Borderlands: JB Review

Just when video game adaptations were getting good...

So, Borderlands--the movie adaptation of the popular video game series--you could call it a rollercoaster of a film in some way, but that's not too complimentary giving an end result that almost all over the place and even too generic to justify itself.

I've never even played the games prior to seeing this, but I can already tell they went the old Hollywood route to likely mix and match what can fit its 100-minute runtime.

The basis of this is where we have bounty hunters and misfits on the planet of Pandora, (not to be confused with Avatar's Pandora) such as Cate Blanchett's Lilith, who bands with a crew to uncover and loot through the planet's secrets. There's probably a lot they could have played and built with of this world, because it looks like if Guardians of the Galaxy met the Mad Max movies, but if you saw this movie cold and without knowledge of games, you'd think it just borrowed elements from far better films such as those.

As much as we would also enjoy seeing these actors together onscreen, they can't help but look more like cosplayers put in a reenactment of what a Borderlands movie would look like, with one of the only things bringing any levity to this is Jack Black as a robot named Claptrap.

Can we also talk about its PG-13 rating, from a game best known for its mature rating? Like, I refuse to believe this was director Eli Roth's fault alone, because the film even went through delays and reshoots from what I read. Had he been given that creative freedom, this could have still worked with the signature violence of his other work. Would we ever see an R-rated director's cut? I doubt it anytime soon.

What we have now unfortunately is another lackluster video game movie, and one I already wouldn't mind be given a proper remake. 4/10