BORDERLANDS

I thought we were past this, folks.
I thought the dark days of Video Game Film Adaptations was past us.
I thought we had made it to greener pastures…. But here we are.
2 deep again, after Five Night’s at Freddies and now this.

Time to pour out a cold one for Borderlands. Buckle Up.

Borderlands is one of the defining video game series of the 21st century. Everyone I know who is a gamer has played/owned/loved this series, including my own best friend who was ravenous for this film adaptation. So my expectations were pretty high, especially with such amazing talent in front of and behind the camera.

Starring a who's who of Hollywood heavy hitters, it is astonishing to me that 2 Oscar winners and one of the greatest comedy actors in the world somehow got roped into this.

But hey, money talks. And with a budget of somewhere around $120 million dollars, I can only hope and pray that Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart and Jamie Lee Curtis each got a dump truck full of money dropped off on their lawns before filming started on this one.

Based directly on a storyline from the first game,the film stars Cate Blanchett as Lilith - a bounty hunter for hire who is contacted by Atlas (Edgar Ramirez), a mysterious CEO of the giant Atlas Corporation, to travel back to her home planet of Pandora to track down Atlas’ daughter. Lilith forms an alliance with an unexpected team — Roland (Kevin Hart), a former elite mercenary, now desperate for redemption; Tiny Tina (Ariana Goldblatt), a feral teenage demolitionist; Krieg (Florian Munteanu), Tina's musclebound, rhetorically challenged protector; Tannis (Oscar winner Jamie Lee Curtis), the scientist with a tenuous grip on sanity; and Claptrap (voiced by Jack Black), a persistently wiseass robot.

Borderlands is a cinematic case of “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly”, and quite frankly that makes it easier to breakdown in terms of what works and what doesn’t.

The good is in the cast, who are the only thing that stand out here if there is any, with Blanchett chewing up every scene she is in, while Kevin Hart and Jamie Lee Curtis really do make the best with what they are given. Blanchett is an Oscar winner so she brings Oscar worthy tact to the film, and even with a script this flimsy and sparse in terms of actual storyline sense, she packs a great heroine punch as Lilith. Same can be said for Hart, who I like in everything he does and this is no exception. His quick wit and smart ass sense of tone and delivery work really well in this kind of a film, and he is definitely the comedic backbone to Borderlands, because Jack Black’s Claptrap becomes more and more annoying as the film goes on.

For a film that reportedly cost $120million+, it’s mind boggling to me that things look this bad and cheap. I was confused at points as to why Roth’s film looks so poorly put together, not just in terms of the set design but also the choreography and cinematography. It’s not lost on me that Pandora is supposed to look like a barren wasteland, but that large and expansive world building never feels fleshed out and even the action set pieces echo that. Everything feels very tight and close quarters, claustrophobic of sorts, with incredibly poor editing to add to the constant bombardment of imperfectly crafted shots.

As I began to dig a bit deeper into the film’s shooting schedule and subsequent reshoots, I came across some news from January 2023 in which Deadpool director Tim Miller had been brought on for reshoots and brought a new cinematographer and editor with him to assist in the transition. Now listen, I am not new to this film thing - so I can spot differences a mile away between two different directors shooting and editing styles. And this is where Borderlands really gets ugly. As I recollected watching the film, there are HUGE differences in terms of the tone, the script, the choreography, the cinematography and the editing at points throughout Borderlands. And I get it - things needed to be ‘polished up’ to hit a desired release date. But Borderlands feels like two very different movies at times.

If you’ve seen an Eli Roth film, the man is a master of the R-rating and horror, so Borderlands PG-13 rating feels like it holds back Roth from being able to give this his all. There was so much potential here to kick off a lucrative franchise. And even with Miller’s additions, it once again feels pigeon holed because of its inability to put together a film that flows cohesively and tonally.

Borderlands is borderline unwatchable unfortunately and a huge letdown after years of being stuck in development hell. The video game series is ripe for the picking so here’s to hoping that down the line, we see this come back to the screen in a violent and ferocious manner it deserves.