Borderlands review: Even Cate Blanchett can't save this simply competent video game adaptation

In Borderlands, amidst a trash-strewn desert, bandits and amoral corporate ghouls chase after the scraps of a once-thriving ecosystem.

I'd joke about how well its desolate setting resembles our IP-obsessed film landscape, if Deadpool & Wolverine hadn't already beaten this punchline into the ground.

As the umpteenth adaptation of an AAA video game series in recent years, the film itself is undoubtedly a product of this kind of risk-averse Hollywood accounting, but is hardly the catastrophe the internet seems to have prepared itself for in the lead-up to release.

For all the highly publicised drama behind the scenes — which saw screenwriter Craig Mazin (The Last of Us) remove himself from the project — Borderlands is competent enough to simply be forgettable.

Directed by Eli Roth (Hostel), the film stars Cate Blanchett as Lilith, a carefree bounty hunter enlisted by the CEO of the all-encompassing Atlas Corporation — whose dystopian portfolio spans resource mining, technology, and paramilitary units — to rescue his daughter Tina (Ariana Greenblatt; Barbie) from a merry crew of bandits on the abandoned home planet Pandora.

Like James Cameron's alien planet of the same name, Pandora contains a valuable resource that humans are all too eager to plunder: scattered miracle fragments left behind by Eridians, an advanced alien race that once populated the galaxy. Buried deep in the arid terrain is a mythical vault said to contain their civilisation's greatest treasures, which Tina happens to be the key to unlocking.

Lilith soon abandons her rescue mission and instead joins Tina's entourage, which includes elite ex-soldier Roland (Kevin Hart) and a wordless bodyguard belonging to a tribe of fanatical "Psychos" (Florian Munteanu; Creed II). Along the way, the group is joined by Claptrap (Jack Black), an overeager robot sidekick with a buried connection to Lilith's past, as well as Jamie Lee Curtis's Patricia, a loyal friend of her dead mother's.

Had the movie come out a decade ago, it may well have received a positive reception. The original 2009 game introduced a volatile team of mercenaries chasing after a dangerous sci-fi entity, an upbeat rock soundtrack, and a cartoonish, irreverent tone well before the Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) or the Suicide Squad (2016) became household names.

Yet it's hard to imagine anyone caring to adapt Borderlands before Guardians visionary James Gunn translated this style of corporate-friendly edge into runaway mainstream success. In 2024, this film reads as a transparent cash-in, little more than a slop trough of tropes, jokes and narrative conceits lifted from other movies.

Credit where it's due: the film does a reasonable job of visually emulating (and in some cases, exceeding) the kind of blockbusters it's competing with, which regularly exceed twice its US$120 million budget nowadays.

Roth may not be famous for making good films (e.g. The Green Inferno, Death Wish), but his background in grisly horror cinema seems to have nurtured a talent for pumping out a finished product with (relatively) limited resources.

The seams are most apparent in Borderland's action scenes. Rarely is the divide between actor and stunt double so blatant; Blanchett and Hart are never required to do anything more complex than pull badass poses in isolated shots before the camera cuts away; set pieces are often spent following the back of characters' heads.

Blanchett is hardly a stranger to genre cinema, but Borderlands manages to find the kryptonite of one of Hollywood's most versatile actors: Reddit dialogue. Rather than lean into the sarcastic, jaded voice of a middle-aged rogue, screenwriters Roth and Joe Crombie (a pseudonym for one or more writers who declined to be associated with the film) box Lilith into an eye-rolling Joss Whedon-archetype better suited for droll teenagers.

Moreover, styling Blanchett like an e-girl feels like a mismatch on par with casting a mawkish Tom Holland as Nathan Drake, the seasoned adventurer of last year's Uncharted adaptation. Both look like they're attending their first Comic-Con.

For decades, video game movies have suffered a reputation for being famously terrible, often in overambitious attempts to capture the spirit of the source material. The approach attempted here, best encapsulated by the recent Mario and Sonic movies, is to simply graft iconography onto a safe cinematic template and watch the money roll in.

Give it a couple more decades, and maybe we'll finally get a video game adaptation that's remotely interesting.

Story By: ABC Entertainment / By Jamie Tram

Original Story Link: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-12/borderlands-movie-review-cate-blanchett-eli-roth/104199456