While Borderlands misses the mark in many aspects, it might offer just enough to entertain both fans and newcomers to the franchise. Eli Roth’s adaptation is definitely a one-time watch, but that single viewing has humor and cool moments where they matter most.

As a gamer myself, I speak on behalf of the entire community, when I say we’ve seen an unprecedented rise in the quality of video game adaptations. Series based on The Last of Us, Fallout, and Arcane are prime examples from the past few years. With great source material, there’s no reason we can’t have excellent adaptations of the most popular video game franchises, provided the right creatives and artists are involved. Unfortunately, the film based on Borderlands represents everything that makes people wary of these kinds of adaptations.

The movie follows Lilith (Cate Blanchett), a bounty hunter tasked with returning a very special girl to her father. The job brings Lilith back to her home planet, Pandora, a wasteland full of psychos and vault hunters, where she teams up with iconic characters from the franchise – namely Claptrap, Roland, Krieg, Tiny Tina, and Tannis – to unlock a mysterious vault left behind by the ancient race of Eridians. It’s worth noting that although I’m not entirely familiar with all entries of the franchise, I knew enough to understand the references, but not enough to notice essential changes to the lore.

If I had to name the main thing that works in Borderlands, it would be the craziness of it all. You can definitely feel the atmosphere of the world that made the games popular. The production and costume design teams did their homework, successfully creating a convincing overall depiction of the game’s locations and factions. We also can’t forget about the franchise’s unique humor, which they managed to capture a lot more than I expected.

However, where Borderlands truly lacks is its casting and narrative. Although Cate Blanchett is badass as Lilith, Jack Black is mostly funny as Claptrap, and Ariana Greenblatt is annoying as Tiny Tina (no, really, that is a good thing). Everyone was trying to bring their A… okay, maybe B game, as the shooting took place during COVID (at ORIGO Studios in Budapest, I might add), but they will never convince anyone, that they are a perfect fit for their characters. Not even those who haven’t played the games, as there is literally zero chemistry between the actors, to an extent that I have probably never experienced before.

Frankly, most of Borderlands’ shortcomings come from the very decision to make it a film instead of an animated series, for example. The original material – both the story, the characters, and the core gameplay itself – is not suited for a feature under two hours, not because of the games’ complexity, but because of the genre itself. This is especially evident in the final act, where everything unfolds abruptly, and the movie just ends, in a quick, unfocused, anticlimactic sequence.

The thing about Borderlands is that it’s a popular franchise from a time, when video games and the whole industry meant something different. The film also reminded me of a time, when video game adaptations were something different, but that something was never great, and it isn’t really great now either, which is made so apparent by recent successful adaptations. Although a misfire like this could get you killed on Pandora, it’s not every day you get to see Cate Blanchett go guns blazing into hordes of psychos while Motörhead’s Ace of Spades is playing, so… I guess that has to count for something, right?