Borderlands Review – A Heartless Pile of Skag Dung

A science-fiction world, bounty hunting, and a wise-cracking robot. That sounds like fun, right? The Borderlands video games have good if not great repetitive gameplay, with a mix of jokes and decent stories. Of course, the Borderlands movie doesn’t have gameplay. But, it somehow also manages to lack in both the story and humor department as well. Directed by Eli Roth (Thanksgiving), Borderlands is a loose adaptation of the first game, which was released in 2009. This is important to remember because the movie feels like it’s just as dated as the original game.

It stars Cate Blanchett (Thor: Ragnarok) as a bounty hunter named Lilith who is tasked by the film’s villain to find his kidnapped daughter on the wild planet of Pandora. Atlas, the villain, is played by Edgar Ramírez (Point Break), while his daughter Tina is played by Ariana Greenblatt (Barbie). Borderlands also features Kevin Hart (Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle) as Roland, Jamie Lee Curtis (Halloween) as Tannis, Florian Munteanu (Creed II) as Krieg, and Jack Black (Kung Fu Panda) as the voice of Claptrap. 

A Bumpy Ride Through the Borderlands

The story of Borderlands is fairly simple and quite boring. Lilith finds Tina, who ex-mercenary Roland kidnapped to keep her from Atlas’s experiments and to ultimately stop him from getting the power inside Pandora’s vault. In the world of Pandora, there’s a well-known urban legend that a powerful race of beings called the Eridians left a vault somewhere on the planet. Nobody knows what’s inside the vault, only that Eridian technology is immensely powerful—siding with Tina and Roland, Lilith and their Psycho friend Krieg attempt to combat Atlas’s forces which leads them on a vault hunt. 

Along the way, they meet up with expert Tannis and charismatic barkeep Mad Moxxi (Gina Gershon), who is accompanied by the wise-cracking robot Claptrap. Roland and company don’t trust Lilith much, and there are classic team-up antics. A native to Pandora, Lilith’s mother died when she was a child and Tannis was supposed to look after her. Instead, she left her on a bandit ship, where Lilith turned herself into the great bounty hunter she is in the film. There are some twists and turns including a couple of fakeouts, but the plot is fairly by the numbers.

The setting of Pandora feels empty because it is. The visual effects bring individual creatures to life, like a Skag (weird-looking dog-like creature) or Claptrap. But, as soon as a human is standing in front of a background or next to a visual effect, it looks horrible. Claptrap looks fine when he is by himself, and some of the locations look visually interesting. But, most of the landscapes are bland, and we barely get any shots of the creatures, with a focus on the Psycho bandits instead. 

You’re a Vault Hunter?

Cate Blanchett is fine as Lilith. It’s not an incredible performance, and she feels miscast. Hart is also fine as Roland, he’s fairly one-note. Greenblatt isn’t great as Tina, but again, she obviously worked with what she was given. The one downright terrible performance is Curtis as Tannis. She seemingly plays the character on the autism spectrum, but it never feels consistent which is the problem, as it feels like parody. It’s an odd choice when Tannis could have been played as overly obsessive.

Munteanu is playing a brute and the character does get some fun stuff to do. But, he performs through a mask nearly the entire time. The two good performances in Borderlands come from Gershon (Riverdale), who plays Moxxi with some charm, and Janina Gavankar (The Morning Show) as Knoxx. Gavankar is a little over-the-top, but I think this movie desperately needed to be more camp and she hits the right tone. There are some emotional scenes for the actors to play with, especially Blanchett, Curtis, and Greenblatt, but when the story is as half-baked as it is, it’s hard to care. 

Some of the character designs are interesting, with Lilith looking like her video game counterpart. Otherwise, most of what you’re seeing on screen would have looked better in something like Guardians of the Galaxy. There are a few combat scenes that look great, again when they aren’t being interrupted by awful visual effects. But, even then, there is a weird level of jank to them that just throws you off entire scenes. The Borderlands video games are known for their bonkers action, so of course the action scenes here are repetitive and there are too few of them. 

Go to Pandora, Have a Few Laughs

Humor is wildly subjective, so you might find Borderlands funny. I counted three or four times I chuckled in the film, and I consider myself an easy laugh. The dialogue is cringeworthy, the performances have the timing of a rickety internet connection, and the situations aren’t all that funny. Ultimately, the movie just doesn’t work. It feels like an action-comedy from the early 2000s, with bad visual effects and dated humor. 

Having talked about why Borderlands is a bad film, I feel like it’s important to note why it’s also a terrible video game adaptation. Taking a great character like Lilith from the games and changing everything about them for the movie, is a baffling choice. With tens of characters to choose from, the ones focused on in the movie are some of the most boring and underserved. Changing the somewhat forgettable story of the first game and essentially adapting the second game’s villain is a horrible idea with an even worse execution. Whatever made Borderlands special in the games is missing in the film. 

If you are a fan of the games, stay home and play them. If you’re morbidly curious as to how the film turned out and wish to go to the theater, do yourself a favor and re-read this review. This might end up being the worst film of the year, and it’s definitely my least favorite of the year so far.

You can watch Borderlands in theaters now.