Borderlands (2024, dir. Eli Roth)

by Jack Martin | Aug 9, 2024

Certificate: 12A

Running Time: 101 mins

UK Distributor: Lionsgate

UK Release Date: 8 August 2024

WHO’S IN BORDERLANDS?

Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Ariana Greenblatt, Florian Munteanu, Jamie Lee Curtis, Edgar Ramírez, Gina Gershon, Haley Bennett, Bobby Lee, Olivier Richters, Janina Gavankar, Cheyenne Jackson, Charles Babalola, Benjamin Byron Davis, Steven Boyer, Ryann Redmond, Harry Ford

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Eli Roth (director, writer), Joe Crombie (writer), Avi Arad and Erik Feig (producers), Steve Jablonsky (composer), Rogier Stoffers (cinematographer), Julian Clarke and Evan Henke (editors)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

A group of intergalactic outsiders set out on a rescue mission…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON BORDERLANDS?

“Well, it was nice while it lasted,” so says a character late into director Eli Roth’s Borderlands. The same can be said about the recent surge in video game adaptations that were actually worthy of people’s attention. One only has to look at the critical success of shows like The Last of Us and Fallout, as well as the strong box office numbers of movies such as Five Nights at Freddy’s and Gran Turismo, to recognise that audience appetite for entertainment based on interactive IP is still, for better or worse, a driving force in modern-day audience consumption.

Borderlands, based on the popular franchise by gaming company 2K Games, just about destroys any and every step of progress those previous examples had made. Roth’s adaptation is a soulless, charmless, and deeply cynical exercise in making a video game movie so bad that it somehow negates the value of those far better examples, and reminds us all that movies based on video games can, indeed, still be very, very bad.

Set somewhere in an intergalactic cesspit that’s apparently dominated by a powerful guy named Atlas (Edgar Ramírez), a bounty hunter named Lillith (Cate Blanchett) is approached by Atlas for a mission to head to the desolate planet known as Pandora – no, not the one from Avatar – and rescue his kidnapped daughter Tina (Ariana Greenblatt) who’s apparently been taken by former mercenary Roland (Kevin Hart) and hulking henchman Krieg (Florian Munteanu). Along the way, Lillith is joined by a robot called Claptrap (voiced by Jack Black), and later by kooky scientist Tannis (Jamie Lee Curtis), but soon all of them must band together to find a fabled vault said to contain some of the universe’s most treasured powers.

Before we go any further, I should clarify something important: I have never played any game in the Borderlands franchise. My knowledge of it is practically non-existent, with no idea what the main plot is (if any), who any of the characters are, or even what the main objective is. I am therefore not the target audience for this film, but I have a sneaking suspicion that neither are actual Borderlands fans, because from what little I do know about the games (largely from just hearing the opinions of people that have actually played them), this movie is to them what The Last Airbender was to avid viewers of the original cartoon. It really feels like Roth and co-writer Joe Crombie simply took the recognisable names and imagery from the source material and proceeded to craft the most generic, uninteresting pile of garbage since the last bad video game adaptation, which I imagine will frustrate dedicated gamers just as much, if not more so, than people like myself who never played them.

Roth’s take on Borderlands is, instead of anything remotely close to what the games apparently are, a misinformed mish-mash of far more popular sci-fi/adventure movies, all of which possess the kind of charm and charisma that this film sorely lacks. Beyond the obvious Guardians of the Galaxy parallels, too many to mention in this limited space of text, there are blatant nods to the Indiana Jones series, Blade Runner, Mad Max and even, of all things, X-Men: Dark Phoenix, all of which Roth grabs from without the slightest courtesy or consideration that his audience will know exactly what he’s trying to replicate. In his mind, and indeed the minds of the studio whose thumbprints are clearly all over this via the blatant reshoots, the narrative succeeds because it’s simply made up of parts that audiences recognise. Unfortunately, that’s not how filmic storytelling works, especially on a blockbuster level, and if you are going to blatantly rip off all these much better movies, then at least make it your own rather than rubbing out the signature of those original artists.

The real reason it relies so much on all this existing IP – except, funnily enough, itself – is because the film is borderline unfunctional without it. Practically all of the dialogue here is a mixture of heavy exposition, much of it delivered by Cate Blanchett’s Lillith via narration so unnecessary that at one point she even starts talking about things that are actually happening on the screen, and an unhealthy amount of Roth’s signature smartass quips that have long irritated viewers, even in some of his better work. Roth’s direction – allegedly hijacked by Deadpool’s Tim Miller during reshoots – does not help, as the film constantly fumbles its own adventurous tone by having the likes of Jack Black’s Claptrap suddenly show up to drop a one-liner like a particularly lame shock jock DJ, or to randomly start having bullet diarrhoea in the middle of an intense sequence.

This unsustainable combination makes it nigh on impossible to connect with any of the characters, let alone the world in which they operate, because none of them carry a weight of charm or charisma, and come off more as obnoxious than endearing, particularly Black’s Claptrap who serves zero purpose other than to crack a joke with an extremely annoying voice and tone of delivery. God bless the likes of Blanchett for trying to make the material work in their favour, but they are left stranded by a dreadful script and scattershot direction that makes their jobs even harder to pull off, regardless of their clear talent.

There’s very few redeeming qualities about this movie, if any at all. It is a film so creatively bankrupt that it’s a shock that Netflix didn’t acquire it. It is a sci-fi blockbuster with such an ugly aesthetic and even uglier effects that it almost makes The Flash look like Godzilla Minus One. It features annoyingly dull characters who you give absolutely none of your sympathy, largely for being nothing more than walking, talking exposition dumps and sources for Roth’s crude and unfunny frat-boy humour, whether it’s being sprayed with urine or, again, bullet diarrhoea. And above all, it’s a video game movie that sucks all the fun and pleasure out of either playing or watching someone play the original games, leaving you with an empty and depressed feeling inside.

Like the wasteland planet on which we spend most of the movie, avoid Borderlands at all costs.

SO, TO SUM UP…

Borderlands is a dire video game adaptation that replaces the wonder and creativity of the popular franchise with a derivative plot, charmless characters, dreadful writing and direction, and constant reminders of far better movies you could be watching instead.