Game vs. Film: Borderlands
Well, it finally happened. The long overdue Borderlands movie has blasted its way onto the big screen with the resounding impact of a wet fart. I was kind of excited when it first got announced *checks watch* nine years ago. But every bit of news that came out after that made me wince and say to myself, “Maybe it’ll still be good?”
Spoiler alert: it wasn’t good. It was a catastrophic commercial, critical, and creative failure. And yet… it wasn’t that bad. Was it a faithful adaptation of the games? No. Was it a terrible unwatchable mess? Also no. Sure, there was plenty of room for improvement, but I’ve definitely seen much worse. Most of it directed by Uwe Boll. Remember Far Cry? Exactly. There was a whole Far Cry movie we just never talk about because it was that bad. People decrying Borderlands as the worst video game adaptation of all time are forgetting that Wing Commander exists. Hell, the Assassin’s Creed movie was a bigger snore—I don’t remember anything about that movie except Michael Fassbender convulsing in VR. Despite the questionable liberties taken with the source material, Borderlands is far from the worst video game adaptation I have ever seen, and is moderately entertaining for most of its runtime. Nobody could say that about Double Dragon.
Upon reflection, I realize that most of my criticisms of Borderlands the movie are just the ways it deviated from Borderlands the game. The basic premise is the same—there’s a crazy dangerous world called Pandora that hides a legendary Vault full of ancient alien technology that everybody wants to find. But just about everything else is different, and few (if any) of these changes are improvements.
This movie does run roughshod over many beloved characters, with only a few even resembling their inspirations. And almost all of them are confusingly miscast. Roland, the stoic soldier-boy with a heart of gold, is played by neurotic loudmouth comedian Kevin Hart. While struggling to play against type he ends up giving a performance so reserved that he literally blends into the scenery. The movie’s version of Mad Moxxi, the top-hatted temptress that seems to tend every bar in the Borderlands, looks like a haunted clown in a corset so drab the real Moxxi wouldn’t use it to wipe her countertop. And when she speaks she sounds far more scary puppet than seductive clown. Instead of one of the series’ great villains, General Knoxx of the Crimson Lance, the film pits its protagonists against his (made-up) daughter, who betrays no character development until she randomly decides to stand up to her boss and gets murdered for it. Tiny Tina, the eccentric thirteen-year-old hyperactive bomb-maker who stole the spotlight so effectively in Borderlands 2 that she got her very own DLC campaign and spin-off game, is barely recognizable. They made her a rather quiet and sullen teen always snarking at the adults around her while doing nothing to move the story forward, despite being stuck as its narrative center. See, they made movie Tina a straight-up Chosen One—she’s a clone made from alien blood, and the only person that can theoretically open the legendary Vault of Pandora. That’s why all of the antagonists are after her, and that’s why Borderlands the movie is a two-hour escort mission. Yet, after her introduction to Lilith, Tina barely even blows anything up, let alone exercises any agency.
Ah yes. Poor Lilith. The iconic hero of the series. Eli Roth did her dirtiest of all. While being portrayed by the immensely talented Cate Blanchett is an honor any fictional character would dream of, she looks utterly bored for most of the movie, even in the midst of a gunfight. At the beginning of the first game, Lilith is twenty-two years old. She came to Pandora explicitly to hunt for the Vault, and she has cool glowing tattoos as a result of her supernatural siren powers. Lilith is also one of the vanishingly few characters in the series with an intact conscience. She doesn’t even believe in killing people for sport! After the first game, she spends more time running the city of Sanctuary as a community leader, happy to leave the Vault hunting to the player. The only thing Blanchett’s version has in common with her inspiration is the red hair. And later, the powers. The mysterious Sirens and their strange abilities are a major part of Borderlands lore, but the movie explicitly ties them to the alien artifacts on Pandora. Lilith only discovers her powers in the last twenty minutes of the movie so she can serve as its deus ex machina, wiping out the bad guys and saving all her friends in a burst of cheap CG to cover up the fact they still couldn’t write a better ending. Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying in any way that Cate Blanchett didn’t give the best performance she was capable of. Her grumpy and sarcastic bounty hunter is a compelling enough character to lead a movie; she just isn’t really Lilith.
The same goes for the guns. Your weapons are practically supporting characters in the games, each with their own quirks and personality. A player’s choice of firearms can reveal a lot about them before they ever say a word. A few legendary guns get name-checked, like the Vladof Infinity pistol, and it looks just like the one you can find in the games, but that’s it. We never learn what makes that one special, or even why Lilith chose it out of the eleventy-gazillion guns available all over Pandora. In the movie, none of them shoot anything other than bullets. Which is not just disappointing, it also eliminates a ton of the world-building that makes Borderlands feel like its own distinct place rather than just another generic sci-fi wasteland.
Other than the existence of the coveted Vault of Pandora, the plot of the movie bears absolutely no resemblance to its source material. Movie Lilith goes on a journey from lonely bounty hunter to a Vault Hunter with friends. But in the first game, Lilith is already a Vault Hunter and her heroic journey is about reluctantly accepting the mantle of leadership. Her and Roland are also in love, but their romance was left out of the movie. Tiny Tina and Krieg don’t show up until the second game, and their inclusion here means that other great characters from the first entry, like Brick and Mordecai, have been cut out completely. Which is a shame, because Tina’s little sister dynamic with big brawler Brick is one of the more endearing pairings in the entire series. They try to replicate this with Krieg in the movie, but its hard to bond with a character that has been turned into a homicidal slab of meat screaming nonsense, with no indication there is anything else going on behind that mask. It is a disservice to one of the series’ more complex characters.
There’s only two characters that make it to the silver screen intact: Marcus and Claptrap. Benjamin Byron Davis gives a pitch-perfect portrayal of the friendly-yet-ruthless arms dealer Marcus Kincaid—my only note is to use him in more scenes! Marcus Munitions is a pillar of the Sanctuary community. Without his network of vending machines, crossing the Borderlands would be a lot more treacherous for everyone. Jack Black similarly nails his vocal performance of irritating-yet-lovable robot Claptrap, the mascot of the series. He manages to strike that perfect balance of sounding like the character without falling into rote imitation of the previous performer. He’s still the same hilariously obnoxious little bot fans love to hate, and his comic relief moments are some of the best parts of the movie.
So, after reading all of that, I’m sure you’re thinking “Wait… Didn’t you say the movie wasn’t that bad? Because it sounds terrible.” I get it. I understand your confusion. But if you look back at everything I said, you’ll notice a theme. Most of the movie’s problems stem from misrepresenting the source material. If this film was simply Eli Roth’s unique vision for a hyper violent sci-fi action comedy rather than a botched adaptation of a beloved franchise, most of my criticisms fade away like gun smoke. Most, but not all.
While there are pieces of a decent flick here, they’ve been assembled and edited haphazardly. Visually, Pandora looks pretty good. They visit a few locations and kill lots of CG critters that players will recognize. Sanctuary feels like a real place people live in, rather than just a quest hub. They spend way too long in Roland’s truck having a rather boring chase scene, but Cate Blanchett does look amazing dispatching waves of psychos with a pistol in each hand.
Which brings us inexorably to the film’s most fatal flaw: the PG-13 rating. Let me attempt to explain what a tremendously bad idea that was. The titular setting of the Borderlands franchise is a savage and lawless post-apocalyptic wasteland—think Mad Max with more guns and crappier cars. It is impossible to overstate just how hostile an environment Pandora truly is. In addition to all variety of vicious flora and fauna, it is also home to clans of bloodthirsty psychos that kill just for kicks. Borderlands is the kind of game where you burn through bullets by the boxful spilling buckets of blood and splattering bandit body parts all across the landscape. The most insane weapons you can find will reduce enemies to glistening red chunks in glorious High Definition. Nearly every character you meet is a murder connoisseur of one variety or another, for there is no such thing as an innocent Pandoran. Violence is the global pastime.
By eliminating all of the blood and guts, the movie renders the dangers of Pandora toothless. It’s hard to believe our heroes are ever truly threatened since we never see anyone get hurt. Waves of psychos get gunned down and just flop on the floor bloodlessly. Krieg swings around a giant buzz-axe, but never seems to cut anyone—it just knocks them aside like a bat. Lilith and company weather the entire film without a single noteworthy injury, which makes Pandora feel more like a carnival ride than the meat-grinder of a world the script keeps insisting it really is. Lots of people talk about what a scary planet it is, but the movie provides little compelling evidence of that. Roland even gets set up for an epic last stand scene, holding back a tide of psychos alone to buy his friends time to flee, and he just… survives? No special tactic or maneuver saves him. He’s just found under a pile of bodies when his friends return and pick him up to continue the story like nothing happened.
The decision to nerf the violence seems like another unforced error mandated from the executive suite rather than the director’s chair. I sincerely doubt Eli Roth, who directed the disturbingly graphic Hostel films, envisioned a Borderlands free of viscera. But someone made what they called a “business decision” and sanded off all the edges in a desperate bid to make it safe for everyone, thus ensuring it would appeal to no one. Perhaps they should have considered that if the built-in audience of millions of Borderlands fans didn’t like the movie, there would be no one to convince those unfamiliar with the property that it was worth watching.
The movie wasn’t the cinematic crime critical consensus makes it out to be, but Borderlands is my favorite video game franchise, and I can’t even recommend you watch it ironically. How sad is that? After such an abysmal performance, it seems unlikely we’ll be seeing the Borderlands back on the big screen anytime soon, and that’s a shame. Pandora is a rich and vibrant setting full of interesting characters with fascinating stories—it really shouldn’t be this hard to turn some of that into a decent popcorn movie.
The original Vault Hunters from the first game