Riot’s Reviews: Borderlands
When it comes to gaming, like with any other hobby, you got to put in the time. Of course, unlike other hobbies, gaming is a multi-billion dollar industry and moves with the blistering pace of advancing technology. So it doesn’t take much to be left behind. Late in 2010, with a dusty X-Box 360, I asked a friend for a game recommendation. “I’ve never played it, but I hear this game called Borderlands is pretty good, it just won Game of the Year” was his response (I’m sure it was more sarcastic, if you know Mav, you know lol). I picked up a copy and the rest is history, I was hooked. Four games and one mini-series later, I’ve put in an intense amount of hours exploring, looting, and shooting up Pandora. While I can’t say they have all been winners, I can certainly say Borderlands 2 is by far one of the best games I’ve ever played. As you can imagine dear reader, expectations were high from the onset when the film was announced in 2015. And then the waiting began…and time went on…and on…and on. Announcements of delays and reshoots decimated confidence and then finally, casting was announced, and confidence…modestly improved? Many friends and family members asked my initial thoughts and the best I could muster was a “cautiously optimistic.” Well, the caution was…needed. And the optimism? I’ll sum it up with a famous soundbite from one of the video games’ most iconic characters, aptly named Psychos, “STRIP THE FLESH!!! SALT THE WOUND!!!”
I wanted to defend this movie, I really did. But there was just no saving it. Since the casting was such an eye-opener when it was first announced, we can start there, it’s where most of the problems reside anyway. One of the reasons I maintained the “cautiously optimistic” outlook partly centered on the film’s lead, Cate Blanchett (Lilith). She rocks, truly, and even though at the onset anyone can recognize she was too old for the role, I still had faith in her superior acting abilities. But the best actor/actress can’t fix a bad script. Her lines were bland and predictable and being tasked with being the exposition machine of the film, her constant stream of poorly written voice-overs didn’t have the same effect as, for example, the epic introduction to LOTR. The writers had the gall to have her mention her age multiple times throughout the film, likely in an illogical attempt to be “meta” about the issue (and y’all know how Riot feels about meta “humor”).
Kevin Hart (Roland) is famously “altitude-inally challenged” and while I initially didn’t think it would really affect anything, as soon as he was placed next to the other characters (mainly Blanchett) it became too obvious to ignore. I was under the impression that Borderlands was going to be funnier than it actually was (literally every humorous moment is in the trailer) and if it had been, maybe Hart could’ve shined more. Jack Black put on an admirable performance as CL4P-TP, but the sound mixing on his voice was about as bad as it could be. Much like the script issues that hobbled Blanchett and Hart, the jokes just weren’t there and even the wacky antics of the lovable robot weren’t enough to make him a compelling character.
I wish I was done with the character issues... Jamie Lee Curtis (Tannis) was an atrocious miss in every single way possible. It’s already impossible to get past the vast difference in age for the character, but the writers bafflingly crippled one of the most off-the-cuff, insane characters of the whole series. The retcon of her backstory (actually the retcon of all of these character’s stories) accomplished nothing by way of making the audience care or empathize with the character. Tannis is supposed to be an accomplished scientist (and simultaneously crazy) and this version of the character is more of bumbling, stumbling fool. But the creators somehow made sure to throw in plenty of gratuitous shots of Curtis’ cleavage for some insane reason.
All of these character flaws end up paling in comparison to what they did with Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt). The problems with Tina are admittedly more complex, being that the voice actor in the video games was well into adulthood when she blew everyone’s minds with her incredible performance. Tina is funny, wild, crass, and silly in all the best ways. I think Greenblatt truly put her best foot forward, but being an actor still in Jr. High at the time of filming, there are advantages a voice actor would have that she simply wouldn’t. Again, the writers hobbled the poor girl. They removed all the charm and wit from a character every Borderlands fan loves and reduced her to bad one liners and immature snarky-ness that’s far more annoying than anything else. Instead of being a formidable member of the Vault Hunters, she’s reduced to an irritating teenager that leaves the audience questioning how it’s possible she’s survived this long.
Finally, and the character with unsurprisingly the least amount of issues, Florian Munteanu as Krieg. How do you screw up an ultra-ripped Psycho that only speaks in wild, violent, and outrageously poetic exclamations? You shoe-horn in a relationship with Tiny Tina that wasn’t nearly as well-developed from the games that they tried to imply. Here’s my biggest beef with this, there is already another muscle monster that actually does have a well-developed relationship with Tina in the game named Brick. Granted, he’s more charismatic than Krieg and perhaps Florian wasn’t gifted enough in that kind of acting, but I would’ve appreciated it much more than what we got.
Whew….that was only characters. Writing is by far the biggest problem in this film and the plot plods along, propelled mostly by sheer happenstance. The “villains” (Edgar Ramirez and Janina Gavankar) are so poorly developed and insufferably bland in their performances, the audience can’t even begin to care about their involvement. That’s if you can ignore the asinine gender-swapping of General Knoxx (Gavankar) and how stunted her character is in this story. The battle sequences are uneventful, filled with clichés, and unbelievably dull, especially damn near everything in a particular chase scene and the entire final conflict.
The creators (most likely persuaded by the studios) made the ill-advised choice to release the film as PG-13, which would be the only excuse I would accept for the drivel these writers put out. Why? Because Borderlands is a violent, gory, and often ridiculous series that wrote its legend in blood (digital blood of course). Sure, the writers toed the lines with their dialogue at times, but either way you look at it, scaling back the violence takes too much of the soul of the IP out of it. The success of Deadpool & Wolverine only proves this point. I can’t reasonably accept the argument that “kids will be watching this” when if you know anything about the game, they’ve already been exposed to worse just by playing (I’m not condoning kids playing these games or watching this movie btw). The IP has literal years of content these creators could have pulled from and maybe this overwhelmed the writers, but all that would be needed is simplifying the approach, minimizing the scope of the story, and paying legitimate homage to already developed characters.
Riot’s Rating: 3.5/10: I have to give it up for the brilliant costumes, gun designs, and a lot of the effects that brought Pandora to life. But even great settings like The Vault and Sanctuary were hurt by other misses, mainly what they did with the Caustic Caverns. It was insulting what the set designers did with such a supremely awesome and difficult level. Initial excitement at its mention never died so hard upon delivery.
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