‘Borderlands’ Review: What Happens When You Order ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ off Temu
Gearbox made a Borderlands movie 10 years too late for anyone to give a shit about!
Lilith, Roland, Tiny Tina, Claptrap, Tannis, and the other Vault Hunters from the colorful world of 2K and Gearbox's long-running game series are stuck with this unfortunate fate in their 15-year long-awaited theatrical outing. As if it couldn't have been worse,they also have a horrible bus driver in co-writer and director Eli Roth tasked to bring Pandora (no, not the good one) to life. Considering that they got the horror guy who can't write characters to helm and pen an action-adventure, he simply rips-off former-Troma colleague James Gunn and his Guardians of the Galaxy-style while putting minimal effort, resulting in a horrendous film adaptation. But Borderlands is not laughably bad by video game movie standards, or even in a Madame Web tier of "so bad it's excellent". It's just downright embarrassing.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Lionsgate
PG13: intense sequences of violence and action, language and some suggestive material.
Runtime: 1 Hr and 42 Minutes
Production Companies: Media Capital Technologies, Arad Productions, Picturestart, Gearbox Studios, 2K
Distributor: Lionsgate
Director: Eli Roth
Writer: Eli Roth, Joe Crombie
Cast: Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Bobby Lee, Jack Black, Edgar Ramírez, Ariana Greenblatt, Florian Munteanu, Gina Gershon, Jamie Lee Curtis
Release Date: August 9, 2024
High-quality bounty hunter Lilith (Cate Blanchett) is hired by arms dealer Atlas (Edgar Ramírez) to retrieve his missing daughter, Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt). Thing is, she's hiding out on Lilith's home planet, Pandora, a desolate wasteland full of monsters and homicidal bandits. Once Lilith finds Tina, she's forced to work with a group of Vault Hunters — ex-mercenary Roland (Kevin Hart), Krieg (Florian Munteanu) a buff mask-wearing psycho acting as Tina’s big brother, Dr. Tannis (Jamie Lee Curtis), a scientist who shares a past with Lilith, and Claptrap (Jack Black), a wise-cracking happy-go-lucky robot programmed to protect Lillith — to find the keys to a portal full of treasure that only Tina can unlock.
Cate Blanchett going crazy during quarantine and signing onto Borderlands was the best thing to happen to Borderlands because this is beneath her caliber. Blanchett never half-asses a performance so, duh-doy, it's no surprise that her performance is the only aspect that makes this drek watchable. She's strutting her stuff gun-slinging, rocking Lilith's pink hair, and looking mighty fine — in the Pandora wasteland, Blanchett is powdered with makeup in every scene—trying to make this thankless material into something.
The same sentiment applies to Ariana Greenblatt, who is perhaps the most accurate casting the film offers, as Tiny Tina. Greenblatt translates the character's exuberance, while finding a middle ground between Tina's well-known hyperactive behavior from the games and infusing her amusing natural charisma. Like Blanchett, she's far too good to be in a movie that's beneath her caliber.
And occasionally, Jack Black’s Claptrap, made me chuckle.
Despite this, I am in a state of shock. I can't say Borderlands feels like a throwback to the video game movie curse era. There was an aura of camp to the worst adaptations from the early 2000s or late 1990s, whereas Borderlands arrives worse than any Uwe Boll adaptation. That's pretty harsh for a multimillion-dollar film with Cate fucking Blanchett. But frankly, there's not an iota of personality or fun in this adaptation whatsoever, and I got secondhand embarrassment for the fans who loved this series. After the many years of filming and production since the last ever E3 in 2021, this is what you came up with?!
For a film with a budget of 110 million dollars, Borderlands appears to be a glorified XBOX 360 advertisement promoting the initial game, featuring notable talents in cosplay that will effectively promote the game, surpassing the film's attempts to do so. The visuals and CG effects are shoddy, unappealing, and untextured, it makes me cringe how this is going to be shown in IMAX theaters. To arrive past those realities in the year when George Miller and Denis Villeneuve made the desolate wasteland into a gorgeous visual spectacle, you should be ashamed. The longer it goes on, and the worse and duller the action gets, the quality becomes Jimmy Kimmel-skit-level and then a fake movie off 30 Rock, right next to the recent and equally shitty Harold and the Purple Crayon adaptation starring Zachary Levi.
Considering that this is a new venture for Roth, he actively proves he is completely the wrong choice to handle this property. Roth's lifeless direction and script penned alongside Joe Crombie lack discernible effort, leaving me insanely bored. I was at the Alamo Drafthouse for my press screening, where I had a Rosé and I was still having a terrible time. The story is already a by-the-numbers clichéd point-A-to-B MacGuffin plot, full of exposition and little personality, but its greatest offense is how constantly it fiddles with the source's lore to further being a Guardians of the Galaxy clone. The movie begins with a snarky attitude more insufferable than spending 10 minutes with Ryan Reynolds by making gags based on the controversial casting of its talents, addressing Kevin Hart being shorter and Lilith being older than their game counterparts.
Unrelated, but Pedro Pascal was Joel in The Last of Us series and his performance was so stellar on its own, no one gave a shit that he wasn't a white dude from Texas.
You see Roth and Crombie’s lazy script use Gunn's familiarity to benefit his characters: Lilith is Star-Lord, equipped with dead mother issues, Claptrap is Olaf (still Disney), Krieg is Drax/Groot, Tannis is Yondou, Tiny Tina is Rocket, Roland is....lame. Because no originality was poured into anyone's traits and are devoid of any wit or charm, except for maybe Claptrap, there's absolutely no chemistry between this ensemble of Oscar winners and contenders.
Goddamnit, Cate Blanchett is too talented to be in this shit. Throughout, I kept questioning, is this a Tár bit? She filmed this prior to Tár. Did Blanchett do this to get into character for Lydia Tár to feel how it might for her getting cancelled. And since Paul W.S. Anderson already dropped his Monster Hunter movie in 2020, Cate had followed suit with the same L by starring in this? These are the questions that grabbed my attention than anything that was happening onscreen.
Having passed its expiration date, any time to drop a Borderlands movie before Gearbox executive Randy Pitchford was exposed as a creep and Eli Roth and hack-of-a-producer Avi Arad revealed their Zionist colors would be tolerable. But alas, even if this came out a decade ago (when the first Guardians of the Galaxy installment dropped but the Borderlands franchise had relevance), in the state that it is now, it’d still be one of the worst video game adaptations ever made.
I'm frustrated for the fans who got screwed over worse than Borderlands 3 and the cast who's trying to do their best with what little material was given to them and doing nothing to elevate some of the miscast choices featured. Why cast known-natural comedian Kevin Hart as a straight man and not let him improvise and crack a joke? Why am I wasting my time talking about a film based on a game that isn't even relevant anymore and isn't likely to make a dozen million in its opening weekend?
Borderlands is what happens when you order Guardians of the Galaxy off Temu.
Rating: .5/5 | 12%
