BORDERLANDS. The Viewers’ Hell [REVIEW]

I was never a huge fan of the Borderlands series. A quick glance at my Steam account shows that I spent about 25 hours in the second installment—the only one I played. For some, that might be quite a lot; for others, very little. However, I remember those 25 hours very fondly. My friends and I looted Pandora, experimenting with the gear we found along the way. The story was secondary—it was all about the pure fun of free-form gameplay, taking down enemies with increasingly new and interesting weapons. Watching the film adaptation of Borderlands, you won’t even get a hint of that kind of enjoyment. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

There’s no point in delving deeper into the plot—it’s generic and superficial. We have a deadly planet, bounty hunters, giant corporations, a mysterious vault, and key-artifacts that open it (fill in the blanks yourself). But we didn’t come to the cinema for the story—an adaptation of a game based on spectacular killing tempted us with something else. Spectacular action scenes, witty one-liners, comedic interludes, and unforgettable audiovisual experiences. None of this is present in the Borderlands movie. Eli Roth’s film looks downright disgusting most of the time—visually, it’s closer to the infamous game adaptations of Uwe Boll than to big-budget Hollywood productions. We’re bombarded by poverty from all sides: in terms of staging and set design. The CGI is more glaring than in the latest Marvel movies—the overabundance of questionable-quality effects doesn’t allow for even a moment of immersion in the depicted world. The chaotic action sequences lack establishing shots. They’re edited in a haphazard manner, though I suspect that at this stage, they were just trying to salvage incompetently shot material. Eli Roth might do well as a horror filmmaker, with productions on a much smaller scale, but directing high-budget action cinema clearly overwhelmed him. His new film shows not a spark of an auteur’s vision—the whole thing is flat, lifeless, like the work of a craftsman who showed up, slapped things together, and then went home to focus on what truly interests him.

The money that should have been spent on special effects most likely went to the actors’ astronomical fees. Because who isn’t here? Kevin Hart, Jamie Lee Curtis, Édgar Ramírez, Jack Black as Claptrap, and Cate Blanchett, who admitted in one interview that she took on a role in Roth’s “spectacle” to unwind after the lockdown. A fair point. Aside from Black, who is a big video game fan (I highly recommend his vlog-gaming channel JablinskiGames) and clearly thrives in voice roles, everyone acts half-heartedly, as if out of obligation. You can’t really blame them—the script was probably not very gratifying. If someone opens their mouth here, it’s really only for one purpose: to mechanically deliver new information and push the plot forward. The relationships between the characters, which exist only on paper, suffer as a result. Example: the great psychological transformation of Blanchett’s character occurs within a single scene. Kevin Hart points a gun at her head and makes her choose: you’re either with us or against us. The character makes the only reasonable choice, and from that moment on, as if by magic, she is no longer a jaded bounty hunter but a devoted member of the team (even though she repeatedly said earlier that she always works solo). A film that should primarily shine with creative action sequences and colorful characters fails completely on both critical fronts.

The blame for this sad state of affairs lies—at least partially—in the production hell into which the Borderlands adaptation fell. The original script was by Craig Mazin, the showrunner of series like Chernobyl and The Last of Us. However, before production began, his script had to go through the producer’s filter—it was first revised and reworked by Juel Taylor and Tony Rettenmaier (the duo responsible for the new Space Jam), and then by Roth himself, who took over as director. The film was shot in the first half of 2021 (for context: when Cate Blanchett set foot on the set of Tár, she had already finished shooting Borderlands). However, the producers were not satisfied with the result and demanded reshoots. Roth couldn’t do them because he was working on Thanksgiving at the time—so the task was handed to Tim Miller (the director of the first Deadpool), for whom Zack Olkiewicz (the screenwriter of Bullet Train) wrote additional scenes. Meanwhile, Craig Mazin requested that his name be removed from the credits, likely sensing that the final product would have nothing to do with his vision. So, in the credits alongside Roth, there’s a certain Joe Crombie. Who is that? Nobody knows. Most likely, it’s a completely fictional entity: a pseudonym that no one—including Mazin—wants to claim. And you only need to watch Borderlands to understand why.

There are projects, though they are rare cases, that manage to escape from such hell almost unscathed. A good example is Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, which was intensely worked on since 2014—changing its title, concept, directors, and screenwriters several times. And yet it worked: a coherent and engaging film was made, successfully erasing the memory of its mediocre predecessor. Borderlands is the opposite case. A battered, knee-pressed, duct-taped film—hitting screens over 3 years (sic!) after the end of the shooting period. After the screening, only one reflection comes to mind: some projects would benefit from remaining in production hell. Forever. Written off as a tax deduction and shelved. For the good of everyone: viewers, creators, and studio executives.