Mild spoilers follow for Borderlands.
We really have been spoiled lately. Big-budget HBO and Prime Video videogame series like The Last of Us and Fallout have seriously impressed gamers and newcomers alike, delivering note-perfect adaptations of these beloved stories. Full of emotion, laughs, gorgeous settings, and gripping scripts, finally, gamers were eating well when it came to adaptations. We’re having a good run, right? So, surely it can continue?
I guess not. This successful run of movies based on videogames has all come to a grinding halt thanks to Eli Roth’s new movie Borderlands. It is baffling how you can take a videogame series that’s so unique, story-rich, and full of heart and turn it into one of the most generic-looking action movies you’ll see this year, or possibly ever. When you have a source material as strong and as captivating as Borderlands, messing that up is an achievement in and of itself.
What is the Borderlands movie about?
The game’s timeline is different from what we see in the Borderlands movie, so I’ll outline how they’ve approached the plot for clarity’s sake. In it, we follow Lilith (Cate Blanchett), an infamous outlaw with a mysterious past, who reluctantly returns to her home planet of Pandora after she’s offered a lot of money to bring a missing daughter home to her father, who just happens to be an incredibly powerful man.
The daughter in question is Tiny Tina, a character who has appeared across the Borderlands franchise as well as the spin-off game Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands (great game, by the way). A fan-favourite character and a figure who is synonymous with the Gearbox Software franchise, moviegoers are no doubt keen to see how she’s depicted on the big screen.
I guess the cast had fun?
Tiny Tina is badly depicted in the movie. I don’t necessarily think it’s Ariana Greenblatt’s fault, either, because she was great in Barbie. Much like the rest of the ensemble cast, she’s simply been given a poor script to work from, and her performance suffers as a result. A shame, really, because it’s clear she gave it her all. But I can’t believe I’m saying that Tiny Tina needed to be more annoying, given how she often grates on players. The characterization is so unlike the Tina fans know, which is disappointing indeed.
What I will say is that other fan-favourite character Claptrap is about 70% there, with Jack Black suiting the role perfectly. As the annoying robot who follows you around, sings, and cracks jokes, he provides at least some comic relief. Not nearly enough, given the fact Borderlands is a very witty franchise. Some of his jokes are painfully unfunny, in fact, including one bit of toilet humour that goes on way too long. Yeah, that’s what we’re dealing with here.
It’s a shame the adaptation captured none of the game’s uniqueness – it felt like a generic action movie with the Borderlands logo slapped on it
Only two of the playable characters from the first game appear; Blanchett’s Lilith and Kevin Hart’s Roland. Those expecting to see Mordecai the Hunter and Brick the Berserker will be left disappointed, as they’re nowhere to be found, another sad omission from a game that had plenty to give. The two characters they did choose to focus on were fine but didn’t do much to stand out from other action heroes. The costumes might raise some eyebrows too, especially the ones on the lead characters.
The movie is like bad cosplay
There’s not a lot to take away from this movie, which genuinely does pain me to say. Sure, it looks nice in places and I liked some of the fictional branding, but even some of the CGI is ropey, and considering the massive budget that will be disappointing to fans hoping to see this in IMAX or other big screen formats. It really isn’t worth the ticket price, and there’ll be better titles you can spend your money on instead.
If you do want to see Borderlands, perhaps wait until you can stream it at home instead. That way, if it annoys you too much, you can always pick up your controller and play the original games instead, which is a wildly funny, self-aware, stylized experience with a lot of heart. Ah, that’s better.