Borderlands (2024)

[Palimelon]

2024's biggest bomb so far?

 

[AimingforYoko]

I have never disliked a Cate Blanchett performance...until this movie.

[baldryanr]

I can't believe they got her to do it.  She must have really wanted to do an action role.  I'm sure her paycheck was nice, too, but she's good enough to get that from a variety of projects.

[dwmarch]

I have played a lot of Borderlands 2 and some of 3 and I'm very familiar with the lore so I went in with low expectations. And you know what? The movie wasn't as terrible as I thought it would be! Don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean it was good but it did keep me entertained the whole time, unlike the 2024 reboot of The Crow.

I think Jack Black nailed Claptrap. Yes, he's super annoying. That is the entire essence of the character.

As for the other casting, I am not mad about it. If you are looking for someone to play a role and Jamie Lee Curtis shows up, you cast Jamie Lee Curtis even if she doesn't really match who the character is supposed to be. Same with Cate Blanchett. As for Kevin Hart, I think the producers wanted Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson instead and he took one look at the script and said "no thanks but let me call a guy I know..."

I like Arianna Greenblatt in general but I didn't think she had the right attitude for Tiny Tina. Her backstory in the game is that as her parents are being killed by Hyperion, she escapes using a grenade her dad gave to her and ever since she's been dividing her time between having torture parties for bandits and building stuffed animals into high explosives. She's also responsible for one of the absolute best, most emotional moments in the game at the end of her DLC in Borderlands 2. I'll spoiler code it for anyone who hasn't played the game.

Spoiler

About halfway through Borderlands 2, Roland is killed by Handsome Jack. In the Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep DLC, the characters are playing a D&D-like game (Bunkers and Badasses) and Tina, who is the DM, keeps inserting Roland as a character. The other NPCs in the game are getting increasingly upset with this because Roland was their friend too and they're still pretty raw after losing him. Finally someone snaps at Tina to the effect of "Roland is dead!" At this point, Tina breaks down with grief and even the most heartless and cynical of players will find themselves crying right alongside her. Ashly Burch is an amazing voice actress.

Something along those lines could have been worked into this story and would have given this movie some depth that it is sorely lacking.

For that matter, I think it would be trivially easy to make a Borderlands movie that follows the games faithfully without being quite the same. Have Lilith roll into some little town while Marcus does his "so you want to hear a story, eh?" Establish the gross factor (this movie should have been rated R) by running over a skag on the way. Get into a conflict with local bandits or skags or rakks or etc, giving each character an opportunity to show off their skills. Find out more about the Vault, get the group headed towards it. Have some fun, wacky adventures as side quests. Introduce a menacing big bad who can throw waves of bad guys at the group. Defeat the big bad in a giant spectacle action sequence, find some cool loot, call it a day back in Sanctuary. Use Handsome Jack to set up a sequel hook. Should have been easy.

Visually, I think they did pretty good on the general look of Pandora. Having said that, a lot of the set decoration looked like literal, actual trash which it probably was. Borderlands has trash too (there's even a map in the first game called the Trash Coast) but it's futuristic-looking trash at least.

Also, there are no Threshers in Piss Wash Gully. They don't even appear in the first game!

Edited September 13 by dwmarch