so like, the borderlands movie sucks. you knew that. you don't need a cinema studies class to come to that conclusion and you certainly don't even need to watch it. it has all the hallmarks of a classic, terrible videogame adaption: rubbish editing that turns action scenes into incomprehensible messes, cosplay-level costume department, lack of budget, unfunny quips and actors who just want to go home.
thing is, you're probably thinking oh! it's a borderlands movie! surely it being based on an incredibly obnoxious series (and i say that as a fan) is a large part of the film being intolerable! i wouldn't blame you for assuming so, i did going in and braced for impact.
NO
the borderlands movie is borderlands in name only. somehow. it adapts the already simple plot and characters of the first two games and mixes everything into a clusterfuck of derivative changes. this might be the most miscast film i've ever seen in my life and ive seen all the resident evil movies.
- Jamie Lee Curtis plays a character less than half her age. i don't know what she's doing here, it's like she wandered in from another set.
- Kevin Hart, a famous comedic actor, plays Roland, the straight-man. his talents are stifled by the role.
- Tiny Tina's personality has been severely toned down without any of her tics or energetic performance. if it wasn't for the rabbit motif, i wouldnt've even guessed it was her or why her backstory was completely rewritten for no reason. how did you manage to make Tiny Tina boring?
- Cate Blanchett is also playing a character half her age. i also don't know why she's here, she's given nothing more than "say this cool line" for 90 minutes and was clearly in for the paycheck.
with the exception of Jack Black's Claptrap (whose performance and CGI is still terrible) and Krieg (who has little to screw up with as a psycho), nobody resembles their game counterparts at all, both in writing and acting. their script is full of garbage one-liners dated from 30 years ago and extremely and i mean extremely poor attempts at character development. there's scenes where characters just straight-up exposit their backstories to the camera, oh my god.
the writing is worse than the games. i can't believe it. you took all the original elements of the series and turned it into the most cliched, bland turd of a film that wouldn't make a toddler laugh. i can't even enjoy seeing my favourite bits from the series because you changed all of them!
and of course, the film looks horrible too. not one element of its world is believable and at no point is any of it shot well, im talking basic mid-shots from start to finish with the action scenes being a fucking mess of cuts. the backdrop of pandora is just a giant, poorly composited desert with a few props lying around, with the rest taken up by interiors that could be from any sci-fi set. the whole film's a green-screen, it's below the standards of a fan short.
are there any positives? no, not really. sometimes a borderlands thing happened and i was like "oh, that's a borderlands thing." fucking A+ there, Borderlands The Movie: Sometimes It's Like Borderlands. this is a depressing, mind-numbing waste of time that somehow avoided all the "so bad it's good" possibilities the source material provided. it's not fun, that's the killing blow, you'd at the very least picture a stupid, OTT bit of dumb action but instead it's slow and boring.
there's a lack of violence in the film. in the BORDERLANDS film. have i made my point yet?
don't watch it, not to laugh at its failures, not as a fan. this is a movie for randy pitchford and no one else.
