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Borderlands Review – IGN

VaselineAugust 8, 2024

0 3 minutes read

There’s no such thing as a curse for video game adaptations, but there are some terrible video game adaptations. Take Borderlands, for example. Eli Roth’s hideous, sinless reconstruction of Gearbox Software’s beloved looter-shooter franchise belongs on the scrap heap. I’d call it “Cosplay: The Movie,” but that would be an insult to the professional cosplayers who miraculously transformed into Mad Moxxi, Tiny Tina, and other Vault Hunters with award-winning results. Roth’s unforgivably dull, one-dimensional job of a film captures none of the creative chaos, exploration, or action-packed hilarity of the games that inspired it.

The film operates like Borderlands 101, centering its attention on Cate Blanchett’s surly bounty hunter, Lilith. Roth and co-writer Joe Crombie—who replaced original co-writer Craig Mazin, whose name mysteriously disappeared from the project in 2023—interpret Gearbox’s interplanetary world-building with a disappointingly linear fashion. All the excitement of traversing Pandora’s Skag-infested territories and Psycho outposts is jettisoned, as Roth throws his characters into a single mission: Lilith is hired by business magnate and arms manufacturer Atlas (Edgar Ramírez) to find his daughter on Pandora—who turns out to be the graceful wrecker “Tiny” Tina (Ariana Greenblatt). But in true Borderlands style, Lilith’s goal isn’t just to rescue Tina from former mercenary Roland (Kevin Hart) and Psycho Krieg (Florian Munteanu). There is also an ancient Eridian vault and Tina may be one of the three keys needed to open it.

Roth’s film weaves together plot points spanning the Borderlands timeline, but the experience is unfortunately simplistic. It’s only a matter of time before Lilith, Tina, Roland, Krieg, and everyone’s favorite brutish robot, Claptrap (Jack Black), form a vault-hunting squad. Between hostile Crimson Lance soldiers led by Commander Knoxx (Janina Gavankar) and massive Threshers that could swallow a hunter whole, their mission seems daunting. But every challenge they encounter is passed with deflated stakes. Lilith either retrieves a crucial artifact by opening a single drawer, or Roland avoids what must surely be an off-screen death caused by Psycho, neutralizing any sense of danger. It’s like watching gameplay in God Mode with infinite lives, except these characters don’t even take damage—so what’s the point?

Roth’s interpretation is comparable to the Guardians of the Galaxy coloring book for preschoolers.

The internet is awash in Borderlands fan fiction that’s more inspired than Roth’s vanilla nostalgia fest. He directs action scenes as if he’s posing action figures, and instructs Blanchett to pose, hips up, as if Lilith were a dystopian Marauder Barbie. The characters’ costumes are consistently impeccable, despite battlefield wear and tear, explained by a silly “electric shower” gadget that removes stains. The question “Wouldn’t it be cool if?” seems to be the most pondered one in Borderlands , and the answer is often “No.” Roth’s production doesn’t really invest in the universe Gearbox has built, so why should we bother with this gaunt excuse for a sci-fi adventure? Sure, you’ll be riding in Marcus’s (Benjamin Byron Davis) van, spotting Dahl ECHO HUDs and checking out Pandoran locations like the acidic Caustic Caverns. But it’s all presented so plainly, familiarly and just as filling as a rice cake.

Visually, Borderlands is one of the ugliest studio releases you’ll see this year. Even in IMAX, Pandora’s dusty digital backdrops look like pixelated vomit. There’s an early scene where a bunny-eared Tina throws explosive stuffed animals at Lilith from above, and Greenblatt’s green-screening atop her junkyard makes no attempt to believably put Tina in her place. Later, when Atlas confronts our unlikely heroes, it’s as if Roth has shot them against an LED wall playing a low-res YouTube feed. The cel-shaded, pleasingly pop-art aesthetic of the games is one of their most appealing attributes, so why drown the film’s opening sequence in dim light? The wardrobe department has at least nailed the ensemble outfits, which burst with signature colors—but even they look like garbage against the bleached-out, ugly landscapes inserted in post-production.

Aside from Greenblatt – who plays an explosives addict clearly modeled on Harley Quinn – no one on screen seems to be enjoying it. Particularly Blanchett: she’s the right choice for Lilith, but she plays the gunslinger with an eye-rolling ambivalence that translates into a dry, disinterested performance. Kevin Hart plays Kevin Hart in a beret, parts of Florian Munteanu’s nonsensical dialogue are unintelligible, and Roth can’t even conjure a consistently funny Claptrap out of Jack Black. Gina Gershon’s Mad Moxxi lacks seductive burlesque charm, while Jamie Lee Curtis’ neurotic Dr. Patricia Tannis exists only to rattle off exposition. The complaint here isn’t that Hollywood stars can’t adequately emulate their in-game counterparts – it’s that Roth is wasting their talents, treating a cast of heavyweights as personalityless eye candy for the fandom.

To be honest, Borderlands feels incomplete. Roth’s storytelling moves forward with a remarkable fluency, as if crucial building blocks of the plot were missing. (Maybe two weeks of reshoots under stand-in director Tim Miller have distilled Roth’s vision into what we see here?) Why else would Krom (Olivier Richters) deserve a portrait in the closing credits when he barely makes a last-minute cameo in the film? Something’s off. Gearbox’s games are dense, expansive, and brimming with freedom to go wild, while Roth’s interpretation reads like a toddler’s Guardians of the Galaxy coloring book.

VaselineAugust 8, 2024

0 3 minutes read