Review: Borderlands (2024)
Borderlands is a sci-fi action-comedy movie that was released in 2024 and was created by Eli Roth also it depicts the video game series by Gearbox Software. This full-length comedy film has Cate Blanchett – Lilith as a leader of the group of criminals who help to find the missing daughter of the most powerful man in the universe; the film also casts Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Edgar Ramirez, Ariana Greenblatt, Florian Munteanu, Gina Gershon, and Jamie Lee Curtis.
Development and Production
A Borderlands film’s production process started in August of 2015 when the Lionsgate Films started to announce their intentions to make a Borderlands adaptation. Other signees include producers Ari and Avi Arad and director Eli Roth who signed early for the movie. At first Leigh Whannell was in talks to direct but by February of 2020, Roth was set on directing and Craig Mazin was to write the script. Actors were enrolled from may 2020 ad April 2021 The first one to sign up was Cate Blanchett. The principal photography took place in Budapest, Hungary, in April, May and June of 2021 under the COVID-19 pandemic measures. Further pickups which were shot by Tim Miller because Roth got preoccupied with his other projects happened in early 2023. Many drafts of the script were produced and due to the differences, Mazin opted to disown script writing credit for the final script with Joe Crombie coming in to take over the job.
Plot Summary
The game takes place in the futuristic setting on the sci-fi planet known as Pandora; here the main character Lilith is a known bounty hunter hired by the owner of the space with economic might, Atlas, to save Tiny Tina, his daughter who has been kidnapped. Lilith returns to her home planet called Pandora where she meet robot named claptrap and join forces with mercenary Roland and Krieg. When they discover the secret behind Tina’s background, the group fights against Atlas and his private army in order to prevent them from dominating over the world with the help of mysterious ancient devices. The culmination of the movie is where Lilith and Tina both defeat Atlas by luring him into the vault. The last scene shows a victorious atmosphere of the characters in the group.
Cast Performances
One can see that Cate Blanchett gives a realistic performance in Lilith, despite the overall insanity of the movie. Comedian Kevin Hart who was recently on ‘Think like a man’ takes more serious role of Roland in the movie but it does not make an impact. Jack Black does voice of Claptrap and gives funny touch to the movie, there is also a corporate villain Atlas portrayed by Edgar Ramirez. Measures of the remaining actors such as, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Gina Gershon, are under exploited and embedded in stereotypical characters with no complexity.
Reception and Box Office
Borderlands was officially premiered in the TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles on August 6, 2024 and it was released in USA on August 9, 2024. However, this film rate was more tragic not only in getting bad reviews but also as a box-office bomb. It grossed only $24. 2 million globally against a producing cost of $110-$120 million, thus becoming a critical and commercial failure. Audiences and Critics were totally against this film and gave it 10% on Rotten Tomatoes and 26 on Metacritic showing the general negative rating from critics. Simply, audience reaction was as bad as the critics’, with CinemaScore rating the movie as low as D+ grade.
Critical Response
For this reason, the movie has not been very successful as we shall see from the following factors. Some blamed it for being a ‘juvenile and derivative adaptation’ with The Guardian labelling it as ‘janky’ while Variety cited the film for the omission of surprise factors that characterise the video game franchise. Other pundits compared the film to other video game adaptations and some even went to the extent of wondering if Borderlands was the worst video game movie ever produced. This effort to achieve action-comedy together with the novel’s peculiar mood made the viewer experience the movie as fragmented.
Nevertheless, not all the reviews that I came across were negative in nature. Interestingly Blanchett’s performance was praised because she brought out dimension in an otherwise frenzied plot. Other critics also picked on action scenes in the motion picture; especially on stunts in which Munteanu portrayed the role of Krieg. But all these positives where marred by the so many defects that includes a slow story line, poor characterization and an incongruent plot.
Conclusion
Specifically, Borderlands fails to emulate its video game source material in the case while it expands the story, it lacks the depth of potential. With a great cast assure and an inspirational plot the movie becomes just another example of film adaptations of video games that might have some potential but ends up disappointing the viewers.
