All the progress made for the video game adaptation… undone.

Lilith, a bounty hunter, returns to her home planet of Pandora in search of a business CEO’s daughter who has been kidnapped. Little does she know, this girl’s fate is entwined with opening a legendary vault, containing unparalleled power.

Borderlands was a hit video game released in 2009 (now I feel old) by developer GearBox and publisher 2K. It was one of the first games in the First Person Shooter genre to be termed a “looter-shooter”. It was designed and advertised, as an excuse to have “a bazillion guns”, which were all different. The player (and up to four players) would play as Vault Hunters, characters with unique powers and weapons, set loose on the Mad Max-like world called Pandora. It was praised for its gunplay, multiplayer campaign and of course, excessive violence, zany humour, and truckload of unique weapons.
Since then, the Borderlands brand has… soured. It had two sequels (and a “pre-sequel”) in which each supplied diminishing returns. As more and more games released into the looter-shooter genre, Borderlands only had its unique humour to stand out. Unfortunately, that humour aged the quickest.

In 2015, a movie adaptation was announced (between the second and third games’ releases.) Production would only begin however in 2021. This isn’t only a terrible time to start a film production, but with the script going through multiple changes and a director being hard to find, it did not start out on the right foot. Eventually Eli Roth, director of violent slasher movies such as Hostel and Thanksgiving, took on the project.
However, between 2021 and release, the film would also go through multiple reshoots as studio heads interfered. The intensely violent movie Roth had made was not part of their plans. Does this sound familiar? Similar to Suicide Squad (2016) with director David Ayer, this film was edited to ribbons.

These reshoots would be completed by Tim Miller (director of Terminator: Dark Fate) and well, we have the product we have now. A watery, shallow, tedious example of how terrible video game adaptations used to be. Indeed, the video game adaptation has been set back roughly 20 years.

To begin with, the hat stand casting decisions.
It should be commended whenever actors are hired for roles and not because of their age. Hollywood has a terrible history of forgetting actors as soon as they “age out” of the established beauty standards. For what it is worth, the actors in Borderlands look like they are having fun. Plus, the characters in the video game aren’t necessarily a specific age (although they are generally on the younger side).
The issues arise when the plot and arc for the characters do not fit the age of the actor. Not to mention the screenplay throws all established story from the game out the window. Cate Blanchett (55) plays Lilith, while Jamie Lee Curtis (66) for some reason plays Tannis. Tannis isn’t even a main character in the games.

But it isn’t just the two ladies. The character Roland is perhaps the most straight-laced, stoic character in the Borderlands games. A foil for the rest of the cast. So of course you hire Kevin Hart to play him (????)

The plot, or what’s left of it, rotates around Tina (Ariana Greenblatt), a girl who has alien DNA inside her. She is the key to opening the vault of stuff people really really want. Tina is also not a main character in the games. Greenblatt shone next to Adam Driver in 65, but here… she is insufferable. Lilith is “too old for this shit”, and has to go through various uninspired high jinx to “rescue” Tina, with the “help” of Roland, Tannis, a robot called Claptrap, and a psycho called Krieg.

What follows is a desperately unfunny comedy. As if Guardians of the Galaxy had been vacuum-dried into a colourful dried-up husk. The CGI is often terrible. There are laughably bad green-screen composite shots. The action scenes are phoned-in and tedious. No one is in peril, ever, despite the apparent odds. The villain is pudgy and non-threatening. There are music choices worst than in 2016’s Suicide Squad.

Borderlands should be as irreverent as Deadpool. It should be ultra-violent and ultra-questionable. The original game had the player shooting enemies literally called “midgets” (this was since changed in sequels, but you can appreciate the tone of the game.) It is baffling, utterly baffling that a studio would not only hire Eli Roth and then protest he made a violent movie, but also reject a violent movie that they based off a violent video game.

Additional Marshmallows: This was hard to rate. It was “elevated”, purely because it is good that Blanchett and Jamie Lee Curtis get to play roles normally given to younger actors. They look like they are having fun!

Two videos for you today! First, the obligatory trailer (which is terrible) followed by perhaps one of the best short-form videos the game’s developers ever made. It probably sums up what Borderlands is all about.

(in the trailer, try to spot the crew member helping to open the hatch at the start!)