Jay Rohr
Borderlands reminds me of the Dave Matthews Band. That may not make sense to anyone outside Chicago, so let’s elaborate. On August 8, 2004, the musicians’ tour bus stopped on the Kinzie Street Bridge downtown and proceeded to dump their toilet waste into the Chicago River below. It poured onto a passing tour boat, drenching all aboard. As such, notorious filmmaker Eli Roth is the one doing the dumping, Borderlands the film is the sewage, and audiences–particularly fans of the video game source material–are the ones getting drenched in liquid filth.
The story features a ragtag group of misfit rogues on a dangerous planet called Pandora. On that world is a fabled vault full of ancient alien technology so sophisticated it seems magical. Corrupt corporations, crazy criminals, and cynical vault hunters have turned Pandora into a blasted wasteland searching for it. It’s only when a reluctant bounty hunter named Lilith (recent TAR Academy Award nominee Cate Blanchett) teams up with a psychotic teen named Tina (Barbie‘s Ariana Greenblatt) when hope blossoms on a savage world.
The movie is adapted from an immensely popular video game franchise. Since 2009, the Borderlands games have delighted fans as first-person loot shooters composed of crass juvenile humor, epic-almost-splatterpunk violence, and frenetic combat that would make a meth addict want to slow down. The film adaptation borrows narrative elements from all over the billion-dollar franchise while telling its own story. However, it can’t escape a snooze inducing predictable plot. Worse, the movie never captures the vibe of the games.
Granted, Borderlands manages to mimic the look of its source material. There are plenty of instances which recreate memorable moments from games, ads, box art, etc. Yet, throughout the film the feeling is never quirky, energetic, or darkly humorous. Borderlands is a lifeless pale echo of its inspiration, and painfully devoid of comedy.
Narratively, the film doesn’t really tell a story. It’s more of an outline leading to toothless action sequences. Undeveloped characters give the sense filmmakers expect the audience to be already familiar with them, yet they do franchise fans a disservice by not taking the opportunity to breathe life into familiar personalities. It’s one thing to make game accurate images on screen. It’s something else entirely to make them feel like real people in a realistic, albeit outlandish, scenario.
Calling “combat” in this movie action scenes is like calling dirt edible. It’s technically true, but we’d all rather eat something else. Furthermore, whenever director Eli Roth tries to stylize the action, it just makes everyone on screen look ridiculous. He clearly has no eye for active cinematic violence. If the camera must move, he doesn’t know what to do with it.
Borderlands sports a budget of roughly $100 million dollars. Yet, a film like Boy Kills World with only $25 million on hand was able to make far more exciting grandiose action sequences, infinitely closer to the Borderlands games’ eccentric vibe. All Roth’s adaptation does is chalk up another reason to stop wasting money on him. The filmmaker can barely do horror, which is supposedly his wheelhouse, and this certifies he cannot do action.
What’s worse is that the script is also Roth’s fault sharing blame with Joe Crombie is wasting a gold star cast. Cate Blanchett as Lilith seems to have been given a list of stances rather than worthwhile dialogue. Her litany of awards and nominations is its own separate Wikipedia page, yet Roth is clearly unaware of how to effectively use her immense talent. Here, she’s a living mannequin striking poses, and her performance clearly hindered by a need to keep her hair from shifting lest it lose its game accurate quality.
Kevin Hart (Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle) is present as Roland, a soldier defecting from a corrupt group to try and keep vault technology out of the wrong hands. Why exactly he does so is apparently as irrelevant as Hart’s comedic background. Except for one slightly chuckle worthy gag at the film’s start, his skills as a comedian are never really utilized. The game is known for shouting outrageous things during combat, so hiring an improvisational performer like Hart makes sense. Yet, again, Roth employs that talent properly a total of zero times.
Ariana Greenblatt plays fan favorite Tiny Tina, a rabbit ear wearing demented demolitions expert. Although she certainly looks the part, she’s never given an opportunity to unleash any of the quirky insane rants her character is known for. Her constant companion is Krieg played by Florian Munteanu (Creed II). This mad mountain of muscles is a juggernaut, but his dialogue is entirely useless gibberish. If meant to be funny, it’s a sad testament to the script’s idea of humor.
Everything Everywhere All at Once Oscar winner Jamie Lee Curtis, perhaps longing for her action-comedy days in True Lies, plays Tannis. This eccentric scientist holds the key to the mysterious vault as well as Lilith’s past. It’s just a shame all she delivers is essentially exposition, a common fault throughout Borderlands. In fact, the first fifteen minutes features two explanations of the plot. Both are saying the same thing.
While it’s always a pleasure to see Gina Gershon (Killer Joe) performing, her presence as Moxie is another waste of talent. Spot on visually, she is given little to do except fan service. Meanwhile, Jack Black (the Kung Fu Panda series) does a decent impression of David Eddings, who made the Claptrap character a favorite. Other than lending his name’s marketability, Black does nothing to make the role entertaining. I’ve gotten stitches that were more amusing.
Eli Roth utterly wastes a perfect assortment of ingredients to deliver a bomb that should blow him out of the movie business. The platinum quality cast is used as foil to wrap a turd. The source material, though often visually matched, is never recreated in ways that matter. That’s to say the fantastically eccentric, kinetic, lunatic vibe of the games. My best friend was a Borderlands fan to the bone, and I’m glad he died recently because he will never have to be disappointed by this abysmal adaptation.
