For a while there, Borderlands seemed like it would be forever locked in the same vault that plays such a central role in its story. They’ve been developing the adaptation of the shoot-and-loot videogame franchise for almost a decade. Like an unskilled co-op partner you’re carrying through the planet of Pandora for the first time, the film was dropped then picked up, revived then abandoned, resurrected only to be hurried to the finish line. Now that it’s out, it’s clear that filmmaker Eli Roth and his team have done something incredible: They’ve returned us to the Golden Age of videogame movies, back when they were all pieces of sh*t.
In the face of unprecedented videogame movie success, where both Sonic and Mario have defied common industry wisdom, Borderlands returns to the old reliable formula of slapping Borderlands textures over a generic fetch quest narrative and sprinkling loose lore references into an anonymous script. Aside from these recognizable keywords and the cosplay costuming, Borderlands could be called anything and set anywhere.
The games made their name with addictive action, which never stopped lampshading its own collect-and-then-collect-some-more mayhem, and a cel-shaded style that gave its cartoonish humor an aesthetic to match. But it’s hard to maintain irreverence when film adaptations treat their source material like gospel, and their Easter eggs like holy relics. The games’ cheeky, hyper-online, self-aware and sometimes gratingly “random” humor has been extinguished. Its bloodthirsty, over-the-top junkyard planet has been PG-13’d into a barren waste indistinguishable from all those MCU green-screen setpieces filled with safe-looking violence. Borderlands also has the misfortune to have its shirtless psychos hit the big screen the same year that George Miller returned with Furiosa to once again prove his post-apocalyptic dominance. These Z-grade War Boys will never see Valhalla.
In this generic world lives our generic hero, Lilith (Cate Blanchett), whose performance and voiceover come through gritted teeth, like her character from Tár graduated from conducting videogame concerts to starring in their movies. She has the dead eyes of a TV star asked to do a “fun one” at a Comic-Con photo op one too many times. Lilith is a bounty hunter, who is hired to return Tina (Ariana Greenblatt) to her rich and powerful father Atlas (Edgar Ramírez). Tina was kidnapped by Roland (Kevin Hart), one of Atlas’ ex-mercenaries, and the masked muscleman Krieg (Florian Munteanu), who seems to be here just to remind everyone about the game’s box art.
They have even less going on inside their costumes than Lilith. Hart is so miscast it almost seems like a joke in and of itself—put a comedian the size of the little girl he’s smuggling in the tough guy role—but it’s not. It’s just a mistake. At least Blanchett, though visibly bored, can strike a heroic pose. Hart sometimes seems to take a moment to realize the camera has started rolling. Munteanu has no discernable lines, nor do we see his face. Greenblatt, now in the unenviable position of providing all the energy for the film, forges ahead with pageant-like falseness.
They make for an adventuring party straight out of a randomized character creator, as Lilith quickly drops the bounty hunting business to ally with Roland, Tina and Krieg for reasons beyond comprehension. Jamie Lee Curtis, ten years older than Blanchett, joins them as a scientist who was colleagues with Lilith’s mom. The squad then super-sizes one MacGuffin search (the girl) into a Big MacGuffin search (some keys that open up a mythical vault).
And that’s about all the set-up we get before we’re off on a prophecy-fulfilling, fetch-questing, name-dropping slog. But even Borderlands’ fan service is out of service. Borderlands the game had a cleverness deeply tied to its form: Its gags about greedy RPG shopkeepers or tutorial exposition dumps simply don’t translate to film—and they’re certainly no longer subversive when stripped from their context. And don’t worry about getting too much adrenaline from the action. After the rare moment of motion, Roth is quick to kick back for a lengthy scene of sitting around.
On top of that, its sense of humor has been smoothed over by earnestness and shoehorned emotion. What little remains has deteriorated like a gun in Pandora’s corrosive sewers, delivered in a non-stop patter by the group’s companion robot Claptrap (Jack Black), turned into an annoying Disney sidekick. Quips are drowned out by blaring needledrops or muffled behind Krieg’s franchise-signature mask like an off-brand Bane; the film sounds cheap and looks cheaper.
At least Claptrap is well-realized, jankily rolling around like rusted-out, even more sarcastic R2-D2. The rest of the film can never meld its actors with the backgrounds that alternate between looking like the games and looking like nothing at all. Fight scenes take place in hallways and storage rooms; Sanctuary, Pandora’s town, looks like space Dave & Buster’s. At Borderlands’ best, we see some nice concept art, divorced from the movement or humanity of cinema. At its worst, we see some poor saps clearly wandering through unreality, stuck in a CG hackjob not quite as convincing as a Spy Kids sequel. Scratch that, the worst parts are the driving. At least that’s like the game.
You’ve made it this far, so I hope you’ll indulge me a quick sidebar. In a scene at the bar owned by Mad Moxxi (Gina Gershon), there, on the bartop itself next to drinks of all kinds, is a can of Axe body spray. Really. A regular can, its brand clear and legible. The simple answer for its presence is crass product placement. But why this product, placed this way? It’s not a beverage, alcoholic or otherwise. We’re not on Earth, where Axe exists. I don’t think there even is an Earth in the Borderlands world. Did Pandora independently develop its own identical brand? It doesn’t even blend in well with the set dressing around it (because it is spray deodorant and not a co*cktail) if Eli Roth was, in fact, compelled by the moneymen to hide it in plain sight in order to offset the film’s ballooning budget. It’s f*cking insane, and of course the only product that would dare get near this movie is Axe f*cking body spray.
But really, that’s only the douchey cherry atop a sh*t sundae. Eli Roth’s haphazard direction, terrible script and disastrous ending turns a nondescript sci-fi adventure into a truly awful Borderlands movie. But it is a return to form for videogame movies, movies that yearn to look like their own fan films. The fake film they’re making in The Fall Guy has more heart, crypto commercials have more soul. Catch a ride far, far away from this catastrophe.
Director: Eli Roth
Writer: Eli Roth, Joe Crombie
Starring: Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Edgar Ramírez, Ariana Greenblatt, Florian Munteanu, Gina Gershon, Jamie Lee Curtis
Release Date: August 9, 2024
Jacob Oller is Movies Editor at Paste Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter at @jacoboller.
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