Borderlands (2024)

February 27, 2025 12:57 AM

An infamous bounty hunter returns to her childhood home, the chaotic planet Pandora, and forms an unlikely alliance with a team of misfits to find the missing daughter of the most powerful man in the universe.
posted by TheophileEscargot (7 comments total)

Poor movie even if you have low expectations of a video game tie-in. The actors don't even make cursory gestures at being scared or nervous before the action scenes where they bloodlessly and effortlessly dispatch hordes of goons, so there's zero tension.

The comedy could have had some appeal with a lighter touch, but it leadenly overemphasizes its moderately amusing lines. Jack Black doesn't really work as the comic sidekick robot Claptrap: he's a rubbery-faced physical comedian and it doesn't work coming out of an expressionless box.

It gave me something to watch doing an indoor workout, but not really worth it except as background.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 1:05 AM on February 27

So not even good in the whole "it's a bad movie, but still worth killing a couple of hours while you eat popcorn and heckle the movie" way? I mean there's a reason it's still in my unwatched queue, I guess....
posted by Kyol at 6:47 AM on February 27 [1 favorite]

Shit. Absolute shit. I've watched a lot of action films and a lot of science fiction-ish films and this one has nothing at all to offer for it's ludicrous budget.
posted by biffa at 6:56 AM on February 27 [1 favorite]

It's like a bunch of pro cosplayers met at a convention and made a movie with a ChatGPT script, which was then acquired by a studio where a host of producers fed the whole thing through another AI with instructions to make a franchise that would sell toys. It's less entertaining than the Michael Bay films the generative AIs were instructed to emulate.

TheophileEscargot sums up the end result nicely with "bloodlessly and effortlessly" - it doesn't feel like anyone's actually responsible for this thing. It's just... extruded film content, professionally executed, but without any sense of quality or intent. It's especially weird considering the Borderlands series runs on being enthusiastically edgy, and this movie has had every single sharp bit abraded right off.
posted by BetaRayBiff at 7:20 AM on February 27 [2 favorites]

I've been playing Borderlands (1, 2 and 3; and Wonderlands too, before you ask) for so many years. I almost feel a duty to watch this, even though I know already that it's a rafting trip through Piss Wash Gully. Kevin Hart as Roland... really? I was kind of excited at the idea of Jamie Lee Curtis as Patricia Tannis. ("Also, I need a new ventilator. This lab smells like bacon. Bacon is for sycophants and products of incest.") But I dunno. I imagined a movie so much better than this turned out to be. Why spoil my imagination with this?
posted by SPrintF at 3:24 PM on February 27 [1 favorite]

The script is atrocious, especially when compared to the games. Someone took something and made it much much worse.

Millenial Dennis Miler is fast becoming a sure-fire sign that a film is shit and it's ironic to see Gearbox would have been better served going for the cheapest option on Claptrap.

The whole thing has the feel of someone with "movie expertise" making decisions about "what works" when they already had all the answers in their hand.

Kevin Hart as Roland... really?

Kevin Hart is fine to be fair, as are the rest of the live cast.
posted by fullerine at 1:00 AM on February 28

The Corridor Crew VFX channel had a video where they were very critical of the effects. One problem is that the movie has a lower age rating than the game, so unlike the game there's no blood from all the people being mown down with gunfire.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 1:39 AM on February 28