We’re in a new era where video game adaptations can be just as good as any other nerdy thing. While many of us once assumed that a video game movie would undoubtedly be crap, there are now enough good ones that the general opinion has changed. Despite this general change, the Borderlands movie feels more like a product of the old era – when most game adaptations were generic, disposable action movies at best, and often worse. And “generic” and “disposable” is exactly what Borderlands is.
Borderlands, from Hostel director Eli Roth, is an adaptation of the sprawling game series set on Pandora, a hostile desert planet filled with corporations and fortune hunters trying to break into a mythical ancient treasure vault rumored to be full of amazing technology of all kinds. Enter Lilith (Cate Blanchett, in her worst American accent), who has been hired by a man named Atlas (Edgar Ramirez) to find his kidnapped daughter on Pandora. Of course, there’s a catch – the daughter is named Tiny Tina (Arianna Greenblatt), and is his creation rather than his real daughter, having been created from the blood of ancient aliens to open the treasure vault. And she wasn’t kidnapped – Atlas soldier Roland (Kevin Hart) rescued her from captivity.
It doesn’t take long for Lilith to catch up with them, and shortly after, they are all attacked by Atlas soldiers. Lilith must then team up with Roland, Tina, her likable psycho-bandit buddy, the quirky scientist Tannis (Jamie Lee Curtis), and the comical robot Claptrap to survive and find the vault herself.
Let’s talk about Claptrap, probably the most iconic character from the games. The video game version of Claptrap was originally voiced by former developer at Gearbox, David Eddings, who was replaced by a soundalike in Borderlands 3. But instead of getting someone who sounds like Claptrap, the movie has Jack Black voicing the role – and it’s terrible. For a few minutes early in the movie, I kind of got into his spirit, but as soon as Claptrap introduced himself to Lilith, the whole thing felt doomed.
It’s hard to say what the defining flaw in Black’s version of Claptrap is – perhaps it’s that he’s completely unable to match Claptrap’s established cadence or pitch, and so he comes across more like a new, annoying Star Wars droid. But his presence throws the whole film off, especially since he gets almost all of the joke attempts.
That’s an odd thing to say about a film starring Kevin Hart, but it’s kind of true. Borderlands isn’t a film where Hart gets on your nerves with incessant jokes, because he barely makes any. Hart plays Roland as a dry-witted action hero, and he’s pretty good at that if you let him, but it feels like most of his key scenes are missing. Perhaps that’s a side effect of the film’s PG-13 rating—the games are rated M and contain plenty of blood and foul language, and Borderlands so often feels like you’re watching the basic cable-cut version of an R-rated movie. And that slicked-down feel contributes to one of the film’s other big problems.
Borderlands is very short at just 102 minutes, which is something you might reflexively celebrate given how many damn long movies we’re currently watching. But there’s a reason longer movies are trending – more time allows for more depth, and depth is what Borderlands lacks the most. But that’s what sometimes happens when a movie spends four years in post-production and is repeatedly reworked – over time, everything gets polished down to nothing.
It’s frustrating to see this from a filmmaker like Eli Roth, who often acts as a writer on his horror films, like last year’s Thanksgiving. But just as often in recent years he’s made stuff like this. And House with a Clockwork Orange. And his remake of Death Wish. In short, anonymous studio jobber work that isn’t very good and has no real writer. Borderlands is also generic mid-range CGI junk that looks like a pretty cheap episode of The Mandalorian most of the time. And after years of re-editing and a round of reshoots by another filmmaker, there isn’t much cinematic craft left to see.
And the cast, unfortunately, can’t help much. Blanchett tries hard, but her American accent isn’t great – her occasional narration can be particularly unpleasant to listen to as a result. But she’s not alone in this, as none of the adult stars in Borderlands make much of an impression. The real star here is Greenblatt as Tiny Tina. Tina unfortunately fades into the background as the film goes on, but when she’s the center of attention, Greenblatt is good enough in the role that she’s one of the few aspects of Borderlands worth remembering.
But hey, at least there is Is something worth remembering. For long stretches, Borderlands is simply unspectacular, the kind of thing that fades from memory so quickly that it’s actually hard not to really like it. Except for Jack Black’s disturbing new take on Claptrap, that is.
