Borderlands (2024) Movie Review – An insufferably noisy and embarrassing video game adaptation

Video game movies have never truly worked. If we forget the recent, painstakingly constructed worldbuilding and character work done in Prime Video’s ‘Fallout,’ every single adaptation has either missed the feel of what makes the games work or never examined what makes them truly exciting in the first place. With “Borderlands,” director Eli Roth had an opportunity to truly explore a ripe and colorful world with distinctive characters and make an IP that truly used the first-person shooter perspective to show some solid fight sequences. Alas, what we get with the film is a noisy, insufferable, and embarrassing video game adaptation that can be seen as yet another example of studio-driven cash grabs treating their audience like dumb cardboard pieces. 

I mean, “Borderlands” feels like the kind of movie that is made to be played in the background with the Gen-Z either chewing their way through popcorn buckets or doom-scrolling on their phones in the dark. There are some truly interesting themes about consumerism, existential angst, and trauma right there, but none of them are explored or even thought of in this drab story. An ensemble cast that is headlined by the dependable Cate Blanchett is thrown into an uninspired movie that can be summed up with the phrase ‘finding the vault.’ 

Blanchett plays Lilith, a ruthless outlaw cum bounty hunter who reluctantly returns to her home planet, Pandora—a desolate wasteland of dirt and violence. Her mission is to find the missing daughter of Atlas (Edgar Ramirez), the most powerful and wealthy figure in a universe that has regressed to basic survival instincts. However, when she arrives home, she inadvertently forms an alliance with the missing girl – Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt), and a band of misfits that includes Roland (Kevin Hart), a former elite mercenary who used to work for Atlas but has now gone rouge, Krieg (Florian Muneanu) – a muscular and challenged demolitionist, Tannis (Jamie Lee Curtis), a former acquaintance of Lilith and the only one aware of where the gang is headed, and Claptrap (voiced by Jack Black), a wise robot who makes some of the lamest jokes you’ll ever hear. The rest of the film is all about the band moving from point A to B to C while surviving the madness of the wasteland. 

Now, “Borderlands” could have never possibly been a great film, but from that cast, you’d at least expect to juice out some form of fun that will make your cinema trip well worth a visit. However, the film is unredeemable from start to finish. It’s an insult to the collective conscience of us as viewers and an embarrassment of the highest order. Not a single instance in the film has even an iota of energy that will boost your adrenaline, even if it is for a brief millisecond. Not a single line of dialogue in the movie makes you feel like you’ve just heard someone talk to the other person, and not a single action sequence ever feels or gives you the feeling of experiencing it in the first-person order – the single chain of thought that should have gone into the head of the filmmaker who was sanctioned to make this bullshit. 

It pains me to point out that “Borderlands” represents the lowest point cinema could ever reach, and if we don’t charge up right now, we will be fed more of the same in the near future. 

Read More: From Awful to OK: How Video Game Movies Have Evolved

Borderlands (2024) Movie Links: IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Letterboxd
Borderlands (2024) Movie Cast: Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Jamie Lee Curtis, Edgar Ramírez, Ariana Greenblatt, Florian Munteanu, Gina Gershon, Haley Bennett
Borderlands (2024) Movie Release Date: Aug 9th, 2024 | Genre: Sci-Fi/Action/Adventure | Runtime: 1h 42m

Where to watch Borderlands