Internet Janitor
Well, it’s not terrible. But it’s not very good either. I forgot the movie’s events as I stood up to leave the theatre. That’s never a good sign. But it did star the lovely, vivacious, stunning, flame-haired Cate Blanchett … ahem, anyway. It’s low effort, and coming from someone as talented as Eli Roth (recently of Thanksgiving), it’s surprising. Though it sounds like it did suffer from invasive reshoots.
Borderlands begins, hold on… let me check my notes. It begins with Roland (played by Kevin Hart, supposedly a comedian) rescuing Tiny Tina (played by the usually awesome Ariana Greenblatt, who was young Ashoka) from a prison of sorts. They go to the infamous planet of Pandora, where an ancient vault created by the universe’s gods is sought after. They, and other strays they pick up along the way, are chased by [insert generic stock villain #12] and must reach the vault before he catches them all.
I wanted to like this movie. I wanted to see that not all of the Internet mob which has chosen this movie to pick on was right. I’m sure many never saw it and complained about Internet points, but they were not all wrong. The biggest problem, despite the involvement of the studio that created the game, is that it has almost no understanding of why people like most of these characters. Cate Blanchett, as Lilith and Claptrap, is not bad, but everyone else is insulting and lazy.
Tiny Tina, despite having small parts in the games (until her own spinoff), is one of the most popular characters in the franchise. Her character is out of her mind, to put it very mildly and is obsessed with blowing things up. The Tina we get in this movie isn’t exactly well-adjusted but really never gets beyond that of a hardcore Hallmark Channel delinquent. I get that some brain-damaged executive who’s never heard of the Deadpool movies thought it wouldn’t make it as an R-rated comedy, but it kills her character and much of the rest of the movie.
It’s not like the games are fine art or anything. But they have a very particular feeling to them, and the world is very recognizable. The recent Fallout 76 series understood and nailed this. Borderlands sprinkle in a few things here and there, but overall, no one in the movie gels. The villain, whatever his name was, is generic and utterly forgettable.
This would have made more sense ten years ago, before studios should have realized that messing with the core fundamentals of what people like is not going to work.
If you want a laugh, check out a post from Gearbox (the studio behind the games) nutcase leader Randy Pitchford who still tried to put off this failure as a victory somehow.