Plot
An infamous bounty hunter returns to her childhood home, the chaotic planet Pandora, and forms an unlikely alliance with a team of misfits to find the missing daughter of the most powerful man in the universe.
Cast
Blanchett, Hart, Curtis, Greenblatt, Munteanu, Gavankar, Black, Ramírez. Nobody can say it doesn't have a great cast! And surprisingly and very out of character made by Eli Roth! (Though it doesn't feel like it).
Verdict
Borderlands was doomed straight out of the gate, and where would I even begin in explaining why.
I mean for a start video game adaptations almost always fail. Why? Because generally they're made by Hollywood folks who aren't gamers, so it's not loyal, it misses the target audience and it simply isn't what it was intended to be.
Next, the casting. I mean are you serious? This is some of the most confusing baffling casting in the history of the industry and lets look at why.
Kevin Hart as Roland? Rolland is a tough guy big muscular soldier. So they cast diddy little Hart? Who thought that was a good idea. He to his credit does his best here, but it just doesn't work.
Jamie Lee Curtis as Tannis? Just why? She's 25-30yrs too old to be in that role and her presence in the movie is so minimal she contributes absolutely nothing anyway.
Blanchett? Again, too old. And let me be clear she's a fantastic actress and I would consider myself a fan, but she was badly miscast here and as much as she makes the most of it this was a poor choice and should been a role taken by someone in their 20's or even 30's, not 50's.
And Tiny Tina? To her credit Greenblatt was great here in her role. But that role is NOT Tiny Tina. Did the writers even play the games for a moment? That was not Tiny Tina in the slightest and shouldn't be considered so.
So what with the video game curse and the offensively bad casting the movie was DOA, though to its credit they at least made a trailer that I thought looked like it could be at least half entertaining. Alas you seem to be able to do that with any movie these days because Borderlands isn't half entertaining, in fact I'd argue it's a tenth at best.
You see it's your bog standard American Hollywood formulaic CGI laden no brains and all flare foolishness. You'll predict every single scene with absolute ease and hate yourself when it the credits roll for wasting 90 minutes of your life on something which you can with confidence say you could have done better yourself.
In my opinion Borderlands isn't bad for the reasons I keep hearing but make absolutely no mistake it's bad.
Rants
One of the biggest complaints I keep seeing/hearingis that it's too cutesy, that it should be more violent, that the creators had clearly never played a Borderlands game because if they had it would be R rated. My response to this, WHY? I've played every Borderlands game and I have no idea why people are saying this.
The borderlands games....
Sex, none.
Nudity, none.
Bad language, minimal
Violence, it's cartoony cel-shaded graphics with minimal blood. It's one rung up the ladder from Fortnite!
So no, the movie shouldn't have been R rated because the games most certainly aren't!
The Good
Big flashy colorful, all the things that keep your attention
Most of the performances were actually good despite the poor casting
Quite a few great nods to fans of the games
The Bad
Awful casting
The ending was dire
Too formulaic.
