The video game movie adaptation used to be something close to an oxymoron, insofar as artists taking paper-thin material and attempting to flesh it out into a feature-length story resulted in some wildly, er, unique takes on classic video games; witness “Super Mario Bros.” and “Double Dragon,” for starters. As video games continued to expand and evolve, they began to resemble cinema more and more, deliberately so. Now it’s gotten to the point where many video games are so intricate in their plotting, so rich in their characterizations (and acting performances), and so cinematic in their technique that a movie adaptation can almost seem redundant.
First launched in 2009, “Borderlands,” the game series, is the type that straddles the line between cinematic experience and personalized interactive adventure, providing a richly detailed world in which the player can choose their own character to explore, as well as a scripted storyline that they can follow in order to complete the game. Thus, an adaptation can be a simple or complex prospect. The world-building and variety of characters (both types and actual examples) are there for the mining, yet the choice of story could potentially alienate hardcore fans and/or confuse newbies.
“Borderlands,” the movie, attempts to walk that particularly tricky line and ends up smack in the middle of the road. While its heavily generic storyline and offensively inoffensive tone are very likely the result of its long gestation period and behind-the-scenes shuffling, part of the blame is a failure to acknowledge the way video games, movies, and video game movies have grown past what they used to be in 2009. “Borderlands” may look like the game come to life, but the lack of innovation in its adaptation leaves it lifeless.
Prophecies, guns, and superpowers … here we go again
The biggest strength of “Borderlands” is its lore-filled universe, but it’s unfortunately also its Achilles heel. As the film begins with a “catch you up to speed” narration from lifelong bounty hunter Lilith (Cate Blanchett), it’s explained that an ancient and extinct alien race, the Eridians, left behind powerful artifacts in a mysterious Vault located on the planet of Pandora (that name was very popular in 2009). As millions of mercenaries (known as Vault Raiders) and a giant evil corporation run by a man named Atlas (Edgar Ramírez) all search for the Vault and its treasure, Lilith is hired by Atlas to track down his daughter, Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt), who is lost on Pandora and supposedly holds the key to opening the Vault.
When Lilith finally meets up with Tina, her ex-soldier protector, Roland (Kevin Hart), muscle man Krieg (Florian Munteanu), and a motormouthed robot, Claptrap (Jack Black), she reluctantly agrees to help the motley crew find and open the Vault ostensibly for “I’ll be murdered along with you guys if I’m caught now” reasons. Turns out that Lilith has a secret backstory that provides her with her actual motivation, however, one that involves her history with the ragtag group’s professorial benefactor, Dr. Tannis (Jamie Lee Curtis), her long-dead mother (Haley Bennett), and her upbringing on Pandora.
Some aspects of the movie seem frustratingly relegated to “for fans only,” such as Krieg, an ex-member of a faction known as Berserkers who are very muscular and wear masks, for reasons the film never bothers to mention. These missing pieces might be intriguing were it not for the fact that the movie is so painfully derivative of 2014’s “Guardians of the Galaxy,” with its mixture of (attempted) edginess with space opera and comic book tropes. It’s all been there, done that, with the whole being much less than the sum of its parts.
Borderlands is filled with neutered gags that only slightly resemble humor
“But hey now,” you might be saying, “so many genre movies are derivative, that’s usually a feature and not a bug!” And yes, that’s generally true. The problem with “Borderlands” isn’t that it’s treading the same well-trodden ground that “Guardians of the Galaxy,” “Deadpool” and other assorted comic book and video game movies have before (and will for many years to come). It’s that the emotions that accompany such tropes and archetypes — irreverence, joy, wonder, excitement, and so on — are nowhere to be found.
“Borderlands” wants to be a rambunctious, offbeat romp, for no better reason than the game it’s adapted from became popular for its dark sense of humor, particularly when it came to violence. There’s a lot of violence in the film, to be sure, but it’s largely bloodless and, worse, toothless; director and co-writer Eli Roth, previously famous for his horror features, can shoot an action sequence with no problem, but can’t seem to bring much more than a basic sense of proficiency to each set piece. It’d be too easy to say that Roth is outside of his wheelhouse; he’s stepped away from horror (and even an R rating) before, and both “Death Wish” and the family-friendly “The House With a Clock in its Walls” have more vibrancy than can be found here.
Even worse than an action movie without juice, “Borderlands” is a comedy without jokes. The script, credited to Roth and Joe Crombie, was undoubtedly messed with during the film’s years-long production period, which could account for why the dialogue feels like it was revised to death. However it happened, the humor in “Borderlands” doesn’t include any of the delightfully demented tangents as seen in Roth’s other films and even Black’s riffs as Claptrap seem fenced in somehow. The jokes aren’t bad jokes per se; they’re non-jokes. It’s like watching “Cardboard: The Movie.”
A film for everyone is a film for no one
Perhaps the most frustrating thing about “Borderlands” is that, on paper, it doesn’t do anything egregiously wrong. It translates the garish, post-apocalyptic chic visual aesthetic of the games to the screen pretty darn well, enough so that the movie is never dull to look at. Its story, despite some elusive bits of lore here and there, is clear enough, and the ensemble cast is a welcome presence, none more so than Blanchett. It really is a special joy to see an actress of her caliber jumping around shooting dudes, enough that it makes me hope to see her very own version of “Taken” or “John Wick” in the near future. (Frankly, that movie could’ve been this one, had anyone’s heart been in it enough.)
Thanks to the fact that it’s not a hopeless mess, it’s possible that people could give “Borderlands” the benefit of the doubt; goodness knows I’ve championed many a derided genre picture in my time. However, every chance the movie gets to show off potentially engaging idiosyncrasies — Gina Gershon as a madam-cum-saloon owner, characters spontaneously discovering new superpowers, various tentacled creatures who spew urine everywhere — they don’t amount to much beyond a brief flash in the pan.
“Borderlands” is not some cynical crime against cinema, but rather a pale imitation of what’s come before. It’s hard to get excited about it, and it’s hard to get too worked up about it, either. The vitriolic fan response to cinematic versions of their favorite properties means that polarizing adaptations like “Resident Evil” and “Street Fighter” are a thing of the past; “Borderlands” makes a point of not being different enough to upset the fanbase, but it’s also not unique enough to win over new audiences, either. It’s a movie for everyone and no one, a film so unwilling to make a splash that it barely makes a peep.
/Film Rating: 4 out of 10.
