By Seb Jenkins August 8, 2024
Despite landing a cast from the top shelf of Hollywood A-listers, Eli Roth fails to get a tune out of Borderlands in one of the most bitterly disappointing films of 2024.
After the immense success of The Witcher, The Last of Us, and most recently Fallout – here comes the latest in a conveyor belt of video game adaptations with rich and popular source material – Borderlands. Only, this particular section of the conveyor belt appears to have been cobbled together using scraps from the planet Pandora itself. Borderlands manages to systematically suck all the guts, gore, and oddball barbarism from the much-loved video game series, leaving behind a broken metal husk that even Cate Blanchett can’t tape back together.
Synopsis
When infamous outlaw Lilith (Blanchett) is given the task of returning to her home planet of Pandora to track down the missing daughter of the tyrannical Atlas, she trips headfirst into the most unexpected of teams. A rescue mission quickly turns into a hunt to find and open the mysterious Vault, which is said to house the most powerful force in the universe.
Review
It appears that in his preparation for Borderlands, director Eli Roth spent the vast majority of his time re-watching Guardians of the Galaxy and Suicide Squad rather than studying his own source material. The parallels to the former are almost laughable – as we see perhaps the worst on-screen interaction of the ‘rag-tag bunch of lovable rogues’ trope. The leading woman who can talk the talk and walk the walk, check! The leading man who does his best work with a gun in hand, check! The resourceful weapons expert who was experimented on as a child, check! The non-human comic relief, check! The man-of-few-words muscle, check! Imagine ordering Gamora, Starlord, Rocket, Groot, and Drax on Wish and you’re almost there.
For those who have never dipped their toe into the wacky and wonderful world of Borderlands, there have been seven instalments so far in the hit video game series. On the planet of crazed scavengers, vault hunters, and wild monsters, the blood is bright red, and the humour is blue beyond belief. The graphics are so unique and iconic that Fortnite even mimicked them during a collaboration back in 2019! So, when the beloved first-person looter shooter was adapted for the big screen, it seemed only right that it would be handed an 18 age rating, right? No? A 15 then? Please, no! A 12A?! Really?! Admittedly, Eli Roth’s hands were tied before he even directed his first scene. A man known for his work in the horror industry meets a franchise known for bad language, blood and gore – all suffocated by an age rating designed for mass appeal over quality.
The exposition at the start of the film feels overwhelmingly clunky, with the scriptwriters choosing to rattle through the video game lore via the use of a strange monologue rather than actually showing us on-screen. In fact, the script itself feels as though it was written by AI after perusing the Borderlands Wikipedia page for a few minutes. Recycled jokes, predictable clichés, and tired action sequences litter the Pandora wasteland like rusty nuts and bolts. After the success of so many video game adaptations before, Borderlands feels
like it was designed to appeal to the masses. Unfortunately, in that quest, it ends up isolating everyone - from die-hard fans to newcomers alike.
Borderlands did its best to throw as many A-listers as possible at the screen to distract us viewers, like a parent dangling a set of shiny keys in front of their child. Cate Blanchett does her best to bring Lilith to life with a shocking script. Jack Black manages to seep out a few laughs as Claptrap, like squeezing the last pea of toothpaste from a flattened tube. Ariana Greenblatt actually gives a fantastically unhinged rendition of Tiny Tina in one of the few successes of the film. Florian Munteanu is reduced to a few mumbled Krieg lines. Kevin Hart cosplays as an army Kevin Hart. Even Jamie Lee Curtis can’t rescue this apocalyptic disappointment! Blanchett recently made headlines for wearing a red carpet outfit made from 102 spoons, perhaps Eli Roth could have borrowed one to stir the creative pot a little better.
In what should have been a celebration of video game heritage, Borderlands departs from the source material, creates mind-numbing new lore for the sake of convenience, and sucks the life out of one of the most vibrant and colourful in-game worlds. The worst thing is, it feels like they didn’t even try. On the plus side, at least they managed to do all that in the sweet, sweet running time of just 102 minutes.
More crap trap than Claptrap.
Star Rating
Borderlands releases in cinemas August 9
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