Different as they may be in all other respects, Hollywood studios and die-hard “Borderlands” fans have one thing in common: They’re both in it for the loot.
You see, “Borderlands” is what’s called a “looter shooter,” meaning that players blast their way through exotic worlds (in this case, the heavily guarded and treasure-rich planet of Pandora) hoping to pick up goodies that will make their characters more powerful. Unlike movies, you can play and replay the same game infinite times, and it’s never the same experience — which helps to explain why “Borderlands 2,” which came out in 2011, still has many people hooked all these years later.
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Psychologically speaking, it’s the same principle — a variable feedback loop — that keeps little old ladies feeding coins into slot machines, young ones swiping right on Tinder and laboratory mice pushing a button that might produce a reward. But that stimulus-response phenomenon, as identified by B.F. Skinner, doesn’t really translate to cinema, where the only real variable is whether you’ll take any pleasure in passively consuming a property that typically rewards a different part of your brain entirely.
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Marketed to look like a cross between “Suicide Squad” and a Zack Snyder movie, director Eli Roth’s tamer-than-expected take on “Borderlands” doesn’t have half the attitude or style its cyberpunk ad campaign might suggest. But here’s the real reason why fans of the game will be disappointed: It’s predictable, therefore nullifying the whole “What’ll it be?” appeal of loot.
For those who don’t know the “Borderlands” franchise, Roth’s pseudo-rowdy sci-fi action comedy will likely still seem familiar, as it sticks close to the motley-posse formula, wherein a gang of argumentative scuzzbuckets blast their way through hordes of bad guys on some far-flung planet. For all practical purposes, this could be a generic “Guardians of the Galaxy” knockoff where the cantankerous ensemble has guns instead of superpowers.
While Lionsgate wants the fans to think it was made for them, in fact “Borderlands” represents the latest stab by loot-seeking Hollywood to lure audiences presumed lost to gaming back into movie theaters. Sometimes it works, as with the surprise success of “Five Nights at Freddy’s” last fall, although that film catered to the faithful with Easter eggs and inside jokes, whereas “Borderlands” goes broad. (The company is even giving it the Imax treatment, although fans of the game’s artful cel-shading aesthetic might have preferred similar-looking animation over live action.)
Stoking the four-quadrant appeal for game publisher 2K’s biggest non-sports franchise starts at the casting level, as Lionsgate enlisted stars you’d never expect to find in a movie like this. Oscar winners Cate Blanchett and Jamie Lee Curtis were controversial picks, but the studio could hardly have gotten two bigger talents to play paprika-haired bounty hunter Lilith and Tank Girl-looking Tannis, respectively. Add to that the prospect of Jack Black voicing the sarcastic droid Claptrap and Kevin Hart playing (a shrimpy version of) redemption-seeking ex-soldier Roland, and we’re a far cry from the janky game adaptations by the likes of Uwe Boll and Paul W.S. Anderson.
In the game, you can take your pick of several of those characters or team up with friends to play in co-op mode, which translates well enough to the misfits-on-a-mission storyline Roth and co-writer Joe Crombie have come up with here. It’s just not an especially compelling mission: Everyone in the “Borderlands” universe wants to get his or her hands on Eridian technology. They call themselves vault hunters, and even though Blanchett’s Lilith keeps insisting that she has no interest in such treasure, they’re all looking for the same thing.
Lilith has convinced herself that she’s on a more noble assignment, having been hired by the CEO of the Atlas Corporation (Edgar Ramírez) to track down his “daughter,” Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt). Lilith isn’t the only one on the case either, since Tina is widely believed to be the “key” to unlocking a vault containing loads of Eridian loot. The spunky teen clearly isn’t related to Atlas (who makes a weak villain), but immediately proves to be more dangerous than she looks. She is not only being chaperoned by Roland and a bare-chested berserker named Krieg (Florian Munteanu), but lobs exploding rabbit dolls and packs the film’s biggest gun.
Blanchett has the thankless task of spelling out much of the clunky Eridian backstory during her opening voice-over, after which she hastily quips, “Yeah, that sounds like some wacko BS, right?” Seems like not even the filmmakers can swallow the movie’s setup. When done right, such biting self-parody can serve to excuse tired storytelling. Alas, “Borderlands” arrives so close on the heels of “Deadpool & Wolverine” that it feels like a belly flop to that film’s cannonball.
Roth tries to sustain that irreverent tone for the rest of the movie (as in a scatological gag when Claptrap takes a moment after being shot up by psychos to dump the bullets he’s ingested), but very little of the humor actually lands. It’s hard to fault the cast, who come across as fully committed to characters with such extreme personalities, even if their outlandish costumes tend to say more than their banter.
The weakest link here is Greenblatt, who played the real girl in the “Barbie” movie. Now as fan-favorite Tina, she comes off looking like the ultimate “Weird Barbie”: Her bleach-rinsed hair matches her plush bunny ears and the fashionable pink Band-Aid taped across her nose. But every time she opens her mouth (especially in the scene where she’s splashed with Thresher waste), instead of hearing Tina, we get a child actor overperforming her lines.
Look to Blanchett for a master class in making even the most ridiculous character sound convincing. Fans already know what to expect from Lilith, whose destiny is meant to serve as a surprise in Roth’s retelling, but she plays the flamboyant vigilante without slipping into camp (the way she did in “Thor: Ragnarok”). Even so, it’s hard to overlook the irony, two years after “Tár,” of seeing the star embody a video game character, considering where that film’s whomp-whomp ending left her (at rock bottom, conducting video game music for a cosplay crowd).
Since gamers no doubt have their favorites from among this crew, the movie tries to give each of the leads a heroic battle against a more powerful adversary — or in Roland’s case, a small army of them. But as the film goes on, it’s increasingly clear where things are headed. By the time “Borderlands” unlocks its vault, not even the characters seem to care what’s inside.
