After sitting through the opening scene of Eli Roth’s new film, “Borderlands,” viewers will quickly realize that they are witnessing quite possibly the worst film of the year.
With a 10% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes and a generous rating of 4.3/10 on IMDb, the best part of this film was the trailer for “Venom: The Last Dance” beforehand.
The film, based on the Borderlands video game franchise, attempts to bridge the gap between a mainstream standalone film and an adaption for devout fans of the games by utilizing a cast of Academy Award winners and A-listers. The outcome is uninspired humor, awkward chemistry and an absurd amount of unexplained vocabulary terms exclusively existing in the games. Put simply, the film caters to no audience.
The film’s writing is hard to endure from the start. The opening scene involves a voiceover by Cate Blanchett, who plays the film’s protagonist, explaining that an alien species created vaults all over the universe containing great power. She then mentions how a multitude of factions began to hunt down these coveted vaults to no avail, but “the prophecy” foretold that one girl would finally open one.
One hears this vague plotpoint and naturally wonders if this “prophecy” is supposed to be common knowledge; however, it is never mentioned when the prophecy was said, who it came from or how our narrator heard of such a thing. It is never brought up again.
Throughout the rest of the film, the script continues to reference a vast and convoluted mythology to which the viewer is a complete stranger. As a result, the film feels like a sequel to a movie that no one has seen, because it doesn’t exist.
In one scene that demonstrates this vagueness, viewers watch in confusion and horror as Academy Award-winning actress Jamie Lee Curtis sees Cate Blanchett’s character inexplicably grow flaming wings, to which Curtis responds, “The legends were true. She’s the fire hawk.” Much like the opening prophecy, this “legend” is an isolated line with no previous mention in the story. It was at this point that a man sitting in the front row stormed out of the theater, making the audience 25% smaller.
As for the film’s jokes, the few that land are delivered by Jack Black, voicing the CGI robot sidekick nicknamed “Claptrap.” Black’s comedic strength may explain where the 10% critics’ score comes from.
The other jokes are almost exclusively lowbrow and stolen. In fact, one of the first scenes shows a door opening to reveal an intimidating masked figure, breathing heavily before taking the helmet off for it to be Kevin Hart, who breaks the tension by exclaiming how he can’t breathe in the mask. This was the same joke used to introduce Rick Moranis’ character in the 1987 comedy “Spaceballs.”
In addition, the movie is incredibly hard to look at. Nearly everything on screen aside from the cast is CGI, and the characters’ excessively bright costumes look as if they were bought at Party City. It’s truly a shock to all senses.
If one were considering seeing Borderlands, one should consider maximizing the viewing experience by purchasing the best seat, which is in a different theater, seeing a different movie. Burning money would be a far more painless process as it would be over in moments, rather than an hour and 42 minutes.
