The Borderlands Movie
The Adaptation That Should Have Stayed in the Vault
I have never written a movie review and I’m not about to start now.
Think of this more like a venting session. A gamer rage moment, an airing of grievances, a giant middle finger to everyone involved in this cinematic dumpster fire. This is for you, Eli Roth, and your whole team of enablers, including the marketing genius who thought this adaptation was a good idea.
Eli Roth. It was Eli Roth who was responsible for the Borderlands movie. To reiterate.
The dude who’s mediocre at best, even when sticking to his bread and butter—horror. Borderlands wasn’t just bad. It was horror-bull. There, even my worst pun is better than his entire movie.
Hey Eli, want a 3-minute crash course on how to make a proper Borderlands movie? Here’s how:
Step 1. Go to YouTube.
Step 2. Search “Borderlands 2 intro movie.”
Step 3. There is no Step 3, dipshit. Just watch it and appreciate how those three minutes are better than your whole film.
In case you’re lost, Eli (which clearly you are) I’ll break it down for you. Here’s a walkthrough of the Borderlands 2 intro from the perspective of someone who’s never heard of Borderlands.
It starts out with a cheeky little Skag (that’s the cute doggo, Eli—keep up, would ya?). In the frame is also a billboard, with the words, ”Vault Hunters Wanted”. The Skag grunts at the sign as if programmed with as much disdain for vault hunters as you have for Borderlands fans.
Anticipation builds and there are some nice camera angles.
Then—BAM!
a vehicle zooms by and snatches up our poor friendly neighbourhood Skag. Camera pans out and some roughneck bandits come into frame—clearly these are the bad guys. One of them even headbutts his own buddy—so, really bad guys!
Apply directly to the forehead!
What a psycho!
Suddenly a trian horn blares and our no-good roughneck bandits get skittled. Epic music kicks in—not your ”oh-sorry-we-blew-our-whole-budget-on-Ace-of-Spades” music, but proper, awesomely suited to the clip music.
The scene transitions to slow-motion. All our newly acquanted bad guys now sailing ever so gracefully through the air, propelled by a mystery train. A nice bit of slapstick as a bandit smacks into the Gearbox Software sign. It’s wild, chaotic, it’s...it’s Borderlands!
Inside the train we get to meet the heroes of our story. There’s a sign that reads, ”Welcome Vault Hunters” and then a false front gives way to, ”To your doom”.
That’s an intro.
Axton the Commando1
Maya, the Siren2
Salvador as the Gunzerker3
Zero, as uh, a number, I guess4
Call of Shame—Casting Edition
The Borderlands movie stars Cate Blanchett (more like Cate Bland-chett, amirite?) and Kevin Hart, held against his will. Jack Black voices CL4P-TP (Claptrap). He’s no David Eddings, but he gives it a shot. Then there’s Jamie Lee Curtis—because apparently she’s in every movie now since she hit 100. Jamie Lee Curtis was in Halloween—this is a sequeter to my horror-bly awesome pun from eariler.
Did you know, it's an established rule and tradition that movie adaptations of video games must be terrible. This is due to the Sloppyright Act of 1671, that states:
For every moderately successful video game, those who wish to adapt to the medium of film must do so with the understanding that the film versions rating shall be inverse to that of the video game so as to offset its popularity and therefore maintain balance within the universe.
After conducting the most thorough and diligent research, I found that one movie broke this rule, ’Werewolves Within’. Who's heard of that anyway? As punishment, all those involved were turned into actual werewolves and banished to the Twilight universe.
Even though the Sloppyright Act has been around since 1671, it wasn't put into practice until 1993 with the Super Mario Bros. Movie.
From Borderlands to Blanderlands
Eli, you didn’t just create a terrible movie—you completey stripped the Borderlands franchise of what made it unique, special.
Animation, Shnamination
Borderlands used a pretty cool art style—not cel-shading, but hand-drawn, spurgled through photoshop and then spat out like a beautiful Skag vomitting up a legendary weapon. Watch this video if you want to know more:5
From the landscapes to the guns to the peeps, this animation technique set Borderlands apart from other games.
What did the movie give us? Generic, run-of-the-mill stupid, glossy, Hollywood garbage. Could you imagine watching Sin City in sepia? Blergh!
Here’s some comparisons between the game characters and the movie:
Roland6
Dr. Tannis7
Lilith8
Dialogue? Dialo-oh-my-god-this-is-boring
The dialogue, at least in the first two games, was pretty damn great—I found The Pre-Sequal to be a bit cringey, but hey, to each their own. The games were filled with fast-paced, witty, free-flowing and natural dialogue. I’ve put hundreds of hours into Borderlands games and the only character’s dialogue that truly got on my nerves was Tiny Tina—little turd was as annoying as they come. The movie version of Tina? Not annoying enough—0/10. And who didn’t love a good villianous monologue from Handsome Jack? Boy, could he could ramble. Claptrap, well Claptrap was Claptrap.
The movie was humourless. I think the only time I came close to laughing was in the opening scene with Tina and Roland. Maybe I’m repressing the rest of the movie. It was all just full of dull exposition and clichés (thanks, alt + 130).
If Character Arcs Were Salt Flats
Eli, really. As if all the above wasn’t enough, you had to take an iron and turn everyone’s character arcs into straight lines.
Roland—now this part killed me, first you threaten Kevin Hart with never seeing The Rock again so he’d be in the Borderlands movie—then you have the gall to make Roland’s character arc weird, confusing and nonsensicle. Let me get this straight, Roland defected from the Crimson Lance (Atlas’s private army), and then is somehow hired again by Atlas (now personified with ’Deukalian Atlas’ as the CEO of Atlas corporation) to rescue Tiny Tina from some non-descript space station? Try Googling, ”defect verb” next time.
Tiny Tina—the once rambunctious independent mouthy orphan, is now a damsel in distress and on top of that, Atlas’s daughter?? What???
Krieg—now Krieg, it’s gonna be different living out here. You couldn’t be more right, Mrs. Jones, you couldn’t be more right. His duality seems to have morphed into a one-ality. No longer the lovable psycho, just some beefed up dude who became a prisoner without any of the depth of the original.
Lilith—oh I know what we can do, said little red riding Roth, we can take an awesome and strong woman—an actual powerhouse who’s job it was to basically protect all of Pandora, and reduce her down to a one-dimensional wannabe tough girl with no agency or depth. Yes! Said all the yes men and women. What a great idea! Little did they realise, in their little bobbleheaded brains, it would in fact turn out to be a not great idea.
Vault Hunting to Family Drama—a Radical Shift in Plotliness
The entire series of Borderlands games hinged on the notion of vault hunting. You were a vault hunter—you hunted for vaults and treasure and Eridium and all that good stuff. The atmosphere was full of anti-corporate underpinnings and rebeliousness. The movie craps all over that—when you go digging through the crap, you don’t find a nice hunk of Eridium, no, you find family dramaaaaa. Family drama between Tiny Tina and her estranged father, Deukalian Atlas—which is just, no. No. The original storyline has Tiny Tina as an orphan. Her parents were both killed by Hyperion. They were all initially sold to Hyperion to be used in Handsome Jack’s experiments. The only thing they got right were her love of explosives—oh and they of course had to inject ’badonkadonks’ into her dialogue. Such dedication to the source material. Many wowzers.
Borderlands’ Heart Ripped From Its Now Corporate-Loving Body
It struck me as weird that in the opening sequence, the narrator mentions Pandora being overrun by corporations—then the rest of the movie is just sanitised, family-friendly, and, well, not Borderlands. The games, as I mentioned before were rebellious against corporate greed, it was satirical. Soulless mega-corporations like Hyperion and Atlas were seen as faceless entities—yet in the movie they chose to personify them (Atlas, anyway), why?
There wasn’t enough absurdity and the dialogue overall was about as punchy as a toothless kitten trapped in a boxing glove. The games pushed things, envelopes, you name it. The movie—well, like I’ve said a couple of times, was just bland and corporatised.
O’ Handsome Jack, Where Art Thou?
Handsome Jack was the villain of villains, the rambler of monologues, he put the ‘ant’ in antagonist. You could quote this sociopath for days—he added so much personality to the Borderlands series. Apparently he missed the casting call for the movie. This is like the Batman universe without the Joker. Just further solidification of the glaring lack of understanding of the entire franchise.
Weaponised Absurdity
I don’t remember a single weapon from the movie—wait, Tiny Tina had that bazooka. The weapons are one of the most beloved features in the insanity of the Borderlands game universe. You even had guns that talked! And screamed. And the armor. Replaced with the blandest, run-of-the-mill sci-fi blasters was abominably bad.
Some examples of weapons and mods from Borderlands 2:
Fabled Tortoise9—this thing made you a tank!
Flame of the Firehawk10—do you like shooting fire in all directions?
Twin Hornet11—corrosive legendary DAHL pistol
Bane12—one of the talking weapons in Borderlands 2 (see below for its phrases)
Bane Weapon Quotes:13
Switching weapon:
“SWAPPIN’ WEAPONS!”
Firing:
YEAHAHAHYAEHYEHAYHEAHYEAEHYAHYEAEHYEHAHEAEAHYEAHYAHAHYHEAYHEAHYHAHAHYEAHYAEHYAHYAHYEAHYAHAHAHYEAHYAHAYEAH (marked by in-game subtitles as [annoying sound])
“BOOM!”
“BANG!”
“RATATAT!”
“AIAIAIAIAIAIAIAIAI!”
Reloading:
“RELOOOOOOAD!”
“REEEEELOADIN’!”
Character Abilities and ‘Badass’ Moments
There were times in the game where you felt like an absolute beast. Whether it was crawling back from the depths of hell through ‘fight for your life’, or defeating a ‘badass’ version of an enemy—these moments were oftentimes fortified greatly by a character’s cooldown abilities. None of this adrenaline-fueled mayhem made its way into the movie—surprise, surprise. You could argue that Lilith’s Phasewalk ability was shown. Other than that, nada.
Top Reasons You SHOULD—That’s Right, Should, Watch Borderlands
\\ You’ll be so bored you’ll have time to work on your creative endevours—bring a typewriter, it’ll be a welcome distraction from Kevin Hart being held against his will
\\ If you’re an aspiring director, this is a textbook, playbook, moviebook example of how not to do a movie—much less a video game adaptation
\\ As an investor, this is the perfect anti-investment advice—it’s a lesson on how to lose money or launder money and get away with it
\\ If you’re a movie goer, who plans on watching more movies, this is a great litmus test for how good the popcorn tastes
Article Finale of the Blandlands Movie Franchise
The Borderlands movie is so much more than a bad adaptation—it’s a complete and utter failure to understand anything about what made the games so great. Literally everything that made the games awesome and unique and memorable—the humour, the art style, spirit of rebellion, everything, was completely stripped away, sterilised. If you replaced ’Borderlands’ with ’Generic Sci-Fi Flop From a First-Time Director’, you would have had more success.
Hi Eli—if you ever read this, I really hope you learned something from this movie. Next time, just stick to making mediocre horror flicks. If you ever think about adapting another video game, at least get your assistant to glance at the source material. Thanks.
I'm gonna kill you and the rest of your stupid Vault Hunter friends!
- Eli Roth, dreaming about making the Borderlands movie
That’s it for now,
As always,
Good luck,
Stay safe and,
Bee well!
See ya!
Borderlands 3 Unreal Engine 4 Tech Demo - GDC 2017
