BORDERLANDS Review: Even Cate Blanchett Can't Save Eli Roth's Risible Video Game Adaptation
An intergalactic bounty hunter on a mission to rescue a preteen explosives specialist faces off with an arms dealer’s army on a hostile desert planet in Eli Roth’s abysmal video game adaptation, Borderlands.
With over one billion dollars in sales spread out over half a dozen games and spinoffs, Gearbox’s Borderlands is one of the most successful video game franchises of the 21st century. Known for its unique comic book aesthetics, expansive mythology, memorable characters, and a dark, adult sense of humor; this Australian game seemed more than ready to make the jump to the silver screen. However, instead of a film that embraces the edgy nature of the game that helped create a rabid fanbase (I count myself among the devoted), Borderlands delivers a damp squib of a film that caters to neither fans nor newbies.
After a lengthy opening narration that attempts to put to worlds of Borderlands in context for the viewer – aliens, secret vaults, multiple worlds, greed, etc – we are introduced to Tina (Ariana Greenblatt), a young girl imprisoned by a munitions company under the impression that she is the key to the Vault, a remnant of the ancient Eridian race thought to be filled with the kind of alien tech that could help one take over the universe. Tina is immediately sprung from her cell by Roland (Kevin Hart), a soldier gone AWOL from his team, and Krieg (Florian Munteanu, Creed II/III), a psycho with whom Tina has built a friendship.
Irritated that Tina has been liberated, arms manufacturer Atlas (Edgar Ramírez), engages the services of the notorious bounty hunter, Lilith (Cate Blanchett), to get her back. The job is on Lilith’s home planet of Pandora, a place she escaped decades ago and to which she is loathe to return. But Atlas waves a big pile of money in her face and she is in. Soon after landing on Pandora she discovers that Atlas’s plans for Tina are more than a little questionable, and she ends up joining the girl and her compatriots – along with smart mouthed helper bot Claptrap (voiced by Jack Black) – in an attempt to stop Atlas from accessing the alien vault. Joined on the mission by kooky scientist Dr. Tannis (Jaime Lee Curtis) with an assist from well-connected bar owner Moxxi (Gine Gershon), the race is on to save the world (?) or something like that.
That mountain of synopsis is the bare minimum that a newcomer to the Borderlands universe would require to even begin to understand what’s going on in this movie. The problem isn’t with the complexity of the world, though – it’s one of the games great strengths – it’s that almost nothing in the movie makes sense as it’s happening. The singular focus of the film – save Tina, stop Atlas – completely wipes away what makes the games great, the world of Borderlands, the characters, the humor, the gleeful violence, all of it feels flattened out and neutered in favor of creating a generic dystopic action movie. If it weren’t populated by characters that fans know intimately, it wouldn’t stand a chance as a standalone property, but the fact that it does these characters dirty makes it an even bigger failure.
There’s a behind the scenes story in here somewhere that may explain the film’s creative implosion – replacing screenwriters, an obvious hack job to turn what should’ve been an R-rated film into a more family friendly PG-13 one – but none of that matters, because what we got is this mess. Borderlands is an unfunny, unexciting pile of CG nonsense with easter eggs tossed in so haphazardly that fans can’t even enjoy them. It’s a disjointed mess, a film adaptation that is ten years too late and fundamentally misunderstands the characters and tone of a wildly popular game franchise to deliver one hundred minutes of disappointment.
There are a few bright spots amidst the miasma that is Borderlands, however. Cate Blanchett seems to be the only member of the cast who truly understood the assignment. Blanchett seems to fully understand how ridiculous the film is – her game-accurate hair and wardrobe are on point – and she looks like she’s having a blast sauntering across Pandora and shooting the crap out of anything that moves. Curtis and Gershon as Tannis and Moxxi are similarly game in their interpretations, though the latter definitely doesn’t get enough screen time, but these three women are really the only actors who are aware of what movie they are in. There is also a bit of a thrill in seeing the landscape of Pandora realized in a relatively accurate way, even though it’s covered in a wash of sometimes janky computer graphics. The positives really end there, and for what is supposed to be an ensemble action comedy, that’s not even close to being enough to sustain.
Is there a better version of Borderlands on the cutting room floor somewhere? Maybe, but with so many people both in front of and behind the camera fumbling the ball at every opportunity, it’s unlikely that it was ever going to be good. Eli Roth gets a lot of flack as a film bro director, but once in a while he actually brings the goods. Last year’s Thanksgiving was a great example of is possible when he is given the opportunity to make something small and personal, The House With a Clock It It’s Walls was also a pretty solid success, but there’s definitely the feeling that something is off with Borderlands. The game’s adult humor seemed like a good fit for Roth, but what we get feels compromised.
With an expansive universe and dozens of well-defined and beloved characters, perhaps an attempt to condense it all into a single film was never going to work, maybe a series should have been the first step. But here we are, cursed with this abortive attempt at capturing an endearingly chaotic universe with this flaccid facsimile. Borderlands is awful; disappointing for fans who’ve spent hundreds of hours in the world of the game and unexciting for those who are unfamiliar but are looking for a fun space adventure. Cate Blanchett may save the girl, but even her endearing performance as Lilith can’t save this mess.
