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Borderlands Movie | Rotten Watch

Draugoth

Draugoth

Gold Member
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After a very long wait, the live-action Borderlands movie finally arrives in theaters this weekend. But before that, the movie was screened for fans and critics in Los Angeles. And, based on the first impressions being posted online, the Borderlands movie sounds like a complete mess.
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Reviews:

Hollywood Reporter (30/100):

It’s conceivable that longtime fans of the video game might get more out of Borderlands, but I wouldn’t count on it. At one point, Claptrap returns to operational mode after a heavy-weaponry assault and says, “I blacked out. Did something important happen?” Not in this movie.
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Variety (40/100):

Marketed to look like a cross between “Suicide Squad” and a Zack Snyder movie, director Eli Roth’s tamer-than-expected take on “Borderlands” doesn’t have half the attitude or style its cyberpunk ad campaign might suggest. But here’s the real reason why fans of the game will be disappointed: It’s predictable, therefore nullifying the whole “What’ll it be?” appeal of loot.
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SlashFilm (4/10):

Borderlands makes a point of not being different enough to upset the fanbase, but it's also not unique enough to win over new audiences, either. It's a movie for everyone and no one, a film so unwilling to make a splash that it barely makes a peep.
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IndieWire (42/100):

If granted permission to bring his signature sadism to these infamously batshit characters, Roth could have delivered his “Mad Max: Fury Road.” Instead, restricted by standards that seem equally unlikely to please preteens, he was left holding a bomb.
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Empire (2/5):

A botched Guardians wannabe that isn’t half as fun as you’d hope from the punky sci-fi promise of its video-game source material and the presence of Blanchett at the top of the cast list.
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Collider (5/10):

'Borderlands' is a fun ride, but a bloated cast and breakneck pacing don’t allow it to reach its full potential.
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BleedingCool (5/10):

I don't think I have ever watched quite so gossamer-thin a movie and yet been so entertained throughout as with Borderlands. There really is nothing to this film. No emotional depths, stakes, or convoluted plot worth speaking of.
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TotalFilm (40/100):

The Gearbox title gamers loved has spawned a frenetic and disorderly shambles they’re likelier to loathe. Claptrap? You said it.
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The NY Times (40/100):

You can see the jokes, but most of them don’t land. Still, there is some neat design work if you squint.
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GameSpot (2/10):

Borderlands comes in at a very brief 102 minutes in length, which you might be tempted to reflexively celebrate in our current landscape of hella long movies. But there's a reason longer movies are en vogue--more time allows for more depth, and depth is what Borderlands is missing the most. But that's what happens sometimes when a movie spends four years in post-production being repeatedly reworked--over time, everything gets sanded down into nothingness.
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ScreenRant (70/100):

Blanchett knows exactly what movie she's in, and she seems to be having the time of her life fitting herself into the mold of a video game heroine.
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Men's Journal:

If Borderlands doesn't stop studio executives from salivating at the sight of every single IP that comes across their desks, nothing will.
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In Theaters August 8:

Lilith, an infamous outlaw with a mysterious past, reluctantly returns to her home planet of Pandora to find the missing daughter of the universe's most powerful S.O.B., Atlas. Lilith forms an alliance with an unexpected team — Roland, a former elite mercenary, now desperate for redemption; Tiny Tina, a feral teenage demolitionist; Krieg, Tina's musclebound, rhetorically challenged protector; Tannis, the scientist with a tenuous grip on sanity; and Claptrap, a persistently wiseass robot. These unlikely heroes must battle alien monsters and dangerous bandits to find and protect the missing girl, who may hold the key to unimaginable power. The fate of the universe could be in their hands but they'll be fighting for something more: each other.
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Directed by Eli Roth (Reshoots by Tim Miller)

  • Cate Blanchett as Lilith
  • Kevin Hart as Roland
  • Jack Black as the voice of Claptrap
  • Edgar Ramírez as Atlas
  • Ariana Greenblatt as Tiny Tina
  • Florian Munteanu as Krieg
  • Gina Gershon as Mad Moxxi
  • Jamie Lee Curtis as Dr. Patricia Tannis
  • Bobby Lee as Larry
  • Olivier Richters as Krom
  • Janina Gavankar as Commander Knoxx
  • Cheyenne Jackson as Jakobs
  • Charles Babalola as Hammerlock
  • Benjamin Byron Davis as Marcus
  • Steven Boyer as Scooter
  • Ryann Redmond as Ellie
  • Harry Ford as Middleman
 
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Bring Back Scalebound

Bring Back Scalebound

Banned
Oh, a movie based on a game sucked and was a complete waste of phoned in time and money?...

There's certainly not a pile over there, where this one belongs to.
A pile big enough that you would think they would stop doing them.
 
March Climber

March Climber

Member
simpatico said:
Serious question. Are movies like this just some money laundering play? Eli Roth, PG-13.... who thought this could be anything other than a trainwreck?
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Personal theory: Some Borderlands fan who works high up in the movie industry just happened to see the swell of success with recent video game adaptations and they wanted to ride the wave before it was too late.

It’s still not too late, but they wiped out mid-surf anyway.
 
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LegendOfKage

LegendOfKage

Member
There will be a bunch of mocking of the Borderlands games as a whole and their writing in this thread, and that's a shame. The quality of writing fell so hard between Borderlands 2 / Tales from the Borderlands when compared to Borderlands 3 and NEW Tales from the Borderlands that it seems all sorts of wrong not to recognize that fact. If you didn't like it before, you would be amazed at how much worse Borderlands 3 is.

It seems like this movie, however, was going to be horrible from the moment the casting decisions were made.
 
Doom85

Doom85

Member
LegendOfKage said:
There will be a bunch of mocking of the Borderlands games as a whole and their writing in this thread, and that's a shame. The quality of writing fell so hard between Borderlands 2 / Tales from the Borderlands when compared to Borderlands 3 and NEW Tales from the Borderlands that it seems all sorts of wrong not to recognize that fact. If you didn't like it before, you would be amazed at how much worse Borderlands 3 is.

It seems like this movie, however, was going to be horrible from the moment the casting decisions were made.
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I personally found 2’s writing to be not as great as some make it out to be. For every joke that landed, another would fall flat on its face. So it was a very mixed bag for me, so 3 being even less funny wasn’t that jarring to me. And really, if you just removed that new kid and the two villains from 3, the game really wouldn’t be that obnoxious in its dialogue. I could tell because what I did play of Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands (also played the first DLC of 3), while not that funny, I also wasn’t annoyed so it proved to me the issue was those three particular characters.

Now Tales from the Borderlands nailed almost every joke they did, but IIRC Telltale themselves handled most of the script for that one so that wasn’t really indicative of Gearbox writers.
 
DetectiveBananas

DetectiveBananas

Member
Wasn’t Borderlands a PS3 era game? I remember playing 2 a bit, but just running around shooting shit up. Dont remember there being much of a story.
Sooo I guess someone thought this movie was a good idea 🤷🏻‍♂️
 
winjer

winjer

Gold Member
Admittedly, the source material in the games is pretty bad. Both story and characters vary from boring to mediocre.
The only exception is Handsome Jack, but even that is just decent enough.
So it's to be expected that a movie based on Borderlands would not be a good movie.
 
Northeastmonk

Northeastmonk

Gold Member
It looks like an odd film. I never felt like Borderlands was all that great to begin with. The games are fun to play, but the humor is what I don’t get. It’s not funny enough.

Most of the cast can probably survive financially from this colossal turd.
 
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Doom85

Doom85

Member
Dusktildawn48 said:
No one is surprised. The casting is just weird all around.
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I think Jack Black as Claptrap and the girl playing Tina (who does get older as the games go on, so an older teen Tina isn’t unheard of) seem like good picks. The rest of the cast are all unorthodox picks, but at the same time Borderlands is not a series where I was super invested in the characters emotionally or anything, so while I get the complaints, for me an older Lilith or a short Roland doesn’t really bother me.

Also, most critics probably didn’t even play the games, so the horrible score is far more likely on the writing, directing, production quality, etc. than the accuracy to the games.
 
J

jason10mm

Gold Member
Remember, this film was in the can in 2021! It was in development even before covid, and got reworked again and again. It never had a chance, really. I'm surprised they even had a press junket for it rather than just selling it off to Netflix.

I imagine Cate was pretty fresh off Thor Ragnarok when she signed to this thing as they figured it would be a similar quirky sci-fi romp. Plus it was shot when there was still a lot of covid restrictions, so many films suffered for that.
 
clarky

clarky

Gold Member
Coconutt said:
Why did the classy Cate Blanchett take this role, whoever did the casting should be fired.
Masterchef Canada Shocker GIF by CTV
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DGrayson said:
Money.
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Apparently this was filmed during lock down and she'd had enough of using the chainsaw in the garden and needed to get out of the house before she went nuts. Not even joking.

www.telegraph.co.uk

Cate Blanchett’s $120 million dystopian disaster: everything that went wrong with Borderlands

‘Covid madness’ caused the Oscar winner to sign up for the ultraviolent video game adaptation. Then the madness truly began
www.telegraph.co.uk www.telegraph.co.uk
 
drganon

drganon

Member
clarky said:
Apparently this was filmed during lock down and she'd had enough of using the chainsaw in the garden and needed to get out of the house before she went nuts. Not even joking.

www.telegraph.co.uk

Cate Blanchett’s $120 million dystopian disaster: everything that went wrong with Borderlands

‘Covid madness’ caused the Oscar winner to sign up for the ultraviolent video game adaptation. Then the madness truly began
www.telegraph.co.uk www.telegraph.co.uk
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Right up there with Michael Caine doing Jaws the revenge to buy a house.
 
Angry_Megalodon

Angry_Megalodon

Member
If the idea of a Borderlands movie wasn't odd enough, then you make it PG-13. What's the target audience of this movie?

How some projects get greenlit is beyond me.
 
clarky

clarky

Gold Member
drganon said:
No, this was the fourth one after the 3d one.
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Gotcha, i was thinking of this classic:

Jaws 3-D:

A giant thirty-five-foot shark becomes trapped in a SeaWorld theme park and it's up to the sons of police chief Brody to rescue everyone
 
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