Borderlands review – Borderline unwatchable, but not quite

It’s an incredibly low bar to clear, but Borderlands is better than (the original cut of) Rebel Moon Part One. Just. This needs to be stated upfront because the online discourse around the new video game adaptation has been relentlessly negative. Borderlands is forgettably mediocre at best, but among the film’s many puzzling creative decisions, there’s the occasional flash of something to appreciate. So it’s not a complete train wreck, despite what social media and the film’s drain-circling box office performance would have you believe.

The Borderlands game series is seven titles strong at this point (including spin-offs) and the new film is based primarily on the original Gearbox Software release from 2009. Or, rather, it sets its own tale within the Borderlands universe, and slaps familiar names and appearances on rewritten characters.

The end result is an ensemble sci-fi adventure where down-on-her-luck bounty hunter Lilith (Cate Blanchett) is hired by one of the universe’s most powerful corporates, Atlas (Edgar Ramírez), to find his kidnapped daughter Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt). The search takes Lilith back to her home world, Pandora, an arid, danger-filled planet that has been torn apart by treasure hunters, all of whom have been searching for a legendary Vault filled with superior alien technology. Lilith’s mission sees her cross paths with the likes of ex-soldier Roland (Kevin Hart), Tina’s “psycho” protector Krieg (Florian Munteanu), socially inept scientist Dr Tannis (Jamie Lee Curtis), and Claptrap the robot (voiced by Jack Black).

That really doesn’t sound too bad on paper, and Borderlands features a surprisingly seasoned cast, including two Oscar winners. The biggest problem, though, is that the film plays against its strengths at almost every step. Borderlands as a game franchise is known for being gleefully anarchistic and R-rated. Director Eli Roth seems like a decent enough fit for the project given his filmography features over-the-top gorefests like Cabin Fever, and Thanksgiving, in addition to the more serious Hostel. Except, Borderlands: The Movie is a bloodless PG-13 film where characters talk about “poopy butts.”

The cast, too, are mostly playing against type in the worst possible way. There’s novelty in seeing 55-year old Blanchett in an action hero role, but the charismatic performer is stuck in dour mode, routinely adopting awkward hip-thrust poses to suggest her “badassery.” Lee Curtis is awkward in a different way, playing a figure stripped of the actress’s innate playfulness. Black’s Claptrap gets the best lines but is also the most obnoxious character by far, mugging for the camera in the way that makes audiences think fondly of Star Wars’s Jar Jar Binks as a CGI sidekick. Oddly, it’s Hart who fares best in an uncharacteristic straight man role, while Gina Gershon is fun in a five-minute appearance as Mad Moxxi, a Dolly Parton-esque bar owner, whose gaudy exterior hides a heart of gold.

Borderlands rather publically underwent reshoots with Tim (Deadpool) Miller behind the camera, and the result is a strong sense of filmic identity crisis, although not in the jarring scene-to-scene sense of David Ayer’s Suicide Squad. There are moments where Borderlands evidently wants to feel like one of those trashy comics and TV series adaptations from the 1990s – think Barb Wire, Tank Girl and Wild Wild West – or a bottom shelf sci-fi movie always in stock at the video store in the Eighties. While there’s no faulting the film’s production design, a CGI monster takes flight in once scene in jerky stop-motion, and the cast is confined to canyons, tunnels and car interiors in a throwback, practical-minded manner that viewers may associate with something like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Borderlands doesn’t look cheap, but it has a consciously cheap creative mindset.

If the film had consistently and overtly embraced such an approach, along with the hyper-violence of its source material, perhaps things might have been different. The issue, though, is that someone (or multiple someones) clearly had tight hold on the reins, tugging back on the retro cheesiness and resulting potential fun.

Audiences instead get something safe, contrived in the story department, and painfully unfunny. As an example of the latter, an early sequence in the movie sees Lilith having to deny she’s a Vault Hunter six times in maybe three minutes.

It’s just one of many head-scratching decisions, leading to the question, “Who was Borderlands made for?” Not the game’s fans, who will rail against the toothlessness of everything on screen. Adolescent boys seems like the target demographic, but why then cast middle aged Blanchett? Lilith’s backstory means that other characters must be comparatively aged, resulting in an ensemble where the vast majority of actors are 45 years old, and up.

In its defence, Borderlands is a brisk 100 minutes, and features one very effective, horror-leaning set piece where our heroes must outrace and outfight a tribe of deranged cannibals in a maze of tunnels. That said, Borderlands is a massive missed opportunity – an example of a film battered into unsatisfying shape by misguided thinking that viewers will embrace a calculated Guardians of the Galaxy clone by default.

However, audiences have moved on, and their sensibilities have evolved. Borderlands may have delivered the entertainment goods at one point, but movie fans have been primed for something better – and very recently at that. On the small screen, we’ve seen that video game adaptations can be a serious art form, given a highly faithful treatment, thanks to The Last of Us. Fallout has deftly shown how to combine dark humour, violence and plot twists against a “wild west” background. And right now Deadpool & Wolverine is delighting cinemagoers with its mix of R-rated shenanigans and heart. The blinkered makers of Borderlands somehow missed all of this, delivering an insincere, made-by-committee mess instead.

Borderlands released on 9 August and is screening in cinemas, including IMAX, now.