I went to see a sneak preview of Doom tonight. Oh boy. Spoilers are probably here, if you care about that sort of thing. Actually, with Doom, even if you do, you shouldn’t.

How Not To Make a Movie Based on a Videogame

-Completely ignore the premise of the videogame the movie is based on. Actually, no– even better, make sly references to the game’s premise, but also make it very clear that any actual comparisons were written out of the script entirely. That way, fans will know you know the real story, and that you’re not bothering to show it.

-Speaking of writing the script, do it about 29 or 30 times. Make sure a different person does it every time. This will ensure that none of the plotlines are actually related to each other, or even have a beginning or an end.

-During those 29 versions of the script, don’t bother coming up with a better one-liner than “Oh, s***.”

-Make sure you hire the Rock. He’s good at one-liners, so he will probably make something out of that line, though, so give him another later. Random cursing will be fine as well.

-Make it completely unclear as to what’s happening when. This can be easily accomplished by using backgrounds straight from the game, but without any relation to the characters or story at all. Fans of the game will recognize the backgrounds and be delighted. It probably won’t matter to them that the sets fit with the movie at all, they’ll just have fun recognizing things from the game.

-Speaking of recognizing things, make sure you put one (and only one) sequence in the view that the game is known for. You don’t need any other reasons than that, because fans will instantly recognize this game– sorry, movie– as something they know, and they will enjoy it. Sure, it may not tie in with the rest of the movie, and it may be as boring as, well, watching someone play a videogame, but even putting it in there will show that you, at the very least, watched videos of the game for maybe half an hour.

-Make the “hero” unrecognizable and without any appealing or interesting characteristics. If possible, make him even less appealing than the original hero of the videogame. Hopefully, the hero of the game will have shown more expressions in a little box on the bottom of the screen than the “hero” does all movie.

-Make the female lead attractive. Then make her the hero’s sister– gamers get uncomfortable around sexuality.

-We mean it about the one liners. “Holy s***” will be fine. Don’t need to be any more creative than that.

-Put lots of winking references in the movie that it’s based on a game– things like “game on,” “game time,” and “put on your game face,” will do nicely. Gamers aren’t usually intelligent, and they often don’t have long attention spans, so they may at times forget that the movie is based on a game. Remind them. Often. Patronize them, if possible. After all, they’re only gamers.