I’m not sure there’s a way to make a clever Borderlands movie. And that’s not it.
Given that it’s one of the worst video game adaptations ever made in a sea of bad video game adaptations, at most a decade or more ago, I had to see Borderlands for myself – even -. It’s not a bad Uwe Boll from 2005, but it’s not smart at all either. To communicate this, you have to know from the beginning that I am someone with many hours in 3 games and a previous sequel, and that is the attitude I come from.
It’s not a Borderlands movie or a movie, period. It seems that Gearbox and Eli Roth tried to split the difference here, making a high-powered PG-13 action movie, but vaguely pointing out the games to watch and appeal to that crowd. to show themselves too.
But the end result is to throw the Borderlands games against a wall, watch them break, and put a handful of recognizable pieces back together. Spoilers follow, but not if you’ve played the games or even know the basics.
Did you think casting was going to be a problem? Casting is a problem. In some cases, it’s really. . . okay. I think the best played character is Marcus, and his 90 seconds of screen time. Krieg just has to look like Krieg and say things like “I’ll lick your spine!” and he does that. I think young Gamora/young Ahsoka Ariana Greenblatt’s promising career will be like this, and she would be a smart Tina with a much bigger story. Oddly enough, I actually kinda liked Claptrap via Jack Black. It was literally fun at times, and probably more so than the games.
But Lilith and Roland, man, what were they thinking? Roland is Kevin Hart, who of course is not the stoic and burly soldier that he is, he is Kevin Hart, acting perhaps 20% less than usual, but only that. And physically she is, without exaggeration, a little taller than Greenblatt’s Tina and the film does not intend to pretend otherwise.
Cate Blanchett is surely the most confusing cast here as Lilith. I have no idea how they gave the two-time Oscar winner, apart from perhaps boredom on her part and an inexplicable preference for recreating the trajectory of her character in Tar. But as a gamer, the age difference between her and OG Lilith is distracting. And not only in terms of the casting decision, but also from the point of view of the story. In the film, Tannis and Moxxy tell her about the time they spent with her and her mother in the eight-year-old. Jamie Lee Curtis is 65 years old, ten years older than Blanchette, 55. Gina Gershon is 62 years old.
The script is unlike any Borderlands game, as it’s loosely about locating Pandora’s vault. They make the story an out-of-canon rewrite of Tina into a clone made by Atlas who uses Eridian’s DNA to open the vault as the “chosen one. ” Her only connection to her original character is her bunny ears and saying things like “dealio”.
Tina is destined to be the “Daughter of Eridia” according to the prophecies, but of course we all know where this leads us. Lilith begins the film without Siren’s powers. After about twenty minutes you’ll know it’s her, and not Tina. , she’s the one selected and gets those mermaid powers at the end. She calls on. The vault opening ends up being nothing more than floating cubes and tentacles, a trail of boss fights from the games with no equivalent fight in the movie.
The plot is rarely very good, but neither is the action. This is what I’ll now call “wayward moon syndrome,” where a PG-13 slice neutralizes the action of anything that is obviously R-rated. Bloody games for adults give way to bullets hitting armor and other people falling. Again, I think his goal was to spice up the box office here with a lower age range, but that hurts the movie. Not that a bloody action would have saved him, but it would have been greater than what they gave us with this cut.
borderlands
Look at those huge stars, we have to play those characters even if they don’t make any sense!Borderlands enthusiasts will be there no matter what, even if the story and characters are very different!We’re launching the Borderlands Cinematic Universe to expand it. Beyond those annoying players!
He will die here. Only. No more movies. Nothing like this is worth trying again. In some other world, I can watch a cool Borderlands animated series that would have possibly worked on Netflix. But whatever big blockbuster it was intended to be, despite a few brief moments where it works, it usually doesn’t. and I’m worried about Borderlands 4, if that’s the kind of thing the studio thinks is smart now.
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