Borderlands (film)
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-Poster.jpg) "It's cute that you will think you broke the video game movie curse, but you didn't. Welcome to reality, kiddo!"
— Handsome Jack after seeing this film | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Borderlands is a 2024 American science fiction action comedy film co-written and directed by Eli Roth, based on the video game series developed by Gearbox Software. It stars Cate Blanchett as Lillith, an outlaw who allies with a team of misfits to find the missing daughter of the most powerful man in the universe. The ensemble cast also features Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Édgar Ramírez, Ariana Greenblatt, Florian Munteanu, Gina Gershon, and Jamie Lee Curtis.
The film was announced in August 2015, with Lionsgate Films developing it with Ari and Avi Arad producing, and Leigh Whannell in talks to direct. By February 2020, Erik Feig had joined as a producer and Roth was attached to direct from a screenplay by Craig Mazin. Casting took place from May 2020 to April 2021, with Blanchett cast first and others the following year. Principal photography began in April 2021 in Budapest, Hungary, during the COVID-19 pandemic, and wrapped in June. Two weeks of reshoots took place in early 2023, directed by Tim Miller due to Roth's commitments to Thanksgiving (2023). That June, Mazin removed his name from the project and was replaced by Joe Crombie.
Borderlands premiered at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles on August 6, 2024, and was released in the United States by Lionsgate on August 9.
Plot
Lilith must search for a young girl while joining a band of outlaws searching for a vault containing a mysterious treasure.
Why It Has No Place For No Hero
- First and foremost: It is almost nothing like the video game series. A series normally known for collecting guns and hunting for treasure became a poor man's Guardians of the Galaxy knockoff. It should come as no surprise that this film was deliberately meant to copy that movie's success without knowing why it works.
- The plot does not take cues from any of the games, making up its own story as it goes along.
- Modercai and Brick, the other two vault hunters introduced in the first game along with Lilith and Roland are absent and replaced with Krieg and Tiny Tina. Krieg does not do anything in here. You could cut his character out and nothing will change.
- Plus, Krieg is probably the Borderlands character with the most backstory aside from Handsome Jack. Established in Borderlands's 3 DLC, Krieg was originally a mercenary with an abusive mother, and was brutally experimented on by Hyperion causing his sanity to wane, it was only until meeting Maya in Borderlands 2 would cause him to regain it. Can you guess that this potentially interesting backstory never made it into this movie?
- Tiny Tina in the games is a young girl traumatized after her parents are killed by psychos causing her to turn into one herself. But here, she's just a tagalong kid who believes herself to be the key to the vault. She isn't.
- The characters in question look more like cosplayers than the actual characters they represent, Roland and Lilith are the worst offenders of all this.
- Ignoring the removal of the cel-shaded graphics, a staple of the games, the film's color palette is bland and looks no different from any other science fiction movie.
- Borderlands is also known for the amount of guns each series has. The style of reloads, fire rate, and the manufacturer made them all unique to one another. But here they're just like regular guns with nothing interesting or unique to them.
- The most egregious change is that the film's PG-13 rating is a massive tone down from the M rating the games have. Eli Roth originally wanted it to keep in tune with the games with its gore and violence, but the higher-ups forced him to tone it down to appeal to a wide audience. Like Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, the idea of making a PG-13/12 movie of a M/18-rated game only butchers the source material even further.
- The CGI is atrocious, with some CGI looking like PlayStation 3 or early PlayStation 4 games.
- Overuse of toilet humor, such as a scene where Thresher piss gets into Roland's mouth and Claptrap poops out bullets.
- Even without the toilet humor, the "humor" is almost non-existent, probably even worse than Borderlands's 3 humor.
- Poor dialogue that looks like it was written with AI.
- Poor direction from Eli Roth.
- While the plot may be better than Borderlands 3, it is still an inconsistent mess filled with exposition, relying on the viewers' knowledge of the series to understand what's going on, and the obvious plot twist of Lilith being a siren and key to the vault, especially if you've played the games.
- Atlas is a boring villain, and while not as bad as Troy and Tyreen Calypso, he lacks the charisma or any charm to stand out.
- The pacing is way too fast for viewers unfamiliar with the series to get time and invested in the world.
- Because of the fast pacing, the film's drama is also undercooked. We don't grow attached to Tiny Tina and her backstory or Roland's sacrifice because everything happens way too fast. Also, Roland survives his sacrifice, making everything hold much less weight.
- The final battle between Lilith and Atlas is anti-climatic, Lilith tricks Atlas into removing his ultra shield, and he's eaten by a vault monster. That's it.
- Executive meddling: The movie was originally supposed to receive an R rating but due to executive meddling, it got toned down to a PG-13, quite possibly being the entire reason the film is as bad as it is in the first place [1].
- The filmmakers failed to credit the riggers for Claptrap, which is a union violation and can lead to them losing every cent made on the film.
- The ADR makes the film look worse due to the dialogue not matching with the actors' mouth movements.
- Poor release timing: This film was released just a couple of weeks after Deadpool & Wolverine, which is a much better film than this.
- Overall, this is nothing more than a poor psycho's Guardians of the Galaxy, and it shows.
Hero Qualities
- Some action sequences can be entertaining to watch.
- Despite the poor casting, the performances are generally good, and they tried their best with the scripts that they were given.
- Jack Black (who also voices Po in the Kung Fu Panda and Bowser in The Super Mario Bros. Movie franchise), did a pretty good job voicing Claptrap.
- Some character designs are pretty decent and faithful to the source material, notably for Claptrap the design is perfect like in the game.
- Claptrap also isn't as annoying as he is in the games and does provide support when necessary.
- The concept of a Borderlands movie is interesting and awesome, even if the actual movie didn't turn out so great.
- Similar to the Sonic the Hedgehog film series and The Super Mario Bros. Movie, there are tons of Easter eggs that Borderlands fans can find satisfying.
- The credits are nice and are the closest thing that resemble the video games.
- This movie may appeal to some Borderlands fans, although doubtful.
Reception
Borderlands was universally panned by critics, audiences, and Borderlands fans. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 9% of 99 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 3.2/10. The film also holds a 4.4/10 on IMDb alongside a 27/100 on Metacritic.
The Guardian called the film "janky" and a "juvenile and derivative adaptation" while Variety found it was a "generic gaming adaptation that deprives audiences of the most valuable ingredient of its source: surprise." The Independent said it was a "total disaster" while Rolling Stone wondered if Borderlands was the worst video game movie ever. The Evening Standard suggested it was the worst film of the year. PC Gamer compared Borderlands to numerous other video game movie adaptations: "You might have heard the claim that this is a righting of the scale, … [to] remind us that good adaptations are the exception, not the rule. We needed a new Super Mario Bros. (1993). We didn't get one. Borderlands cannot hold a candle to Super Mario Bros. It is not interestingly bad. … It has no cheesy, thwarted ambition to redeem it. It never becomes more than a waste of a hundred minutes."
Blanchett's performance was praised by Tim Grierson, of Screen Daily, who contrasted it with the rest of the ensemble cast: "Not many in the starry ensemble shine. Vivid character actors like Gina Gershon and Jamie Lee Curtis ... are trapped in stale genre types. Even the potentially intriguing change-of-pace performances — such as Hart in a far more sombre turn than we expect from the explosive comedian — flatline." Among the more positive reviews, MovieWeb wrote, "Roth displays his cinematic prowess with solid combat scenes. Munteanu's Krieg is a beast and a half, twisting baddies into human pretzels with unabashed glee. The violence is brutal but not graphically disturbing ... It's stunning to see a Roth film without even a hint of blood. The producers made a business calculation to avoid the R-rating and allow children who also enjoy the games to see the film. Die-hard Roth fans expecting his trademark gruesome torture should sit this one out."
Box office
The film made only 31.3 million against a budget of 110-120 million, with half-and-half coming from domestic markets (US and Canada) and internationally. Sources declared it as one of the biggest box office flops of 2024, with estimated losses of 80+ million including marketing which isn't factored into the production budget for Lionsgate.
Videos
Official Trailer
Reviews
References
Comments
- Spoilers
- Bad movies
- Bad media
- Unfunny films
- 2020s films
- 2020s media
- Based on video games
- Lionsgate films
- Lionsgate's downfall
- Science fiction films
- Comedy films
- Terrible grasp on the source material
- Abusing the franchise
- Commercial failures
- Box office bombs
- Controversial films
- Featured on TV Tropes' So Bad, It's Horrible