Borderlands and all the images you see in this review are owned by Lionsgate Films
Directed by Eli Roth
Video game adaptations have certainly gotten better in the last few years, but there’s still a wide gulf between genuinely good movies and good-for-a-video-game-adaptation. I had mixed feelings about this when the trailer dropped as it looked like a Guardians of the Galaxy knock-off which worked out well for Dungeons & Dragons, but it’s also directed by the guy whose made some of my least favorite movies of all time. Does Eli Roth finally prove himself to be a competent mainstream director with a fun adaptation of a beloved game franchise, or will he be just another director who couldn’t crack the code on turning games into movies? Let’s find out!!
Welcome to Pandora! The planet that is to late-stage Capitalism what Rapture was to Objectivism! Corporations have stripped the planet bare, everyone is a jerk only out for themselves, and the masses are placated with a false promise of ascending up the social ladder by achieving the Pandorian Dream; in this case, finding a secret vault full of ancient alien treasure. Bounty hunter Lilith (Cate Blanchet) is far too savvy to buy into that nonsense, but she makes her way to the planet anyway in order to rescue Tina (Ariana Greenblatt), the daughter of an industrialist (Edgar Ramirez) who was taken to Pandora by Roland (Kevin Hart). When she arrives, she finds the foul-mouthed teen bumming around with Roland and Krieg; the latter being a jacked dude with a mask (Florian Munteanu) who’s surprisingly good with kids. Let’s just say that the rescue goes a bit sideways for Lilith, a situation not helped by a bunch of space cops trying to grab her bounty out from under her, and she ends up stuck with this group of misfits who are there to find the vault and prevent Tina’s dad from using it for evil! With the help of a local scientist (Jamie Lee Curtis) who knows more about the vault than anyone else on the planet as well as a robot named Claptrap (Jack Black) who follows Lilith around and seems to be programmed for maximum annoyance, will they be able to find the one thing on the planet that the wealthy can’t get their hands on and use it to make things better for the people of Pandora? Why did Roland need to take Tina in order to do this, and is does Lilith have a connection to all this that she has yet to understand? Perhaps they can also solve the mystery of how her hair is able to look like that without using super glue and spray paint.
It’s fine, alright? Whatever you’ve heard about this being a total disaster or yet another failure to adapt a video game, it’s not really true. Oh sure, this is a mediocre movie that’s crying out for a better director, and make no mistake, I put all this movie’s faults on Eli Roth’s shoulders, but he did not make a complete dud with the tools he was given. Heck, it’s arguably the best movie in his entire filmography, for whatever that’s worth. My pithy take on this is that it’s a great example of style over substance, as all the pieces are there to make a great movie, but there’s just no soul behind the camera to make any of it meaningful. It’s got big action set pieces with interesting choreography, but the shot composition lacks any impact. It has elaborate sets and costuming that brings the aesthetics of the game to life, but it’s all for a story that’s about as engaging as watching paint dry; perhaps some interesting looking paint with flashy colors and parts that glow in the dark, but paint nonetheless.
Still, it’s not without a substantial amount of charm in a few key areas, so it’s not something I’m willing to write off entirely. The template they’re working off of is Guardians of the Galaxy, and this is where the movie comes as close as it does to being enjoyable. Most of the performances from our cast are sold with decent banter between them, though the script is incredibly uneven, with Lilith and Tina getting the most to work with while everyone else has to subsist on crumbs. Cate Blanchet can play a role like this in her sleep, and I genuinely liked that they didn’t worry about casting someone younger for the role of Lilith as I’m sure another actor would have been fine with this world-weary yet hyper competent role, but Blanchet lends real gravitas to it that gives it a lot of life. Getting her was easily the best decisions they could have made as she carries the bland story on her shoulders, which could have been intolerable in a lesser star’s hands, and she has a lot of fun interacting with the rest of the crew. I’m not familiar with Tina from the games, but Ariana Greenblatt gives it her all and does a good job of selling both her freewheeling hostility and her deep-seated vulnerabilities. Everyone else is simply powering through on their performances, as the script gives them nothing to work with. Krieg as the big guy with a heart of gold at least understands the assignment and has great interactions with Tina, but Kevin Hart is begging for a reason to even be there as he has no backstory and barely the whisper of a motivation. The worst, however, is Jack Black as Claptrap who is rather annoying which, admittedly, is what everyone expected from the character, but what’s so off-putting about it is that it just doesn’t feel like a Jack Black performance. He has a very unique energy and style that works well in almost every movie he’s in, but here he’s essentially doing an impression of David Eddings who brought a completely different energy to the character when he started voicing him in the first game. Jack Black is a solid actor, but he doesn’t add anything new to the table and feels stifled in mimicking someone else’s idea of the character.
Everything else about the movie hits at about a meh, and doesn’t waver from start to finish. The villains are entirely disposable, the action set-pieces are far too boring for the amount of effort that clearly went into them, and the plot twists are obvious from a mile away even without any familiarity with the source material. Still, and I may start to come off as a bit dismissive here, it’s never bad enough or boring enough to be a deal breaker for me because I just don’t feel like we’ve wasted our shot on a fantastic video game franchise since I never understood the appeal of in the first place. Something like the Metal Gear Solid movie that is, theoretically, still in production has all the potential in the world to be a complete and utter disaster, given the odd mix of sincerity and absurdity that lies at the heart of it. Borderlands has always come off, at least to me, as very cheeky and snarky, which is why the movie being as insubstantial as a puff of air doesn’t feel like a betrayal of the source material. Perhaps some of the games had decent and heartfelt storylines, but the vibe has always been to not take it seriously and the movie, in some strangely roundabout way, gets that feeling across. Something like the Warcraft movie, which is also from a franchise I have no investment in, was immensely frustrating because it had some genuinely excellent moments sandwiched between a confusing plot and some bafflingly uneven performances. This, I can’t even get worked up about, as its ambitions are to be goofy fun and to not be taken seriously. It doesn’t quite succeed at that, but it gets a lot closer to hitting its goals than Warcraft did at trying to be the next big fantasy franchise.
If I were to give Roth some credit here, I think I know what he was going for, and I appreciate the moxie for doing it. See, back in the day, after the Mad Max series became a cult hit, there were a lot of attempts to recreate its aesthetic in low budget straight to video shlock that no doubt choked the aisles of his favorite video rental stores in the nineties. Nonsense like Future Hunters, The Survivor, Prototype X29A, or basically every third movie that RLM covers on Best of the Worst, so while the template is obviously Guardians of the Galaxy, those seem to be the films that compelled Roth to attach himself to this. Making the connection between those movies and the Borderlands franchise is rather inspired, and I got some satisfaction from the idea that he spent over a hundred million dollars to make recreate low budget shlock. Even so, it wasn’t enough to make up for all the film’s shortcomings, which leave it feeling far too dull for a movie trying to be this wacky.
I couldn’t tell you how fans of the games are going to react to this, but I feel much about this the same way I did about Madame Web a few months back. It’s clearly flawed in a lot of ways that would have been easily avoidable, but the end product is not as bad as everyone seems to be saying it is. It’s competently made for the most part with a well realized world and some excellent production design, but when it’s time to do anything other than trade quips or admire the scenery, it just isn’t ready for prime time and the cracks start to show right away. I would tentatively recommend this as a breezy time-waster for a lazy weekend at home. It probably won’t be as fun as just playing the Borderlands games themselves, but at least with the movie, you can eat pizza and not worry about getting grease on your controller!
The Reviewers Unite 