"Borderlands" - A movie for no one.

Josh
Oct 7, 2024
4 min read

Eli Roth (2024)

I play the games with muted dialogue and I wish I could do the same for this movie.

Like The House with a Clocks in its Walls, you have to ask yourself, why this movie, Eli Roth? What in this script or world intrigued you to make this movie? Has he even played the games before? Being someone who has played the games, I didn’t think Roth directing a movie in this franchise was the worst thing in the world. Especially as originally they were aiming for an R rating. His previous movies typically contain obnoxious characters with vulgar teenage juvenile humour with over the top almost comedic violent set pieces, which aligns pretty well with the overall style game. Although, everything I was expecting from this combo was missing. This movie was so generic and just bland. If you remove the Borderlands title and turn down the saturation, I don’t think you could separate this from any other apocalyptic Mad Max rip off. And with a movie plagued with behind the scene shenanigans, this movie felt doomed from the beginning.

For those unfamiliar with the games (or even me who has some history with the series) the story of Borderlands is rather dull, predictable, tired, played out and any other synonyms you can think of for mediocre. It’s a very simple story (and using the phrase unironically, it felt like a video game) where the character of Lilith, played for some reason by the wonderful Cate Blanchett, a bounty hunter forced by a mega-corporation to find a child then leading to having to open a vault. A hidden treasure trove left behind a powerful race before humanity. This begins a bit of a cat and mouse style to be the first to the vault. Although, we’re introduced to the villain (Edgar Ramírez) via a hologram and then they have no presence in the rest of the movie. In fact, I forgot about him until he made an appearance at the end. Then throw in some uninteresting MacGuffin, then double it and end with some ‘you were the chosen one’ story beats and you’ve got banality at its finest. Nothing about the movie is unique, so much so you can mouth off lines of a dialogue before they are said just based on the purpose of the scene and where we are in the plot. They even pull the noble sacrifice on a lead character and you know as their death wasn’t specifically seen on the screen that they will return. Taking more tension from a tensionless scene. And one last note on how lazy the writing is, when the characters set out to find the entrance to the vault, a character literally just trips over it. Think of every action adventure movie after Raiders of the Lost Ark and you’ll have characters use their wits by using a windy draft and sand to find where a hidden door might be. Literally, no effort is put into the adventure part of the adventure into the vault.

And if the plot is as simple as can be, at the least the characters could be interesting as we have the Reject Shop (there’s a local reference) equivalent of The Guardians of the Galaxy. None of the characters are interesting or worth investing your time in. Because, I’ll let you in on a little secret. I’ve played the games but upon replaying I often play with muted dialogue because I cannot stand the characters. So watching these characters almost felt like being introduced to them for the first time and even knowing them I still didn’t really know anything about them. Firstly, ClapTrap. He’s cringe and annoying in the game and I feel like he’s even worse in the movie because I can’t solely mute the dialogue. Jack Black gives an uninspired performance (Just like in The Super Mario Bros. Movie and I’m predicting also in A Minecraft Movie) who could've been replaced by anyone else and it’ll affect nothing (Don't know why they just didn’t get David Eddings from the games to voice him…). Cate Blanchett, Jamie Lee Curtis and Gina Gershon are all mis-cast for what is meant to be a poppy action movie. Even Kevin Hart as the big tough leader Roland… why Kevin Hart? They even make a joke about his height but the joke doesn’t work because we don’t see him in comparison to anyone else. The cinematography during this opening is so tight and claustrophobic with a set piece in generic sci-fi hallways. And while on the topic of cinematography, the movie is so ugly to look at. It looks like a cheap YouTube Blender CGI (And that is pretty insulting to some really top quality Blender artists), action scenes are shot like a sit-com with a lot of lifeless flat shots. And this is from the game that uses random generation to create guns. Guns that shoot acid, or have ricochet bullets or turn into a smaller gun with legs when reloaded. And the movie did nothing with that. Nothing. This movie is nothing.

Something in this review I didn’t get into was the behind the scenes of the film. If you have time, I would recommend looking into it because it's a lot more interesting than the actual movie. Disgruntled writers, reshoots with other directors and desperate game executives begging people to watch the movie (Hey and while you’re at it, I recommend looking into Randy Pitchford from Gearbox for some more eyebrow raising). But this movie is very stale. The movie is so forgettable, uninspired and about 10 years too late when this franchise was at its peak. It fails at a video game adaptation feeling like any other movie that doesn’t lean into what makes the games unique. It fails as a fun ensemble action adventure movie. I cannot recommend this movie to either fans of the video or the general audience.