Knock on Wood

Back in May of 1993, the world was graced with the first-ever live-action video game film adaptation.

Super Mario Bros.

A disaster of a film that fell short of making even $39 million against its $48 million production budget, even before marketing expenses. A film that’s meme’d upon to this day for its awful acting, poor creature design, and cringe-inducing dialogue. A film that holds a dubious rating of 29% on Rotten Tomatoes. A film that is, unironically, often in the conversation for the worst films of all time.

Since Super Mario Bros. there have been an additional 45 live-action video game film adaptations. Of those, a whopping four of them have actually scored above 60% on Rotten Tomatoes to earn a ‘fresh’ rating, and only one has scored high enough to be ‘certified fresh’, 2021’s Werewolves Within.

What am I getting at here? Well, quite simply, video game movies suck ass. We are close to having nearly 50 of these damn things over the course of three decades, and they’ve made one, count ’em, one, good movie.

Years (decades?) from now, when Hollywood finally figures out how to make good video game movies, we will (hopefully) be able to look back at this time and laugh. We’ll be able to appreciate them in a pseudo 20th Century Fox Deadpool & Wolverine-esque ironic nostalgia. But for now? Pain. We must suffer through intense, excruciating pain because of flicks like Bloodrayne, Alone in the Dark, and as of today, Borderlands.

To put it ever more bluntly, Borderlands is an awful movie that will insult and infuriate fans of the beloved video game franchise, annoy non-fans to the point of being numb to the experience, and bore the everloving hell out of everyone in the audience. There are virtually no redeeming factors to this entire trainwreck of a movie.

Right off the bat, one of the biggest issues this movie has is that, well, it’s not a Borderlands movie. Sure, it has the title, character names, and from a distance, the visual appearance of the games. The IP is in full effect, trying its best to lure would-be consumers fans to the ticket booth. But this isn’t Borderlands.

Because Borderlands is a franchise built upon its harsh mature rating. That proudly displays its blood, guts, and exploding limbs. Stylish, over-the-top violence is the name of the game, and making skulls go ‘pop’ is a driving factor in the core fun of the gameplay. As are the creative and unique characters that are fully fleshed out with distinct backstories, but more importantly, powers. There are neo-samurai assassins who can turn invisible and slice people up with a laser katana, mechromancers who can summon dead robots to life to fight by their side, beastmasters who call a variety of creatures to combat to aid with incendiary fire and caustic acid. Hell, there’s even a siren who can teleport, phasewalking through reality, appearing next to would-be victims and detonating! Imagine Nightcrawler from X-Men, but when he teleports and reappears, it causes anyone within 10 feet of him to explode and rain body parts. And those are just a few of the cool abilities. The games are also littered with millions, repeat millions, of unique guns and weapons. Some shoot bullets, but others shoot electricity. Some can even have their projectiles travel through space and time, hitting enemies from different angles. There are also massive vehicle car chases and gunfights à la Mad Max: Fury Road, and giant battles with bizarre creatures native to this world whose designs would give you nightmares.

If the core gameplay didn’t sound worthy of a mature rating, don’t worry, the humor and character designs certainly were. Raunchy and inappropriate at face value, let alone when you dove deeper into the games and their side missions, the jokes in this franchise were never for the faint of heart, nor a PG-13 audience. Vulgar language, sophomoric toilet humor, and as many sexual innuendos as you could jam into one storyline (especially with a character named Moxxi who was designed to be as big-chested and skimpily-dressed as possible) was the calling card of this series.

I know, I know, you’re sitting there thinking, “Heath, why are you talking about the video games? Tell me about this masterpiece of a movie!” Well, dear reader, this is why… Because all of the things I just described? All the things that make Borderlands, well, Borderlands? None of those things are in this movie.

The closest it gets is that in the closing 10 minutes, you finally see that aforementioned phasewalking siren. That’s it. There is no one else, the entire movie, who showcases fun and entertaining powers and abilities. The myriad of dynamic and interesting weapons? Nonexistent. You see one person shoot a standard pistol, and another who shoots a standard small machine gun. That’s it. Massive vehicle chases? There’s one, it lasts about three minutes, and it’s an unexciting CGI mess. Standing off against cool creatures? Bwahaha, no. There’s one big creature, defeated in 10 seconds, and we never fight another one the entire film. As for the humor? Nerfed, into the ground. I didn’t even crack a smile while watching this movie. Not a guffaw in sight. In fact, no one in my entire auditorium laughed a single time throughout. It’s just not funny, and it’s certainly a far cry from the foul-mouthed dialogue that put this franchise on the map.

So what’s left? Nothing but a neutered-down experience that will disappoint fans, and dull would-be fans since they don’t know what they’re missing. The entire movie becomes a basic mama bear/young cub savior storyline that you’ve seen time and time again, done so much better than this. Not a single second of this film will hold your attention, surprise you, or entertain you. You’ll see everything coming from a mile away, and you’ll resent the mile long journey you have to take to get there.

Especially because, for a really weird reason, the movie decides to hyper focus on the games’ worst traits. Specifically, CL4P-TP, or, as he is more commonly referred to, Claptrap. An annoying-ass robot who follows our characters around dispensing useless, forgettable jargon. See, in the games, this improper C-3PO is eventually dumped and you can go most of the game avoiding him. Seek him out only if you wish to enjoy his irritating company. Also, and I cannot stress this enough, in the game you can just fucking shoot him when he bothers you and he’ll run away. In Borderlands the movie however, he is unavoidable, and unshootable. Sure, the great Jack Black does a terrific job in the voice acting department with a shockingly on-point rendition of the character, but it’s inconsequential when you don’t want to hear the character talk in the first place. The movie even recognizes that this dirty little droid is exasperating on numerous occasions, even going so far as to have a scene where well over a dozen people shoot the shit out of him, but, unlike the games, he just comes back.

In fact, he comes back and shits out all of the bullets that were pumped into him. There’s a prolonged scene showing this. Of his bullet diarrhea. It goes on for well over a minute, and is played for laughs. It’s exhausting. In fact, the scene goes on for about as long as this paragraph about shitting bullets. Because, since I had to suffer through it, I need you to suffer with me seeing as this review will turn you off from ever watching this movie, right? Right?!

So the action, style, and humor is nothing like the games, lacking any amount of entertainment value. The story is generic and derivative. And one of the central characters will drive you up a wall most of the runtime. Is there anything worth liking here? I mean, sure? I guess? If you squint hard enough you might see something…

Namely that Cate Blanchett is completely innocent here. This is not on her. In fact, you could even argue that she’s good here. But the slop they make her do, the lack of depth to her character, and the poor dialogue she must utter, makes you want to roll your eyes. Additionally, visually, this movie looks like the games. I mean, not counting the weak visual effects, or the over-abundance of bad green screen. No no no. I’m talking about the look of the character designs. The costumes, the hair, the makeup, and the dirty grime of the world. That’s pretty solid. It look like ass as soon as it starts moving around, especially in these lackluster action sequences that are awfully constructed, and framed far too close to our characters so you get no sense of geography and can’t even see what’s going on…but, you know, when Blanchett is standing still she looks pretty cool as the fiery, red-headed Lilith. There’s also a decent amount of references to the games in terms of side characters, how they looked, and even some exact lines of dialogue extracted from the games. Not that it really adds anything, but, you know, it’s there. So there. I said something nice.

There’s nothing else here that’s worth your time. Kevin Hart is actively bad, and an awful casting choice for the character of Roland. He’s not big enough physically, or in presence, to fill that role’s shoes. Jamie Lee Curtis is fine, but stunted as her character is a walking plot device and expositional dumping machine. Florian Munteanu is completely underused (he might as well not even be here) as the psycho Krieg, Edgar Ramírez is more bland than your standard MCU villain (and that’s really saying something), and Ariana Greenblatt misses the boat entirely as Tiny Tina. A fan favorite character who is laughably off the mark throughout this flick.

Really, this all falls on two people – Eli Roth and Avi Arad. Roth is here as both screenwriter and director, and it’s clear he never should’ve been within 100 yards of this project. He must’ve seen some images from the games, got told a 30 second elevator pitch of the plot and its core concepts, and just started scribblin’ nonsense. Roth, my guy, you were finally in our good graces after last year’s Thanksgiving. We wanted to like you. Why’d you have to go and throw it all away like this? You cannot sit with us.

And Arad…my god. I genuinely do not understand how this man has a career. Yes, he’s stumbled ass backwards into great success at the helm of most of the big Spider-Man movies, including the Spider-Verse flicks, and even the launching film for the MCU in 2008’s Iron Man. But outside of that, he reigned over all of those god-awful 20th Century Fox superhero flicks. You know, the ones like Ghost Rider, Elektra, and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer – the movies that Deadpool & Wolverine just made fun of for about two hours! Someone needs to stop letting this man produce movies…

There’s no reason to see Borderlands. If you’re a fan of the games, you’re going to be pissed that they shit all over the things you loved. The things that pulled you in and made you fans in the first place. If you’re not a fan, you’re going to be annoyed with the boring plot and stupid characters, and not understand the reason why people like these games in the first place, completely unaware that the magic has been ripped out of this film. No matter who you are, you’re walking away disappointed. And not in a minor way, where this flick feels like an inconvenience, but in a way that makes you question your life choices as to why you wasted hours of your life watching garbage when you could’ve been doing literally anything else, like doing the dishes or mowing the lawn. It may suck, but it’s better than this.

Borderlands is out in theaters now. Make sure you go and see it…never. Send the message with your wallet. Don’t let Hollywood, and Avi Arad, think it’s okay to keep making this crap. This is genuinely one of the worst movies of the year.

Borderlands is playing in theaters now.