Borderlands (2024) Review: It’s DOA For This Video Game Movie Debacle

Borderlands is bad and b-o-r-i-n-g with a capital “B”. It’s the kind of video game movie adaptation that disregards the all-important term “game accurate”. Like what Eli Roth is thinking when he assembles a cast that looks older than the game characters?

Sure, the cast is stacked with familiar names like Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart and Jack Black. Except for Jack Black, who nails the hyperactive personality and voice of Claptrap the robot which at least looks straight out of the video game, the rest feels like they are cosplaying the game characters.

The most baffling choice is Cate Blanchett and although she is no stranger to appearing in genre movies (Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Hela in Thor: Ragnarok), her lead role as the red-haired Lilith made me feel like she’s doing this for the sake of a paycheck rather than inhabiting the character. She tries her best to look cool, sassy and all but it’s hard to believe an acclaimed actress like her can end up with such a role not worthy of her talent.

So, in this movie, Lilith is a bounty hunter hired by Atlas (Edgar Ramirez) to locate his missing daughter Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt). The latter turns out to be on the planet Pandora together with a rogue soldier, Roland (Kevin Hart) and the masked muscleman Krieg (Florian Munteanu). Pandora happens to be Lilith’s home planet and even though she’s reluctant to travel back there, the money’s too good to resist. Once there, it doesn’t take long before she manages to track down Tiny Tina and the next thing you know, trouble arises.

Lilith ends up joining Tiny Tina and the rest of the gang as they try to survive enemy attacks, one of which includes the Crimson Lance soldiers led by Commander Knoxx (Janina Gavankar). The movie also introduces Tannis (Jamie Lee Curtis), a scientist who later joins the team and the whole mission has to do with Tiny Tina being the important key to accessing the all-powerful Vault.

Borderlands may clock just 102 minutes but it sure feels like a tedious slog reaching the finish line. Roth, who also co-wrote the screenplay alongside Joe Crombie, is disappointingly bland with a limp comedy-filled adventure that looks as if they are targeting this movie as the next Guardians of the Galaxy. The story just flatlines right from the get-go, and even with the busy visuals and action sequences earlier on including a car chase that ends with Roland ramming his armoured vehicle in and out of the monstrous Threshers, the stakes are surprisingly low and at times, non-existent. The rest of the action is mediocre, lacking the propulsive fun desperately needed for this kind of movie.

A team-up movie like Guardians of the Galaxy mainly works because of the cast of well-established characters that we can root for. But this is barely the case in Borderlands with the ragtag team and despite their different personalities, they are devoid of chemistry and emotion, making me hardly care whether they will succeed in their mission or stay alive at the end of the day.

Borderlands has been a victim of troubled production with extensive reshoots and Terminator: Dark Fate Tim Miller was even brought in to oversee the production after Roth needed to fulfil his obligation to complete Thanksgiving at the time. After the movie culminates in an underwhelming third act, I’m glad it’s over. The overall result feels like reliving the worst type of video game movie adaptations populated in the ’90s and ’00s era with embarrassing stinkers like Street Fighter, House of the Dead and Alone in the Dark.

Borderlands fit well into that category and like Lilith and the gang passing through the Piss-Wash Gully, my feeling is just like the literal pee splashes all over the team from Tiny Tina’s roll-down window and cries, “It’s in my mouth!“