Official Review
We were lucky (?) enough to be invited to an early media screening of the movie ahead of its US release on 9th August. Wading through crowds of overdressed influencers at London's Leicester Square, we were ushered into Tiny Tina's Funfair, where we were encouraged to toss boots at toy rabbits and attempt to win some bunny ears from a claw machine.
So far, so Borderlands.
Upon taking our seat, we sat through a little over 100 minutes of lifeless sci-fi action on a screen large enough to be visible from outer-space. For those not familiar with Gearbox's game franchise, the best point of pop culture comparison is probably Guardians of the Galaxy, as a band of ragtag vault hunters embark on a mission to open a MacGuffin magical crypt in search of… Well, no one really knows, to be honest.
Space marine Roland (Hart) is also trying to find Tina, and in the process has broken masked psycho Krieg (Florian Munteanu) out of prison. However, rather than return her to shady space executive Atlas (Edgar Ramírez), the makeshift team decide to work together to track down a trio of vault keys themselves, in order to prevent the unscrupulous CEO from obtaining its contents. And that's more or less it.
Claptrap, a silly robotic sidekick, is introduced fairly early on to bring comic relief – but we weren't even aware it was the always-reliable Jack Black voicing him until the end credits. There are a couple of one-liners that land, but the big gags fall embarrassingly flat. One scene, after being hosed with machine guns, sees him excrete the bullets. It's funny because he's pooing, apparently.
We were also surprised by how little the movie explores Borderlands' main features. The games, for example, are loot shooters where acquiring different guns with unique statistics is a big part of the appeal. We'd expected the film to emphasize this, but the shootouts are largely forgettable affairs, chaotically shot to the point where it's difficult to even follow what's going on.
By the time the credits rolled, we felt pretty empty inside. Borderlands' problem isn't necessarily that it's bad – it's just really bland. The jokes don't really hit, the action's meh, and the story goes nowhere. Blanchett tries and Greenblatt is fine, but no one else really turns up. It left us wondering: why does this movie exist? And, perhaps more pertinently, why did Roth waste an all-star cast on a series as narratively limp as Borderlands?