Welcome back to the blog readers. There are three things that are almost always guaranteed in this absolutely atrocious thing we call a life: death, taxes, and video games adapted into films absolutely suck. There are so many glaring examples of this trend; take Assassin's Creed, Warcraft (both 2016), Monster Hunter (2020), and Five Nights at Freddy's (2023). Also, do not forget Mortal Kombat (1995) and its sequel Annihilation (1997). Borderlands has always been a beloved game franchise, so how well would this game translate to the big screen? Stick around to find out.
Borderlands was directed by Eli Roth from a screenplay by Roth and Joe Crombie and a story by Roth, based on Borderlands by Gearbox Software. The film stars Cate Blachett, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Edgar Ramírez, Ariana Greenblatt, Florian Munteanu, Gina Gershon, and Jamie Lee Curtis. In the film, an outlaw named Lilith teams up with a group of misfits to help find the missing daughter of the most powerful man in the universe, who might be the key to uncovering a lost treasure.
Now here's the thing about this film. Eli Roth's last film Thanksgiving (2023) was awesome, and I cannot wait for the sequel to that (expected in 2025), Cate Blanchett is one of the best actors working today, Jamie Lee Curtis is an Oscar winner now, and Jack Black is...well, Jack Black. With all that being said, how on this green earth was this film as absolutely terrible as it was? I'm not sure, but it may have been the uninspired, passionless and lazy acting, the completely piss-poor script, or (except for one scene) the lifeless action? Maybe it is a combination of the three.
I won't be spending too much time talking about each individual performance in this film because they were all just as mind-numbing as the others. Cate Blanchett's character comes off like she was stuck in the 1990s and her performance is more dull than the craps I take, Jack Black was absolutely annoying as the voice of the robot Claptrap (and he just brilliantly voiced Bowser a fucking year ago), Jamie Lee Curtis (who is now an Oscar winner) channels her inner Freaky Friday (2003) rather than her Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022), and it is infuriating, Gina Gershon's accent for the film is as insulting as the film's existence in the first place, and you know you have a problem when Kevin Hart of all people plays the most serious role in the film.
Now I know I said in my initial thoughts that the script for this film was piss-poor, but I did not imagine it was be as abhorrent and as insulting a script as we got. Now don't get me wrong here, this is no Meg 2: The Trench (2023) or Madame Web (2024), but the script here is on the next level up from those. I felt the Meg 2: The Trench vibes where every line spoken made me absolutely cringe, and not for the right reasons either. They were all poorly written by people who probably do not know how to write science-fiction dialogue, and they were just as painful coming out of the actors' mouths. My dead grandmother could have written a better script than this, and she was the furthest thing from a screenwriter.
The final point I want to talk about is the action. Now I do not want to come on here and pretend like I am some sultan of stunts, because that I am not. I am no expert on the topic, but I want to say from the action I have seen and the films that have set the bar extremely high for me, this film fails to meet that extremely high bar. The action felt lazy, it felt contrived, and it felt rushed to me. However, the one action scene that felt different (and surprisingly was the only time in the film that I was actually engaged) was the scene when the crew have to fight the feral group of Psychos in the cave system and they were all working together. That scene felt the most inspired out of every other one, and put the rest of the film to shame. If only the rest of the film was like this.
To conclude my thoughts, Borderlands is a total mess that wastes its star cast by having them deliver lifeless performances and features a dull and lazy script. This is one of the worst films of the year by far. Thank you all for reading, and I will see you for the next post.
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