“Borderlands” review – a compilation of jumbled films that are more interesting to play than to watch

Lately, video game adaptations have been released more often than Russian fairy tales. And Borderlands was shaping up to be the most explosive blockbuster of August. The crazy watercolor world populated by all sorts of bad guys, the plot (albeit a sophisticated one, surprisingly beautiful and with great Easter eggs) doesn’t have much of a well-thought-out plot since it’s a shooter. Apparently, the script had to make sense of it.

Almost from the first seconds, jokes pour from the screen, and some of them can be called generally successful. We meet the main character, the red-haired bounty hunter Lilith, played by Cate Blanchett, in a bar. She enters a drinking establishment, holding another criminal on a leash. She is immediately surrounded by bandits who offer to work for their boss. While Lilith easily copes with everyone, the boss, who according to all canons must survive, emerges from the semi-darkness, but no – the hero unexpectedly kills him with a shot to the head, not allowing him to show off his skills and end. He completes his tirade with applause.

Already in this scene, we understand that something in the spirit of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” awaits us, where a crazy group of friends and a robot set off on a space journey to retrieve an artifact, or rather, lost alien technology. Literally: Lilith arrives on her home planet Pandora to find Tina, the daughter of a gangster lord named Atlas. On the way, she unexpectedly meets the Tin Man, an indestructible and never silent robot who will become the most useful member of the team. While the rest are busy with spectacular fights, the baby droid will more than once do all the dirty work and show miracles of ingenuity.

Considering that Borderlands is inspired not only by Diablo and Fallout, but also by the best science fiction films from Star Wars and The Fifth Element to Game of Thrones, it is not necessary to accuse the script of being derivative. The only pity is that this potential was not realized and many ideas were abandoned halfway or were replaced by boilerplate solutions. Unlike the game, the film pays little attention to the fate of the characters (there is not enough timing), so you do not have time to get attached to them. For obvious reasons, the creators chose the girl Lilith as the main character, while the players had the opportunity to choose three more characters with different abilities, character and the ability to endlessly improve weapons.

When the mercenary Lilith finds little Tina, it turns out that she really needs to be saved, albeit from Atlas. This secret is revealed almost immediately, but the creators of the film – Eli Roth and Tim Miller, it seems, did not even think about keeping us interested and surprising us with plot twists. All attention will be focused on the rides, and for those who watched the trailer, there will be no unexpected moments: the car of the heroes will be epically swallowed by a giant worm that has crawled out of the sand (did you miss Dune?) and will explode from the inside, and Tina will swallow the urine of the monster from Piss Hollow (it turns out we heard right).

A movie like this is supposed to be crazy and funny, but for some reason jokes like “nobody can kill me but me” are incredibly jarring. In general, while watching it, you can’t help but feel that acting is more interesting than watching. Take, for example, the scene where the group tries to cross a rickety bridge over an acid lake. While everyone is arguing about who should go first, little Tina carelessly steps forward and almost falls, which makes the viewer at least a little nervous. Otherwise, the heroes are so defenseless that biological dirt on their clothes will be much more uncomfortable for the viewer than scrapes and wounds.

Lilith really moves like a pixelated game character, and considering that the prototype is clearly younger than the actress, although not new, it fits the overall image. Another thing is that the characters in the film do not interact much with each other: they seem to be on their own. Despite the colorful costumes, it is difficult to remember who did what after watching. Tiny Tina was a funny trickster character who selectively cursed and told stories, so the players fell in love with her, and in the film the heroine (Ariana Greenblatt) seemed to admire herself in the image of Harley Quinn, getting on the nerves of the audience.

Perhaps Borderlands wasn’t funny enough, epic enough, or even emotional enough. When we learn about Lilith and Tina’s past and origins, they continue to be unsympathetic. Perhaps the director hasn’t decided how to see this story, so the touching scenes have nothing heart-warming and the jokes become too predictable.

The final battle with the boss Atlas turned out almost like a toy: could he give him the drama and necessary tension in such an outfit? The alien portal, which the heroes and the main villain are so eager to enter, is also confusing – it turned out to be a boring, empty and completely unspecial place compared to the locations of the same Pandora. Moreover, it is not clear what exactly Atlas wanted to find there.

Apparently, the reason for this result is that the directors who worked on the production of the film were not fans of the game, otherwise the “spirit” would be felt in every detail and painted in the bushes, and the whole action would not resemble a game, but a masquerade with special effects. Eli Roth’s failure to complete the film (Tim Miller took over) also contributed to the deterioration of the narrative. Perhaps both directors tried to bring the pieces together into a coherent plot and even convey the atmosphere, but instead of making the audience fall in love with this world, they turned Borderlands into a mess that leaves a feeling of disappointment and confusion.