As we’ve learned time and time again, video game adaptations are always the hardest to accomplish. When you look at the television side, they’ve earned the most respect after HBO’s The Last of Us and recently Amazon’s Fallout, gaining critical acclaim and receiving Emmy nominations. However, when looking back at adaptations for the big screen, they usually struggle to capture the magic of what frequent gamers played before. Throughout Hollywood, they can be placed in specific categories: You got your surprisingly decent (The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Sonic the Hedgehog), forgettable (Uncharted), guilty pleasures (Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat), and unwatchable (Max Payne, Five Nights at Freddy’s, etc.). With the latest in Borderlands, from writer/director Eli Roth, I had an idea but tried my hardest to keep an open mind about a movie I most probably forgot was coming out. No expectations were going into this because none of the marketing looked promising, and hearing nothing about it days before its release indicated it wasn’t looking good. And it’s not surprising, to say the least, that this could hold the title for the worst movie I’ve sat through all year.
What’s the Story: Lilith (Cate Blanchett) is a bounty hunter who is hired by Atlas (Edgar Ramírez), the most powerful man in the universe, to travel to the dangerous planet of Pandora, where he was born to rescue his kidnapped daughter Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt). Once there, she first comes across a robot named Claptrap (voiced by Jack Black), who’s programmed to assist her, and is forced to team up not only with Tina but mercenary Roland (Kevin Hart) and the masked psychopath Krieg (Florian Munteanu) as they must travel across the post-apocalyptic planet to collect specific keys to open a vault containing secret technology to a lost civilization.
The Borderlands video game series from Gearbox Software and 2K has been popular since its launch in 2009. This is coming from someone who hasn’t played any of them and went into this adaptation, wondering if this would be enough to consider trying them out. That’s not the case, even if it was faithful to the games. This has been talked about for almost a decade, and everyone has wondered if it will ever come out after filming completed in 2021. In the worst-case scenario, having a blast with these characters and exploring Pandora will be an average time. Instead, you get a two-hour rip-off of Guardians of the Galaxy and the last two Jumanji movies (in which Black and Hart starred together) I wished I was watching because they’re entertaining. The difference between this movie and those is what Borderlands brings to the table doesn’t attempt to bring heart and thrills in between to feel the least bit immersed in this world.
The generic screenplay from Roth and Joe Crombie (initially by Craig Mazin but asked to remove his name) does a poor job of introducing the audience to this universe when it moves from one scene to another in a rushed manner, whether it’s the needless exposition and dialogue we’ve heard millions of times before. Once Lilith lands on Pandora and her attempt to save Tiny Tina begins, this misfit team goes on their mission together and becomes so uninteresting that it tests my patience due to how boring it is. Everything is all so predictable and repetitive, even a particular reveal that was no surprise.
With a pretty respectable cast attached, it’s a shame they’re all wasted sharing no resemblance of chemistry or building any kind of relationship with each other when it all seemed forced. Out of everybody involved, Blanchett, one of my all-time favorites, seemed to be the only one I thought was trying her damnest with her performance as the anti-hero Lilith. That’s not to say the two-time Oscar-winning actress looked like she could care less about being in this. But a part of me felt she was genuinely enjoying herself, despite her character’s development being underwritten until the plot required to do something about it. Hart, as Roland, seemed out of place, especially when compared to his character’s appearance in the games. One of my friends said Yahya Abdul-Mateen II or Winston Duke would’ve made better choices, and it’s hard to disagree with that since it’s not a role to take him seriously when he’s playing it straight.
The problem with everyone trying their best is that you don’t care about anyone if they’re in peril, from Greenblatt’s Tiny Tina to Jaimie Lee Curtis as Dr. Tannis, who has a history with Lilith. She felt so out of place in this universe, which is sad because she and Blancett are too good to be involved in a sci-fi of this kind. But then we have Black as the voice of Claptrap, the only character I recognize from the games. I love Black, and everybody knows he has done killer voice work in the past. This is the most annoying character he’s ever played and the most irritating character in a movie in about a decade. It’s effortless to see why Lilith couldn’t stand him when they first met. Whenever Claptrap makes a bad joke, I want to throw him in a trash compactor.
Not only does the comedy fall flat at every turn, but you can tell Roth doesn’t have the skills to pull off action. All the action sequences leave no lasting impression after they are over, which made me think they should’ve gone with an R-rating to see some blood in the mix. The only way to describe them is dull, even with that intergalactic feel that never brought any energy regarding stakes and from a visual standpoint. There’s only one I can barely remember, and that’s when they’re killing these psychos after sneaking past them since it’s played to “Ace of Spades” by Motörhead. Side note about the music: Besides a weak score from Steve Jablonsky, how many times will movies keep using The Heavy’s “How You Like Me Now?” And the nerve of this movie for not only playing Muse but one of my favorite songs from them, “Supermassive Black Hole.”
Everything here made me question why director Eli Roth was tasked with making this game come to life. He’s never been a director I liked, but considering his last flick, Thanksgiving, was a surprisingly enjoyable slasher, this could’ve been another hit with a non-horror movie. But we’re back to not standing him. Since he was on duty shooting that, they brought Deadpool director Tim Miller to helm two weeks of reshoots, and the final product is still this bad.
Borderlands, a movie with the potential to be a major blockbuster surprise, unfortunately, falls short big time. It’s one of the most uninspired and messiest video game movies in recent memory, with little to redeem its action or world-building. Even fans of the game will find little enjoyment here. I haven’t seen a lot of terrible movies this year (mainly because I ignored them), but this was utterly abysmal, with no trace of fun.
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