Warning: This column contains minor spoilers for the Borderlands movie and game series.
On paper, the wildly popular Borderlands series is perfect material for the big screen: A bunch of alien criminals? Check. Goofy humor to add to the thrills? Check. A lovable (and slightly annoying) robot helper? Check!
So how did Lionsgate's film adaptation, directed by Eli Roth, fail to do so well?
It's a flop by any measure: “Borderlands” has just a 5% fresh rating from critics on review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, while diverseThe New England Journal's chief film critic criticized the predictable plot, writing, “As the film progresses, it becomes increasingly clear where things are going. By the time Borderlands opens its vault, even the characters no longer care what's inside.”
But of all the people who waste 102 minutes on this Guardians of the Galaxy ripoff, there's one group that's sure to be the most disappointed: gamers, like me.
When the first Borderlands game was released in 2009, it pioneered a new genre of looter-shooter games. Its fast-paced combat forced players to pay attention to random new guns dropped by defeated enemies, and to change their combat strategies with each higher-quality gun they acquired.
The exciting shooting is complemented by a compelling cast of playable characters: siren Lillith with powerful Eridian abilities, Berserker tank Brick, sniper hunter Mordecai, and former Crimson soldier Lance Roland.
Brick and Mordecai don’t appear in the film, while 55-year-old Cate Blanchett plays the spunky Lilith, for some reason. Despite her undeniable talent (and actresses of a certain generation certainly deserve to be action heroines), it’s hard to find a shadow of her original self in her portrayal of the wisecracking criminal. Meanwhile, Roland’s gruff character is reduced to a series of boring jokes about Kevin Hart’s height.
I'll be the first to admit that the comedy in “Borderlands” is… to the maximum Back in 2009, this game wasn’t for everyone—though it was refreshing at the time for a first-person shooter that didn’t take itself too seriously. Crude insults like “Bonerfart” don’t fly as well in 2024 as they did back then.
Unfortunately, while the film departs significantly from the source material in plot and character personalities, this old-fashioned humor—the element that most It needed updating – and that seems to be the only thing that remained intact.
At one point, as Blanchett's Lilith and Kevin Hart's Roland approach a narrow hallway, she motions for them to move forward and says jokingly, “Ladies first.” It's not exactly sophisticated comedy.
Almost all of the jokes fall flat, and that's not the fault of the crew, who put their best foot forward in an illogical scenario that fails to reach any kind of meaningful conclusion. This is not surprising, given the film's production problems.
The film began filming in 2021 during the pandemic, but underwent reshoots in 2023, directed by “Deadpool” director Tim Miller. “The Last of Us” writer Craig Mazin wrote the original screenplay that Roth was hired to direct, but he later disavowed the project, which now credits Roth and Joe Crombie as screenwriters.
The script they wrote develops a “transformation” in the third act that can be spotted from a mile away—Lilith is the true daughter of Iridiya, and possesses powerful phoenix-like traits, including the superpower of “phase walking.” In the game, phase walking is literally the first skill players can unlock for the character, making this reveal particularly unsatisfying for anyone even remotely familiar with the source material.
If the movie doesn't care about the gamers who bought over 77 million Borderlands games, then who exactly was this movie made for?
