Eli Roth's slapdash adaptation of the brash video game series is a joyless slog despite the presence of Cate Blanchett.
Within mere seconds of starting, as Cate Blanchett lifelessly reads an exposition dump of a monologue, Eli Roth’s Borderlands threatens to take the wind out of the sails of anyone even mildly excited for the concept of the video game adaptation. Her character, Lilith, sets the scene with an air of exhaustion in her voice: there’s a planet named Pandora, there’s a vault with untold treasures and secrets in it, and everyone is out to find it. As if accompanied by an off-screen eye-roll, she adds, “Sounds like some wacko BS, doesn’t it?”
Every single minute of Borderlands matches this energy, by which I mean none. There is no joy to be found in the way that Roth parades out his actors in bad cosplay of characters from the series and strips them of any humanity. Whatever personality or history might have existed for these characters in-game, from Krieg’s (Florian Munteanu) internal personality conflict to Tiny Tina’s (Ariana Greenblatt) trauma, is no longer here either. These personas aren’t just paper thin, they’re insufferable – none worse than Jack Black’s endless rambling, which somehow turns the game’s frustratingly talkative robot companion Claptrap, into something bordering on unlistenable.
To take a looter shooter like Borderlands – ultimately a video game with a sparse narrative and a lot of brash personas designed to either charm or annoy – and try to turn it into a feature film requires a touch of creativity. Look no further than Monster Hunter and the way Paul W.S. Anderson eschews any given plot by using the fantasy world of the game as a sandbox. Roth and his writers (some of whom remain uncredited after abandoning the project) are never able to decide between fidelity to the source or completely absurd original plotting, resulting in a script that isn’t just lacking in the game’s irreverent sense of humor, but in any catharsis for the plotlines it lazily introduces.
But it all extends so far beyond bad writing. Tonal confusion exists everywhere, down to the performers themselves, each one delivering their lines without an ounce of inspiration and oscillating blindly between snark and supposed friendship. The weightlessness of their words also translates to the way their action scenes play out, without a hint of energy and certainly without any of the gratuitous blood and violence the games are best known for. If Borderlands’ greatest source of inspiration (as it seems to be) was Guardians of the Galaxy and James Gunn’s rag-tag team, perhaps it would have served the Borderlands creatives better to think about the way these individuals connect and grow over the span of a motion picture.
Instead, Borderlands barrels through everything it introduces. No scene lasts longer than any given fetch quest one might embark on in-game, with choppy editing that makes each scene feel like it had a “skip cutscene” option, and breakneck pacing that renders emotional beat and moment of tension useless. Roth and his myriad collaborators – many of whom walked away from the project, much like he did before leaving it in Tim Miller’s hands – seem to that think something being “colorful” means not being void of life aesthetically, and, to its credit, some of its styling and production design certainly looks nice. However, nearly every shot is buried under visual effects that feel painfully unreal, with stiff bodies moving against green screens that would make contemporary Marvel movies’ fake backgrounds look subtle.
While some bad movies have so much badness in them to enjoy they eventually become entertaining, others are just too empty to find any redeeming feature in. Borderlands is decidedly the latter, destined to not only make those who go in blind regret their decision but to make those who were once entertained by the game question whether or not that was ever true. It strongly seems that not a single person involved in its production gave Borderlands any more of their energy than the bare minimum, and will likely never think about it again – and neither will I.
Little White Lies is committed to championing great movies and the talented people who make them.
Published 9 Aug 2024
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Little White Lies was established in 2005 as a bi-monthly print magazine committed to championing great movies and the talented people who make them. Combining cutting-edge design, illustration and journalism, we’ve been described as being “at the vanguard of the independent publishing movement.” Our reviews feature a unique tripartite ranking system that captures the different aspects of the movie-going experience. We believe in Truth & Movies.
