PHOENIX (AZFamily) — BOREDerlands it’s right.
Summary
In the futuristic, dystopian world of BorderlandBounty hunter Lillith (Cate Blanchett) is hired by the wealthy Atlas (Edgar Ramírez) to rescue his daughter Tina (Ariana Greenblatt) from the dangerous world of Pandora. It turns out that Tina has something special about her that gives her the ability to open “the treasure chamber” that contains something Atlas desires.
Lillith eventually finds Tina on Pandora, along with her protectors Roland (Kevin Hart) and Krieg (Florian Munteanu). When Lillith realizes that Atlas has nefarious ulterior motives regarding Tina and the Vault, they join forces with their new, ragtag team to protect Tina and reach the Vault before he does.
My thoughts
Let’s face it, until basically last year, video game adaptations were mostly terrible. Not only are they mostly poor representations of their source material, but they also barely work as standalone films. It wasn’t until 2023 that properties like The Super Mario Bros. Movie And The Last of Us has shown us that high-quality films and shows can be made.
Funnily enough, 2023 was also the first time that Eli Roth actually released a good movie, the holiday slasher thanksgiving. I still attribute this to the fact that he didn’t write the final script, but it felt like he was finally coming into his own as a filmmaker and maturing a bit.
But the shadow of Borderlanda film he completed shooting in 2021 took up a large space …
Roth and Roll
Now, in 2024, Eli Roth presents us with a video game adaptation, this time based on the popular (a decade ago) franchise Borderland. Although I am not the biggest Roth fan, I found his style to be well suited to the adaptation of this IP. The whole attitude of Borderland is very loud, aggressive and direct, things that Roth knows only too well.
I played a lot Borderlands 2 when that came out over a decade ago, but I wouldn’t call myself a huge fan of the franchise overall. I’m certainly not well-versed enough on the lore or anything like that to be upset when the adaptation completely misrepresents every aspect of it.
I barely remember anything from this game other than the characters and running around shooting a bunch of rabid psychos and evil creatures. What I mostly remember is Borderland were three different things: the art style, the humor and, most importantly, the weapons.
The Borderland Games have a style that won’t be to everyone’s taste, but the style is 100% its own and part of what made it such a popular and unique franchise for the time. Even if the movie were to have a terrible plot and terrible characters, it could at least be funny and have a bit of decent action to provide a modicum of entertainment.
The thing is, Eli Roth never had much flair as a director. His films may be loud and try to make themselves heard by practically shouting in your face, but there is no style to them. At best, he is competent as a technical director.
Unless he is making an action film. As I said above, one of the appealing aspects of Borderland was the variety of firearms and their incredibly unique ways of working. Bullets that explode on impact, targeting enemies, or throwing the weapon itself only for a new one to appear above the magazine you’re holding. Every single weapon in the video games felt completely original and amazing in its capabilities.
One would hope that this kind of creativity would be brought to the film adaptation, but there’s none of it here. Some of the weapons the characters use here look cool, but they function no differently than any other weapon out there. They shoot bullets and the bad guys drop dead without a single drop of blood to be seen (yes, let’s downgrade the property, which is all about guns and crude humor, to PG-13. That will win over fans).
So every action scene is chaos, with our heroes being chased by thugs coming from all directions and shooting indiscriminately. The staging or choreography is completely well thought out, it’s just a cacophony of gunfire and lame lines accompanied by a bit of popular rock music that desperately tries to make the whole thing entertaining.
Lost in translation
Part of the charm that makes the Borderland The series was distinguished from other video game franchises by its unique, cartoonish art style, which provided an amusing contrast to the crazy, hyper-violent world. This also influenced the franchise’s signature twisted humor, both of which are noticeably absent here.
There are certainly attempts at humor here, but every single one of them falls flat. It’s all pretty vulgar and childish, but without the biting wit that the games have. The games didn’t have the most mature comedy, but everything was thought through to fit in with the overall world. So many “funny” lines and scenes just made me think “huh?”
They really should have made an animated film out of it, because most Borderland The visual style doesn’t translate very well to live action. Kudos to Cate Blanchett’s stylists for actually getting her hair to look like that, but whatever, it just looks silly sitting on a real person’s head.
There were countless production issues with this film, so it’s hard for me to pin all of the problems on this project entirely on Roth or any one person. Filming for this was originally completed in 2021, with reshoots being done by Dead Pool‘s Tim Miller, as Roth was busy with thanksgiving.
Aside from a few scenes where Greenblatt looked a little older, it wasn’t clear to me which scenes were shot by Roth or Miller. The entire film just seemed like a hodgepodge of ideas and action scenes patched together with the thinnest thread. As far as the utterly dreary, soulless experience goes, everything seemed pretty uniform in that regard.
Before Roth joined the project, Craig Mazin of HBO’s The Last of Us fame, originally wrote the screenplay. Strangely, his name does not appear anywhere in this project. However, there is this Joe Crombie, who is also listed as the screenwriter.
Never heard of Joe Crombie? Well, neither have I, and neither has anyone else! Crombie is absolutely not listed on IMDb and doesn’t seem to actually exist. Mazin insists that his name was simply removed from the project and that Joe Crombie is not a pseudonym to distance himself from the film, so take that as you will. If one thing is clear, however, it’s that there was no unified vision for this project.
Miscasting
Borderland seems to have been doomed from the day the cast was announced. On paper, all of these people seem fine. Cate Blanchett, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Florian Munteanu, and Ariana Greenblatt are all top-notch stars who have delivered outstanding, occasionally Oscar-winning performances before.
But once the movie starts, it couldn’t be more obvious that the casting here is just wrong. Kevin Hart as a gruff, no-nonsense soldier? I give him credit for playing against type, but seriously? They don’t even make use of his comedic talent, which I’ll admit I’m not a huge fan of, but if you’re going to have Kevin Hart, use him!
It’s not just Hart, the same goes for all the other actors. You don’t even have to know anything about the characters and their behavior in the games to know that everyone here is completely miscast. I didn’t know most of these characters here, but just from their archetypes and their function in the story, you can tell that these stars just weren’t the right choice.
Cate Blanchett is one of those people who is practically synonymous with the word “actress,” so it would be sad to see her embarrass herself like this if she was so woefully miscast, if we didn’t know she would do well and go on to play more Oscar-nominated roles. Despite that, she is absolutely terrible in this film, with some incredibly flat and emotionless lines.
This problem also applies to everyone else who plays their characters way too seriously. Ariana Greenblatt may look like Tiny Tina, but her physical performance or line delivery aren’t wild enough to make Tiny Tina the crazy little pyrotechnician we all know and love. At least Greenblatt and most of her co-stars knew what they were doing, unlike Jamie Lee Curtis, who looks confused in every single shot.
The only casting that seems to make sense is Jack Black as the voice of the wisecracking robot Claptrap, but even his performance doesn’t work. It certainly doesn’t help that his character serves only as comic relief and is relegated to uttering some of the most insufferable lines imaginable.
Final verdict
Borderland is certainly a failure on virtually every front, but it does not quite belong in the list of legendary bad films like The room, Batman and Robinor Catsto name just a few of my favorites. These movies are hysterically awful in their confusing execution and incompetence. The kind of movies you can watch with a few friends and yell at the TV for a few hours.
No, Borderland doesn’t even offer entertainment like those disaster movies. It’s not just a bad adaptation, it’s just an all-around terrible movie. However, I was never angry, upset, amused, or even the slightest bit chuckled. I wouldn’t even say I was bored. I just felt the worst thing you can feel when watching a movie: absolutely nothing.
My rating: 2/10
Borderland is currently playing in theaters nationwide and will be released on digital platforms for purchase and rental on Friday, August 30th.
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