While Borderlands misses the mark in many aspects, it may offer just enough to keep both fans and newcomers to the franchise entertained. Eli Roth’s adaptation is definitely a one-off experience, but this one-off viewing offers humor and cool moments in the most important places.
As a gamer myself, I speak for the entire community when I say that we are seeing an unprecedented increase in the quality of Video game adaptations. Series based on The The Last of Us, Stand outAnd Arcane are prime examples from recent years. With great source material, there is no reason why we can’t have excellent adaptations of the most popular video game franchises, provided the right creatives and artists are involved. Unfortunately, the film is based on Borderland represents everything that makes people shy away from such adaptations.
The film follows Lilith (Cate Blanchett), a bounty hunter who is tasked with bringing a very special girl back to her father. The mission brings Lilith back to her home planet, Pandoraa wasteland full of psychos and exterminators, where she teams up with iconic characters from the franchise – namely Claptrap, Roland, Krieg, Tiny Tina and Tannis – to open a mysterious chamber controlled by the ancient race of Eridians. It’s worth noting that while I’m not completely familiar with every part of the franchise, I knew enough to understand the references, but not enough to notice any significant changes to the lore.
If I had to name the most important thing that works in Borderlands, it would be Madness of everything. You can definitely feel the atmosphere of the world that made the games so popular. The production and costume design teams have done their homework and managed to create a convincing overall representation of the game’s locations and factions. We also can’t forget the franchise unique humorof which they were able to capture much more than I expected.
What Borderlands really lacks, however, is its Pour And narrative. Although Cate Blanchet is as bad as Lilith, Jack Black is especially funny as Claptrap, and Ariana Greenblatt is annoying as Tiny Tina (no, really, that’s a good thing). Everyone tried to give their A… okay, maybe B game since filming took place during COVID (at ORIGO Studios in Budapest, I might add), but they’ll never convince anyone that they’re a perfect fit for their characters. Not even those who haven’t played the games since there are literally no chemicals between the actors, to a degree that I have probably never experienced before.
Frankly, most of Borderlands’ shortcomings stem from the decision to make it a movie rather than a Animated seriesfor example. The original material – both the story, the characters and the basic gameplay itself – is not suitable for a feature film under two hours, not because of the complexity of the games, but because of the genre itself. This is especially evident in the last act, where everything develops abruptly and the film simply ends in a quick, unfocused, disappointing sequence.
What makes Borderlands special is that it’s a beloved franchise from a time when video games and the industry as a whole meant something else. The film also reminded me of a time when video game adaptations were something else, but that something was never great and it still isn’t really great today, as evidenced by recent successful adaptations. While a failure like this could get you killed on Pandora, it’s not every day you see Cate Blanchett charging at hordes of psychos with guns drawn while Motörheads Ace of Spades plays, so… I guess that has to count for something, right?
