meeting.   

Schwarzenegger, by then, was not only significantly older but also busy as Governor of California. Alternatives were explored. One rumor, neither confirmed nor denied, suggests Vin Diesel was in the frame to star. Ultimately, however, it was Johnson who ended up landing top billing.   

Not that anyone was complaining. Johnson was largely a B-movie star up until that point, making Doom a good fit to potentially take him into the big leagues. There was just one problem though – The Rock didn’t want to play the good guy.   

Producers had originally slated the WWE star to play the film’s main protagonist, Staff Sgt. John “Reaper” Grimm. Johnson had other ideas, though.   

“When I first read the script, and read it for [the part of] John, after I read it I thought wow John is a great character and, of course, the hero of the movie,” Johnson explained at the 2005 San Diego Comic-Con.  “But for some reason I was drawn more to Sarge, I thought Sarge was, to me, more interesting and had a darker side.”   

He agreed to star but only in the role of Sarge, leader of the film’s Rapid Response Tactical Squad sent to Mars and someone who ends up becoming the principal villain.   

Karl Urban, fresh from featuring in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, was cast in his place in what represented the first major misstep.  

Watching the film back now, it’s tempting to wonder whether Doom might have fared better had the two switched roles.  

After all, Johnson has carved a sizeable niche as an all-American good guy in the years since, while roles in Dredd and The Boys highlighted a darker streak to Urban’s repertoire.  

It’s certainly something Wesley Strick, who served as script doctor and ultimately co-writer on the film, concurs with when the notion is put to him.  

“That would work better,” he tells Den of Geek.  “I think you are onto something there. The swap was his idea though and this is all with hindsight.”   

Blame Superman

An experienced screenwriter with credits on Arachnophobia and Martin Scorsese’s Cape Fear, Strick ended up working on Doom as an indirect result of Tim Burton’s failed Superman movie.   

“Lorenzo [di Bonaventura] was head of production at Warner Bros when Tim Burton asked me to come onboard for Superman Lives,” Strick explains.    

“Tim and I and Nicolas Cage cooked up this whole scenario for a Superman movie and we would often walk into Lorenzo’s office to do battle with him, essentially, because he was stubbornly opposed to almost every idea we had,” Strick says. “Consequently, Lorenzo and I really butted heads and sometimes it could get quite ugly…I felt like I might have burned my bridges.”

With Superman years in the past, di Bonaventura called Strick to gauge his interest about working on Doom.

“I really wasn’t interested,” Strick says. “Just because I knew nothing about the game. But I have two sons and they were teenagers so there was a lot of enthusiasm from them. They told me to look into it and were excited about the idea of their dad working on this video game movie. Any project you can do where your kids are involved and excited is fun. So that appealed to me.”   

Strick was also sold on the film’s director, an exciting young Irish filmmaker called Enda McCallion. McCallion had made his name with a series of striking TV adverts (the Metz alcopop ‘Judderman’ campaign) and music videos for the likes of Nine Inch Nails.  

He was being tipped to follow in the footsteps of filmmakers like Jonathan Glazer by transitioning into features.   

“Enda was this up-and-coming new Irish director who was hyped to me as a visionary and someone who was going to bring something very original to the movie. It wasn’t going to just be this piece of product.”   

Big picture stuff

Strick was tasked with simplifying Callaham’s script to ensure it translated into a workable schedule and, crucially, that it could be made within a modest budget of $60–70 million. That meant cuts.  

“The producers looked at it and tried to put together a schedule and realized it was too complicated,” Strick says. “So, I read it and came up with a simple solution. In Callaham’s draft the marines kept going back and forth through this portal. Three times or something. It was unnecessary. They would go over there and then chase back and then regroup and then return to Mars or whatever. I said no, do it once and be done with it. I also had a list of a couple of monsters I thought the movie could do without.”   

The decision to cut several monsters familiar to Doom enthusiasts was a contentious one among fans, with Callaham’s original script featuring both the Cacodemon and Arch-Vile among others. Strick had been through this kind of process before though.   

“This is sort of the big picture stuff,” he says. “You can get a lot of shit from fans when they feel like you are trespassing on their genre and I think that happened to an extent on Doom. People were like ‘how dare you’.”   

He cites his experience on Batman Returns as an example of when the fanboys miss the point.   

“I hadn’t read a comic book since I was 12 and I loved them but I was 37 then,” he says. “Way past comic book age. In my mind, that’s okay because you’re trying to write a movie, not a comic book. You don’t want a comic book fanatic on a job like that – what would they bring to the movie?”   

Read more

Movies

Best Action Movies on Netflix

By Alec Bojalad

Movies

The Terminator: The Many Performances of Arnold Schwarzenegger

By Mark Harrison

Despite ringing the changes, one sequence Strick was determined to retain from Callaham’s script was the five-minute first-person shooter sequence.  

“That was one bit I wanted to keep in no matter what. It was just funny. It had a great attitude and visually it was just delightful. If anyone ever proposed cutting it, I would argue strenuously against that. It was a great idea. Real, in your face.”   

All Change

By the time filming commenced in Prague in the winter of 2004, however, Strick found himself working on a very different film. McCallion had departed the project for reasons unknown. He didn’t respond to our request for an interview.   

In his place came Andrzej Bartkowiak, a seasoned cinematographer who had recently branched out into directing in the early 2000s, helming a trio of Jet Li action movies.   

“I was deeply disappointed when Enda left the project,” Strick admits. “It became the thing that I was assured of at the beginning it wouldn’t be. A more conventional approach to a movie like that. I don’t know what kind of movie Enda would have made but at least there was the possibility with him that it was going to be something special.”   

Strick was also having to contend with issues elsewhere.  

“When Doom moved to Universal, a guy called Greg Silverman became my executive on the project and he didn’t like me. He just always gave me shit,” Strick says. “Once he told me everything I had portrayed about the marines and their tactics was inauthentic. He wanted real, genuine, marine combat tactics.  I went back and did loads of research, read books like Jarhead, and really immersed myself in the whole marine mindset. I did a rewrite where I fixed all of the combat stuff, so it was genuine US marine combat protocol. And he hated it. I tried to explain that was exactly what was happening in Iraq, but he was just like ‘nah’. So we ended up going back to the fake stuff.”   ​

It’s an anecdote that hints at that dreaded but all too familiar issue on disjointed projects of this kind – studio interference – and Strick wasn’t the only one experiencing frustration. In the run-up to the film’s release, his co-writer Callaham had begun interacting with angry Doom fans online, who had heard rumors of the film taking liberties with the source material.   

Writing in a lengthy open letter defending his screenplay, the young writer managed to make things worse.    

“Let me assure you…, that the themes and elements that you love about Doom are ALL represented strongly in the film…just with some new twists,” he wrote.   

Few were convinced, however, particularly after he went on to claim he had watched a “bunch of strangers bastardize” his original vision of the film.   

Strick has some sympathy.   

“As soon as you engage in a fight on the internet, you’ve lost. I don’t think Dave realized that until it happened, but he got the shit kicked out of him by Doom fans. He was determined to defend himself and his movie against all comers and they just kicked him around. But he got back up and got moving again.”   

Callaham certainly did that, going on to pen The Expendables and, most recently, Wonder Woman 1984.  

Strick remains philosophical about his experience on Doom and still has cherished memories of taking his sons to the premiere [“they were in awe of The Rock” ].   

Positives and Negatives

“I thought the film was pretty good. Particularly in the sequence where it becomes like the video game. It’s the one great thing in the movie. Ironically, it’s a movie but it’s at its best when it devolves into pure video game action.”   

Bartkowiak took the brunt of the criticism for the film’s visual issues – visual effects wiz Jon Farhat took charge of the much-lauded first-person shooter sequence.  

Things would get even worse for the experienced cinematographer-turned-director a few years later with his next film, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, which pulled off the ignominious feat of being an even worse video game movie.  

Johnson rode the storm though, eventually hitting A-lister pay dirt with 2011’s Fast Five – a movie that breathed new life into his career and the Fast & Furious franchise as a whole.  

Today, Johnson is able to laugh about Doom, recently claiming its failure was the result of a “video game curse” he successfully broke with Rampage. The jury is still out on that one.   

With a different director, more ambitious budget and the right stars in the right roles, Doom could well have ended up being a great video game movie – but Strick thinks making a truly great video game movie “is next to impossible.”  

It’s about narrative,” he explains. “In a movie, we’re taking you for a ride whereas in a video game you are in the driving seat. So they are two conflicting and competing ideas for what makes a story engaging. Sit back, relax, we’re going to entertain you versus you’re immersed in an environment that you control. I don’t know where you find the center for that where the two opposing ideas co-exist. That’s possibly why the video game sequence is so good. It took on that paradox. You’re watching a video game movie that’s a simulation. It’s a kind of reminder of what the movie could never be.”   

The post What Went Wrong With Dwayne Johnson’s Doom Movie? appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2GguwED