On August 8, the sci-fi movie Borderlands was released, which is an adaptation of the computer game series of the same name. It is about a quest of a group of adventurers on a distant desert planet. The film has been heavily criticized as ridiculous, but let’s see for ourselves what it really is.
The Borderlands movie
Borderlands
Borderlands is an adventure fantasy film released on August 8, 2024. It is based on the world of the computer game series of the same name. They were released from 2009 to 2019, became famous and loved by people.
The movie itself does not repeat the plot of any of them, but tries to tell its own story. At the same time, the characters are those from both the first and the second parts of the game, so it is both tied to them and completely independent.
The plot takes place in the future on the distant desert planet Pandora, which is full of dangers and has a lot of minerals and a repository of an alien civilization. The latter is sought by everyone, including very large corporations.
Tina, the daughter of the owner of one of the mines runs away from her father and later she turns out to be not only a potential key to the alien artifacts’ repository, but also a master bomber who throws plush rabbits with explosives inside.
The mercenary Lilith sets out to find her, and soon finds herself siding with the fugitive. A team is formed of the two aforementioned, an elite soldier Roland, a psycho in a Krieg mask, a talking robot that looks like a trash can on a unicycle, and an archaeologist.
Throughout the movie, this group makes their way through scrap yards, desert, swamps with strange creatures with tentacles, and abandoned mines, in order to fight the owner of the corporation and his mercenaries at the gates of the storage facility and defeat them.
If all of the above seems too primitive, confusing, and unrealistic, you are not alone. Critics are crabbing the film, and now it claims to be considered not only the worst computer game adaptation, but also one of the worst films in history.
Shooting on another planet
The main criticism of the movie is that everything that happens on the screen is frivolous. The plot is as primitive as it gets. In fact, the characters simply move between locations, completing quests. At the same time, the reasons that force them to leave one place and move to another are so ridiculous that it just annoys.
But here it should be recalled that the original game was actually a first-person shooter. And its “main course” was shooting with various weapons in fantastic scenery. At the same time, in the series of games, the world of Pandora was built in such a way as to show plenty of vivid images, locations, and enemies, rather than to think about how realistic it all is.
Of course, it’s a pity that the filmmakers didn’t think about giving everything that happens on the screen at least some kind of logical explanation. It would have made the movie really interesting. However, the approach they chose is quite justified.
At least they honestly tried to convey the atmosphere of the game. Another thing is that they almost failed. Because endless shootings and running around on the screen have long been boring for everyone. In order to impress the viewer, the stunts have to be on par with the old Jackie Chan movies or the latest Fast and Furious films, and Borderlands falls far short of them.
The plot and locations
From a scientific point of view, there is simply nothing to analyze in the movie. A desert planet, a repository of an extinct race, talking robots — all of this has been seen in movies, books, and games more than once. So the filmmakers could only surprise us with the way it was presented and interacted with each other. And they failed.
Visually, the film can be characterized by the phrase “bright scrap”. Because wherever the characters go and wherever they start shooting, it still seems that the scenery around them was found at the nearest dump and they decided to make it look proper by painting it as brightly as possible.
It’s clear that this style was inherited from the game, and in theory, the viewer might like it. But in reality, it doesn’t work because all the locations look almost the same. And since the motivation of the characters to move between them is poorly written, you simply forget where the characters are running to and what exactly we is happening on the screen.
And the approach of “taking characters known from games and telling a new story about them” clearly backfired on the filmmakers. Because those who are not familiar with the game did not understand why they would like any of the clown gang, which is essentially the main characters. For those who had played Borderlands, the characters still didn’t resemble the game characters, while the plot of the movie was completely predictable.
Unlike The Space Cadet, which was also both unrealistic and problematic in terms of what realism was supposed to replace, Borderlands absolutely fails to interest the viewer in what is happening on the screen.
In general, the question of whether this is a bad movie can be answered unequivocally with a “yes.” Well, Borderlands can still be watched as a fantastic action movie, but even then it is a frankly mediocre picture. Other than that, the movie doesn’t deserve your time at all.
