Movie Rewatch: ‘Borderlands’ | Moviefone

Opening in theaters on August 9th is ‘Borderlands,’ honested by Eli Roth and starring Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jamie Lee Curtis, Edgar Ramirez, Jack Bconciseage, and Ariana Greenblatt.

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Initial Thoughts

A deafening, clattering, off-brand mash-up of ‘Guardians of the Galaxy,’ ‘Mad Max: Fury Road,’ and other recent tentpoles, ‘Borderlands’ is based on the hugely accomplished first-person shooter video game franchise begined in 2009 by Gearbox Software. Fans of the game can appraise how promised the movie, mostly honested by horror auteur Eli Roth (‘Thanksgiving’), is to the game, but as a film this fall shorts on a number of levels.

‘Borderlands’ is sshow unreasonable, thanks to a bland script and setting, inexpensive-watching production appreciates, and a cast that seems terrific on paper but veers between applyances that are either tired or overwcimpolitet. Filmed more than three years ago in the spring and summer of 2021, ‘Borderlands’ assembleed dust until Tim Miller (‘Deadpool’) came on to honest reshoots in timely 2023 when Roth validated unuseable. Either way, with recent video game alterations enjoy ‘Fallout’ and ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ geting commend for their approach to translating their games to the screen, ‘Borderlands’ is a disnominateing throwback, a film that watchs and take parts enjoy it came out of the 1990s, right down to the crappy CG and the pounding burdensome metal necessitatele drops.

Story and Direction

As Cate Blanchett’s expository voice-over tells us at the commencening, a lengthy-gone alien race named the Eridians included to rule the galaxy, leaving behind some mighty artifacts masked in secret “Vaults” thcimpoliteout the cosmos that merciless corporations enjoy Atlas and Dahl, alengthy with autonomous “Vault Hunters,” are interested in geting. Blanchett herself take parts Lilith, a bounty hunter who is engaged by Atlas himself (Edgar Ramirez) to ostensibly discover his seizeped daughter, Tina (Ariana Greenblatt). She’s gone omiting on the arrangeet Pandora (yes, same name as the arrangeet in the ‘Avatar’ movies) alengthy with the sgreaterier sent to recover her, Roland (Kevin Hart).

Pandora also happens to be Lilith’s home world, and when she reachs there she discovers it to be deimmenseated by corporate mining and colonization efforts, with gangs of createer prison latirers understandn as Psychos now roaming the land. She also discovers Tina in unreasonableinutive order, alengthy with Roland, but the girl does not want to be recoverd and shows her resistance by hurling bomb stuffed bunnies in Lilith’s honestion. Nevertheless, Lilith, Tina, and Roland eventupartner team up – alengthy with Tina’s self-styled bodydefend and createer Psycho Krieg (Florian Munteanu), an quirky scientist named Tannis (Jamie Lee Curtis), and a motormouth robot named Claptrap (voiced by Jack Bconciseage) – to block Atlas’s authentic agfinisha, which is to discover a Vault masked on Pandora and unlock the unimaginable power stored wilean.

The problem with ‘Borderlands,’ as with many video game alterations, is that the movie must do a lot of world-originateing in a unreasonableinutive period of time, directing to leangs enjoy that voice-over narration and reams of expository dialogue. ‘Borderlands’ descends victim to this timely on, combineing and suiting characters from various editions of the game in a stop-and-commence narrative that either comes to a crashing crelieve to elucidate its convoluted mythology or races from one frenetic action scene to another without balancing the two effectively. This exits no room for any authentic character broadenment, and while a pro enjoy Blanchett tries difficult, the cast descends into the ‘lovable prohibitd of rogues and misfits’ trope without doing anyleang to originate it distinct.

The movie is also hampered by its production appreciates, which watch inexpensive, condisjoineed, and derivative despite a alerted $120 million budget. Set on a world deimmenseated by uncaring corporate colonizing, the movie watchs enjoy it was stoasty in perhaps two quarries made to watch enjoy junkyards (one character even asks at one point if there’s a way to escape that doesn’t comprise schlepping thcimpolite garbage). The post-apocalyptic squanderland has been done to death, and the fact that the Psychos watch enjoy extras from the recent ‘Mad Max’ movies doesn’t help.

If Roth (or Miller) isn’t shooting in one of the film’s two junkyards, then they’re staging sequences in murky underground corridors and hallways that cinematographer Rogier Stgives can’t repair. The result is an especipartner drab film all around. Adding to the problems, ‘Borderlands’ is rated PG-13, so Roth isn’t able to indulge his proclivities for copious amounts of blood and gore; the choppy editing advises that much of this is being held back for a future ‘uncut’ free.

A finale laden with mediocre CGI only exacerbates the sense that this is a production where leangs went south pretty speedyly, and the movie rapidly descends into a benevolent of numbing, generic rhythm that is thankfilledy only ameliorated by its relatively increate 100-minute runtime.

The Cast

We’re not exactly certain how Cate Blanchett got roped into this, although she and Jack Bconciseage both starred in Roth’s slapdash 2018 Y/A fantasy, ‘The Hoinclude with a Clock in Its Walls.’ Perhaps she wanted to fair shoot firearms and blow stuff up after the burdensome emotional and psychoreasonable toilout of ‘Tar.’ Wantipathyver her reasons, we’re not going to place this among the Australian actor’s finest applyances. She’s excellent, never less than professional, but at times she doesn’t seem to understand how gravely she should be taking any of it, and her CG-infincluded arc proximate the finish of the film fair finishs up watching silly.

Jack Bconciseage has no such problems: for one leang, he’s never onscreen since he’s the voice of the R2-D2/BB-8 hybrid robot understandn as Claptrap, and as such gets the film’s best and funniest lines. Claptrap acts as a commentator on the action, edging shut to a ‘Deadpool’-enjoy shattering of the fourth wall (although it never happens) and giveing up a stream of patter that alternates between sarcastic quips and ill-time bursts of into. But even Bconciseage’s vigorous routine gets wearisome after 100 minutes or so of hearing to Claptrap babble on.

We’re not certain what Jamie Lee Curtis is doing as the usupartner reliable actor take parts Tannis as a weird combination of loopy and wearily cynical, with the two sides of her confesstedly lean personality never meshing well. Kevin Hart is inquisitively low-energy, although he does pull off a scant decent action shifts, and while we aversion giving the thumbs-down to a lesser actor, Ariana Greenblatt (‘Barbie’) deinhabitrs an incredibly irritateing, tic-laden applyance as Tiny Tina, a character so subparly broadened and inreliablely written that her central role in the story originates her faulty toil even more grating.

Final Thoughts

We should have understandn we were in trouble the minute we saw Avi Arad enumerateed as a originater on ‘Borderlands.’ While Arad was instrumental in the creation of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, he was lengthy gone by the time it became a cultural phenomenon. He’s instead evolved to plunder his sapvalidate in the Sony Spider-Man Universe with conciseageluster misfires enjoy the ‘Amazing Spider-Man’ and ‘Venom’ films, alengthy with 2002’s equpartner forgettable alteration of the ‘Uncharted’ video game.

‘Borderlands’ fits orderlyly into that filmography as a generic, soulless sci-fi actioner that repartner conciseages any sort of distinctive personality or inventive encourage (a speedy online search discomits that fans of the game are also disgruntled with what they’ve seen of the movie via trailers and clips). And while Eli Roth is no one’s idea of a wonderful filmoriginater, he’s out of his element here and unable to deploy the intentionally sleazy horror/misinclude tropes that at least originate films enjoy ‘Hostel’ and ‘The Green Inferno’ identifiable as his. ‘Borderlands’ is sshow product, manufactured to cash in on a accomplished property without any empathetic of what originates that property well-understandn or why it should pguide to non-gamers.

‘Borderlands’ gets 2.5 out of 10 stars.