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Borderlands… the videogame series I played endlessly, from start to finish, over and over again… and there’s as much validity in that statement as me telling you this film will eclipse the billion-dollar mark by the end of its second weekend.
In reality, I played just over 30 minutes of the third game when it was free on Epic Games Store in 2022.
At 55, Cate Blanchett (The New Boy) would be considered in the US as a senior citizen, but as Lilith, she has the energy of a teenager, telling us how the Eridians are responsible for all the fantastic tech on her home planet of Pandora, but they’re long since gone. Plus, it’s a place she never wants to return to, but this story will draw her back, as everyone’s looking to get into the vault, which is the aim for the rag-tag bunch that come together in this movie.
For what it’s worth, Lilith in Borderlands 3 is 34 years old.
Kevin Hart (True Story) – his character is Roland, but it’s Kevin Hart, and he rarely changes – frees Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt – Barbie), daughter of corporate bigwig Atlas (Édgar Ramírez – The Undoing), also bringing along Krieg (Florian Munteanu) from the same jail, for the sake of plot.
Meanwhile, robot Claptrap is meant to help whoever he comes across – in this case, Lilith – but since he’s voiced by Jack Black (School Of Rock), he mostly just serves to be very, very annoying.
I had low expectations for the Borderlands movie, because videogame adaptations are usually a miss, and this one has had very bad word of mouth; and in the end, it just descends into a stupid road trip movie that feels like an overlong, terrible adaptation of The Crystal Maze.
On the plus side, Lilith certainly does more bounty-hunting than Ryan Gosling’s character did in The Fall Guy! Well, the latter was MEANT to be a bounty hunter, but that aspect was just forgotten about in that awful film.
However, any violence is very much toned down. Clearly, the studio ordered a PG13/12-cert, in order to get the younger audiences in, but they’re clearly busy watching other films, and no-one’s going to see this, meaning that after nearly a week, it has not even taken $20m at the box office, and with a budget of $120m, it could need to take as much as $360m just to break even! Hence, Lionsgate are taking a bath on this one!
Meanwhile, the games are rated M for Mature.
Even some of the mild language is toned down, such as the trip through Piss-Wash Gully, which was shown in the trailer, where Tina opens the car window, everyone tells her to shut said opening, but too late, and they all get covered in it. She doesn’t know what it is, leading Kevin to shout, “Why do you think it’s called Piss-Wash? How do you think it got the name(?)”
But in this film, he exclaims in a limp fashion, “I’m covered in pee!”
There’s a similarly awful case of this in Bad Boys 4: Ride Or Die, involving Captain Howard in this prerecorded video, and why the fuck would any studio/director take one of their best scenes from the trailer and completely fuck it up?
There’s other additional characters, such as Gina Gershon‘s (Thanksgiving) Moxxi, and Janina Gavankar‘s (Encounter) Knoxx, which just serve to bloat the cast in the small (by today’s standards) 102-minute running time, leading to forgettable appesrances, and still plenty of time where nothing of interest is happening. Whatever these two were meant to do, I neither know nor care. They were probably angry at Lilith because reasons.
Meanwhile, Jamie Lee Curtis (Halloween Ends) also turns up to cash the cheque as Tannis.
This is also the first of two films, out of THREE, where one of the characters was called ATLAS. WTF?! Okay, well, in this one, it’s the surname, but for It Ends With Us, it’s the first name. So glad their parents never met to trade baby names! Atlas Atlas, anyone?
Maybe save that for the crossover movie? Nah, that ain’t happening.
Finally, there’s no post-credit scene, but a sort-of mid-credits thing, as you’ll see in the video below.
Borderlands is in cinemas now, and is available to pre-order on 4K Blu-ray, 4K Blu-ray Steelbook, Blu-ray and DVD, ahead of its release date TBA.
You can also buy the Borderlands videogames.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 102 minutes
Release date: August 9th 2024
Studio: Lionsgate Movies
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1 (ARRIRAW (6.5K, 4.5K)
Cinema: Odeon Trafford Centre
Rating: 2/10
Director: Eli Roth
Producers: Alexandra Added, Ari Arad, Avi Arad, Christopher Blasko, Erik Feig, Asha Joseph
Screenplay: Eli Roth, Jon Crombie
Music: Steve Jablonsky
Cast:
Lilith: Cate Blanchett
Roland: Kevin Hart
Atlas: Edgar Ramírez
Tannis: Jamie Lee Curtis
Tiny Tina: Ariana Greenblatt
Krieg: Florian Munteanu
Knoxx: Janina Gavankar
Claptrap (voice): Jack Black
Marcus: Benjamin Byron Davis
Krom: Olivier Richters
Moxxi: Gina Gershon
Ellie: Ryann Redmond
Child: Sophie Popper
Lilith’s Mom: Haley Bennett
Young Lilith: Riana Emma Balla
Larry: Bobby Lee
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.