Mucking with Movies: ‘Borderlands’

“Borderlands” is another video game adaptation that has hit the theaters, so you know I would be pulling up. I’ve never played it, much to the chagrin of my gamer friends, so I was able to come in with an unsoiled mind. 

One of the worst things that has ever happened to filmmaking is the PG-13 rating. It created too much middle ground and too much room for compromise. Movies are allowed to become stagnant in the space between adult and childish. The world didn’t get soft; the powers that be did. They got cowardly and calculated that they could draw more money by putting just enough content in there to draw the older demographic without phasing out kids’ ability to buy tickets.

Bloodless violence and cutesy cursing don’t fit the scenery and environment that the “Borderlands” planet of Pandora promises. We are explicitly told we are in a savage world, but nothing is ever done to back that up. I talked a few weeks ago in my review of “Man on the Moon” about movies that have nothing. Stuck in this purgatory of needing to be violent but cookie cutter, “Borderlands” has no edge, no message, no core. 

Proof of this is the opening. It is a classic adaption entrapment, the exposition voiceover from the main character. Stemming from a panic that the audience won’t understand the pre-established world they are being dropped into, all it does is slow down the first act. Rather than letting us get to know the lore organically, we are stuck with such disgustingly heavy-handed slop that it somehow becomes both boring and grating. 

It’s a shame how badly director Eli Roth fails his world, as it is gorgeously constructed. With the frame constantly filled, it reminds me somewhat of the “Star Wars” prequels, where there is always something to catch the viewer’s eye. The color palette sprays burnt oranges and turquoises as well as the omnipresent yellow hue of Pandora’s sand across the screen, but it seems post-production chose to tone those down for some bizarre reason. They could have used color correction to turn the cinematography into a neon dreamland — it certainly is shot and production designed with that potential — but where there could be brightness, shadow or darkness is extinguishing it.

There’s a quote that has floated around film schools that 90% of directing is casting. If this is true, about 80% of this film was way, way off-base. The exceptions would be Jack Black as the one-wheeled robot Claptrap and Florian Munteanu as the saved psycho Krieg. Both seemed to have a firm understanding of their roles, capable of balancing sardonic humor with the resignation to the barbarism swirling around them. The rest, freaking woof. 

Cate Blanchett is unbelievably, undeniably talented but would be about the last person I would ever think to cast as a calloused bounty hunter in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. It is such an awkward fit, such a square peg in a round hole that I don’t think anybody — regardless of ability — could have acted their way out of it. She is stuck to go one note as the symphony she is capable of hitting is rendered mute under the film’s guise. 

Jaimie Lee Curtis is stuck in a similar position. I have no idea what she was going for with her character, but it falls way short of the mark. She adopts some accent that can’t be sourced to any origin, so I assume she was trying to create her own outer world dialect, but she rarely sticks to it. It was like she wanted to be an alien, but she also didn’t want to alienate the audience with something too fresh. Instead, she elects to do the bare minimum and get out of there. 

Rounding out the principal characters is Kevin Hart as “elite soldier” Roland. Hart has an innate ability to make all his lines mildly, acceptably, palatably funny. The drawback to this is that he is incapable of emoting anything besides simple charm. You would think him playing a specialized warrior would allow for some fun cast-against-type shenanigans to go down, but instead, he and Roth elect to play the character straight. 

Desperately, I want to protect my boy Roth and say that this reeks of studio meddling, and it does, but it still does not excuse a nonsensical script that he cowrote and a third act that opens more questions than it answers. There are a couple of laugh-out-loud moments and a few cool settings, but for the most part, it is a trite mismanagement of a renowned IP.

Critic Score: 4.4/10

Jack Simon is a mogul coach and writer/director who enjoys eating food he can’t afford, traveling to places out of his budget, and creating art about skiing, eating, and traveling while broke. Check out his website jacksimonmakes.com to see his Jack’s Jitney travelogue series. You can email him at jackdocsimon@gmail.com for inquiries of any type.