A rogue bounty hunter is hired to save and princess and finds herself caught in the middle of an intergalactic treasure hunt in Borderlands, a surprisingly faithful adaptation of the video games that opens worldwide this weekend. But despite a colorful cast of characters and striking production design under director Eli Roth, the agonizingly dull narrative will leave you wishing for a way to skip this cutscene.
Borderlands had its work cut out for it from the start, with the long-derided genre of video game adaptations seeing a huge uptick in quality and popularity in recent years. The Super Mario Bros. Movie challenged Barbie for top of the global box office last year, while recent streaming adaptations of The Last of Us and Fallout have drawn rave reviews from both critics and fans.
In a world where the top of the video game adaptation heap was Paul W.S. Anderson’s Mortal Kombat, Borderlands would play relatively well: this is a slick and fast-paced transition to the big screen, largely faithful to its source, with a striking production design that nicely captures the game franchise’s cel-shaded aesthetic. But competing with blockbusters like Deadpool & Wolverine and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga at the multiplex, this is clearly second-rate, B-movie filler.
Borderlands stars Cate Blanchett as Lilith, a snarky, roguish bounty hunter hired by interplanetary CEO Atlas (Edgar Ramírez) to track down and rescue his daughter, who has been kidnapped by members of his own guard and stashed on the desolate wasteland of the planet Pandora. Lilith is chosen for the job due to her own mysterious past on Pandora, which will tie into the larger narrative in short order.
But when Lilith locates Atlas’ daughter, the snarky, roguish demolitions expert Tiny Tina (Barbie‘s Ariana Greenblatt), and the man who snatched her, the snarky, roguish mercenary Roland (Kevin Hart), the trio find themselves swarmed by Atlas’ goons. So she joins them on a mission to find the hidden treasure at the heart of Pandora, for some reason, alongside the snarky, roguish android Claptrap (voiced by Jack Black) and the hulking brute Krieg (Florian Munteanu), who never speaks, though we can sense the witty one-liners that go unsaid from behind his mask.
You may notice a similarity between our merry cast of characters: in Eli Roth’s version of Star Wars, everyone is Han Solo, cracking wise as they fly through monsters and dodge storms of bullets. The jokes don’t really land, but the over-the-top levity creates a distancing effect for the audience; if none of these characters are taking the movie seriously, why should we? To be fair to the film, it’s an accurate representation of one of the biggest criticisms of Borderlands 3, which sacrificed its story for interminable attempts at comedy.
Only Jamie Lee Curtis, as spaced-out scientist Tannis, is given a distinct personality from the rest of the primary characters. But Borderlands does the Oscar winner no favors by having her walk through the entire film like a deer in the headlights. In an all-too-brief appearance, Gina Gershon brings a much-needed sense of sincerity to her role of madam Mad Moxxi.
The crux of Borderlands involves this ragtag band of heroes tracking down mystical keys in order to open the mythical vault on Pandora that holds some kind of legendary power of the gods. Not for their own gain, mind you, but just to keep it out of the hands of Atlas, who is so absent from the movie that he fails to register as any kind of genuine threat. Nevermind that they could destroy the keys, or flee to some other planet, if that really was their goal.
Story was never a strong point of the franchise, especially in the much-derided third game, and this adaptation continues the tradition. But the freewheeling spirit of life on Pandora is nicely captured by the characterizations here, and the production design is so perfect you might as well be watching a cutscene from the games.
Unfortunately, the story is so rote and uninvolving that it also captures the experience of sitting through a cutscene in Borderlands 3, and this one is of the unskippable 90-minute variety, shorn of the promise of some satisfying FPS action at the end. Borderlands is never inept or offensive enough to warrant getting worked up over, but it won’t play well with fans of the games by leaving out what made them fun, and its generic narrative is unlikely to recruit any new fans, either.
