Reel Geeks: Borderlands

By Mike Montgomery

I’m just going to come out and say it right off the bat.  Borderlands doesn’t deserve the hate.  It’s not that bad, it’s honestly not.  I’m not saying it’s good but it’s not the steaming pile of garbage many seem to be insisting it is.  Now before you decide I’ve completely lost my mind and stop reading, I’d like to point out a few things to qualify my previous statement.

First, I have no connection to the Borderlands franchise at all.  I’m not a gamer, and I’ve never consumed any Borderlands media outside of the film.  Second, bad films are my cinematic catnip.  Any time the buzz around a movie is “oh this is going to be awful,” “it’s not tracking very well,” “everyone expects this to bomb” etc etc, you’re basically telling me to go see the movie.  So essentially, if you’re one of those people who will go on and on in comment sections about how much the movie sucks and you can’t believe it got made, thinking you’re accomplishing something … THANKS!  You promoted this movie enough to get me interested.

That being said, I’ll openly admit that I wasn’t particularly excited for the movie.  The trailers looked like fun, but they just didn’t have that certain something that gives you the “Oh my God, I need to see this” reaction.  Nevertheless, after attending a Hal-Con barbecue I thought to myself “I’m near the Park Lane theater, there’s a screening in 30 minutes, so why not?”

Now here’s my thoughts on the film …

I always enjoy the idea of having a theater to myself when I go to a movie.  If the theater’s empty when I walk in, there’s a part of me that hopes it stays that way.  Unfortunately, I haven’t successfully achieved this since the Tim Robbin’s/Ryan Phillipe lead “Anti-Trust.”  And once again … I almost had it.  I knew there was going to be one other person (they’d bought their ticket before me so I saw the sold seat) but I have to admit, I was hoping he wouldn’t show up.

Me, the bird & one guy.
The whole audience

Borderlands is a bit of an outlier in terms of video game cinema.  It’s not well-made, so it’s difficult to call it “good,” but I think so much of that is the result of everyone in front of and behind the camera using this film as an opportunity to try new things so I also find it difficult to call the movie “bad” because that desire to branch out is something I can respect.  That starts with writer (well … it’s probably more accurate to say “Only person who can legally be credited with writing this movie and has his name on it willingly”) and director Eli Roth. 

I’ve heard a lot of people wondering “Why is this a PG-13 directed film if they’re bringing in the master of gore and horror, Eli Roth?”  I hear you, I understand your confusion, and I’d simply say this: He’s done that before.  He’s done that almost to the point of having done absolutely nothing else.  He wanted to do a big budget popcorn film because he’d never done one.  I can respect that, and applaud him for trying to branch out.  The thing is … at the end of the day that lack of genre experience shows.  The story’s a generic quest tale (you’ll recognize the plot very quickly if you’ve seen Guardians of the Galaxy or either Suicide Squad film), the visual FX are inexcusably bad in places and there’s a by now famous gaff where the characters open a hatch with the camera looking up from the inside as they do, and a crew member is clearly visible helping them do it.  These are all things where the responsibility falls at the feed of Roth as both writer and director, and I just don’t think he was the man for the job.  I should note, however, that some reports (as well as the IMDB trivia) seem to indicate that Roth’s first cut of the film was in fact more in the “Hard R” vein, but alleged interference from a studio wanting PG-13 lead to director Tim Miller re-shooting so much of the film that Steve Jablonsky was brought in to re-do the score as much of the original music simply didn’t work.  My initial thoughts on Roth’s work are based, in part, on comments he made on the Talk is Jericho podcast.  However, if studio interference really was as much of a factor as was claimed, I’m quite willing to revise my opinion here.

Cate Blanchett.  Again, one of the biggest questions surrounding the film has been “What is someone of the caliber of Cate Blanchett doing here?!”  There’s two answers.  First is, again, that desire to stretch one’s acting muscles.  Cate Blanchett: Action Hero is something we don’t often see, and there’s a certain … I don’t really want to say “credibility,” but perhaps a certain “grounding” that her performance as Lilith does bring.  The second answer is, quite simply, she needed to get out of the house.  The film was originally shot during the height of the COVID Pandemic and Blanchett was reportedly going stir crazy at home.  According to Blanchett herself: 

“I think there also may have been a little Covid madness - I was spending a lot of time in the garden, using the chainsaw a little too freely. My husband said, 'This film could save your life.'” (IMDB) 

I’ve also heard that Blanchett had contacted her agent and essentially said she was going stir-crazy and to get her a script.  Any script.  One could probably make the case that Borderlands is her Jaws the Revenge, which Michael Caine had famously done for the paycheck.  Blanchett essentially did this movie to relieve boredom.

And you know what?  She’s kind of the highlight of the film.  While the film sadly doesn’t take full advantage of this, Blanchett absolutely immerses herself in the world of the film and gives her Lilith almost an old west sensibility.  She’s the bounty hunter riding into town to find her quarry and instead gets drawn into events much bigger than herself.  Again, standard plot you’ve seen a number of times before.  But the thing is, it works.  There’s a sort of exasperated confidence in much of her work, this is a harder, more world weary Lilith but not in a way that makes her unrelatable.  Lilith has the proverbial “her heart grew three sizes” arc over the course of the movie and while it’s nothing particuarly creative, Blanchett carries it off just fine.  My final note here is simply this, I don’t want to hear any more of this “She’s too old to play Lilith” bullshit.  It’s called acting, and it’s not like she was playing Tiny Tina.  You know what else?  I learned from this movie that I have a type, and it’s “Cate Blanchett wielding a flame thrower” so I will not be accepting any ageism around her work here.

Speaking of Tiny Tina, I have a sneaking suspicion Ariana Greenblatt was secretly laying the groundwork for a future Harley Quinn audition.  While essentially being the MacGuffin of the film, I think Greenblatt’s Tina was essentially also supposed to handle a fair amount of the comic relief, and that’s where the character fell a bit flat for me.  This isn’t Greenblatt’s fault so much as much of Tina’s more comedic dialogue is based in toilet humor which isn’t really for me, and I don’t think the film really gives much for her to sink her teeth into.  That said, Greenblatt pulls out of a sort of “psychotic childlike naiveté” that carries her performance along nicely when the script fails her.

On the subject of script failure, we come to Kevin Hart.  Once more we have an actor trying to stretch his acting muscle with a role we’re not used to seeing them in.  Hart’s Roland is no doubt a role that he’s always wanted to play, and he’s clearly put the work in.  He also very much had the support of director Eli Roth … he just doesn’t have the support of writer Eli Roth.  Hart’s doing his best with what he has, but when all he’s asked to do is run around and shoot guns, I don’t think he’s breaking his “yappy comedic sidekick” image any time soon.

You’ll notice that I haven’t mentioned anyone else in the movie.  To be perfectly honest, with the other major characters (IE Jamie Lee Curtis) the best I can say, and I say it with the utmost respect, they’re kind of just there.  I’m not saying their performances are bad, I just don’t feel like there’s anything truly worth highlighting.

As much as I’ve had general praise for the movie up to this point, there were also things that I do have to question.  One of the smaller things is the role of Mad Moxie, played by Gina Gershon.  Gershon seemed to be playing Moxie as that older saloon owner you’d often see in Westerns, which makes sense, and I have a sneaking suspicion that she was cast because of her prior working relationship with Eli Roth, which I understand … but something about Gershon’s Mad Moxie just didn’t click for me.  It felt like the right performance, just the right performance for a different character.  There’s a brief moment in Moxie’s saloon where I honestly thought she and Lilith were going to share a kiss, but otherwise I couldn’t tell you anything about her work in the film.  She just doesn’t leave any kind of a mark.

The Visual FX.  I’d honestly love to know what happened here because there’s issues with the VFX and they’re oddly specific.  I don’t know if this has anything to do with the Tim Miller lead re-shoots, but for some strange reason, the backgrounds on any scenes focusing on a character in a flying vehicle are just terrible. They’re utterly inexcusable and I truly do not understand what the issue was, but for some reason any sequence on an aerial vehicle is so bad its even beneath an Asylum film, while anything involving characters and/or vehicles on the ground is perfectly fine.  I’m adding this film to the list of apologies that Ant-Man: Quantumania is owed.  And man do I want an explanation.

Finally, y’all I thoroughly enjoy Motörhead.  I do.  I love Ace of Spades just as much as the next rock fan.  But there’s a sequence in Borderlands where, frankly, it’s used in a way that’s so predictable and uninspired that it’s impossible to not roll your eyes at it.  Was this the James Gunn influence rearing its head?  Absolutely.  However it’s just so predictable and cliché that I haven’t seen a music cue that lazy since Highway to Hell in Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief.

At the end of the day, would I recommend the movie?  Yes and no.  If you’re looking for a direct translation of the game to the screen, you’ll be left disappointed.  I have no idea why you’d want to go to the theater to watch something you can interact with at home, but to each their own.  If, like me, you have no connection to the franchise at all … yeah you’ll likely have a good time with the movie, but as I’ve mentioned it does still have problems that will stick out, so it’s question of how much those things will bother you.  Quite simply, Borderlands is essentially a film experiment for a lot of people that doesn’t quite work.  Whether that’s due to studio interference, or too many people working on the film in roles you’re not accustomed to seeing them in, I’l leave it to you to decide what the problem was or if you even care.

Me?  All I ask in life is Cate Blanchett brandishing weapons.