A ‘Borderlands’ Fan Regretfully Reviews The ‘Borderlands’ Movie

I’m not sure there’s a way to make a good Borderlands movie. And this is certainly not it.

Given that it’s being rated as one of the worst video game adaptations ever in a sea of bad video game adaptations, most from a decade or more ago, I had to see Borderlands for myself. It is not 2005-era Uwe Boll bad, and yet it is also not good at all. To talk about it, you should know up front that I’m someone with hundreds and hundreds of hours across three games and a pre-sequel, and that’s the perspective I’m coming from.

This is neither a good Borderlands movie or nor a good movie, period. It feels like Gearbox and Eli Roth tried to split the difference here, making a mass-appeal PG-13 action film but gesturing vaguely at the games to try to get that crowd to show up too.

But the end result is throwing the Borderlands games at a wall, watching them shatter, and gluing back together a handful of mildly recognizable pieces. Spoilers follow, though not if you’ve played the games or even know the basics.

Did you think casting was going to be a problem? Casting is a problem. In some instances it’s actually…okay. I think the single best-cast character is Marcus, and all of his 90 seconds of screentime. Krieg just has to look like Krieg and say Krieg things like “I’m gonna lick your spine!” and he does that. I do think Young Gamora/Young Ahsoka Ariana Greenblatt’s promising career will survive this, and she would be an okay Tina with a much better script. Weirdly, I actually kind of…liked Jack Black’s Claptrap? He was genuinely funny at times, and arguably more so than the games.

But Lilith and Roland, man, what were they thinking? Roland is Kevin Hart, who is of course not the stoic, burly soldier he should be, he is Kevin Hart, perhaps acting 20% less Kevin Hart-ish than usual, but only that. And just physically he is, no exaggeration, only slightly taller than Greenblatt’s Tina and the film does nothing to pretend otherwise.

Cate Blanchett is absolutely the most baffling casting here as Lilith. I have no idea how they got the two-time Oscar winner other than perhaps boredom on her part and an inexplicable desire to recreate her character’s trajectory in Tar. But as a game-player, the age-gap from her to OG Lilith is distracting. And not just as a casting decision, but from a story perspective too. The movie has Tannis and Moxxi telling her about their time with her mother and remembering her as an eight year old. Jamie Lee Curtis is 65, ten years older than Blanchette’s 55. Gina Gershon is 62. It’s just goofy.

The script does not resemble any Borderlands game at all, other than it’s vaguely about finding Pandora’s vault. They make the thrust of the story an off-canon rewriting of Tina into being some Atlas-made clone using Eridian DNA to open the vault as a “chosen one,” her only connection to her original character being her bunny ears and saying things like “dealio.”

Tina is supposed to be the prophecies “Daughter of the Eridia,” but of course we all know where this is going. Lilith begins the movie without Siren powers. You will know from about twenty minutes in that she, not Tina, is the chosen one in question and gets those Siren powers at the very end. Flame on. The vault opening ends up being nothing but floaty cubes and tentacles, a hint of a boss fight from the games with no corresponding fight in the film.

The script is not good, but neither is the action. This is what I’ll now be calling “Rebel Moon Syndrome” where a PG-13 cut neuters the action of something that clearly should be R-rated. The gore-soaked, Mature-rated games give way to bullets pinging off armor and people falling over. Again, I think they were going for box office boosting here with the lower age rating, but it hurts the film. Not that gory action would have saved it, but it would have been better than what we got in this cut.

This project feels like pure ego. Look at these huge stars we got to play these characters even if they make no sense! Borderlands fans will show up no matter what even if the story and characters are way different! We’re launching the Borderlands cinematic universe to expand beyond those pesky gamers!

This will die here. Alone. No more movies. Nothing like this should be attempted again. In some other world I can see a cool animated Borderlands series possibly having worked on Netflix. But whatever A-list blockbuster this was supposed to be, despite a few brief moments where it works, it overwhelmingly does not, and it actually makes me concerned about Borderlands 4, if this is the kind of thing the studio thinks is good now.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.