Why the Hell is Lionsgate Making a ‘Borderlands’ Movie?
I love “Borderlands”.
There’s something I find undeniably captivating about grinding for loot and wacky guns while fighting outlandish enemies in a hyper-violent cartoon world that doesn’t take itself at all seriously. The gameplay is always tight and full of silly surprises, and each entry has added new enemies and fun things to do. While there is little to differentiate “Borderlands” 1, 2, the pre-sequel, or 3 from each other, I have gobbled them up like the rube I am because I find them so fun.
The story for each of these games is fairly thin, each one having a basic plot centered around space outlaws hunting for alien vaults containing mysterious treasure, with little to no character development and most of the twists being in the form of jokes. It’s not Tolstoy by any means (or even Patterson for that matter), but it’s enough glue to hold together the gameplay. As one might imagine, none of this is fodder for a film, which is why I was surprised to see that Eli Roth is developing a live-action cinematic adaptation and has just cast the perpetually underrated Edgar Ramirez as Atlas, a character that doesn’t exist in the games, but is one of several weapons manufacturers behind the many randomly generated toys of destruction the player uses. Cate Blanchett, arguably the best actress in the world, is set to star as Lilith, a superpowered vault hunter. Alongside her is Kevin Hart as Roland, a casting choice that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, and Jack Black as the series’ robo-mascot Claptrap. All this begs the question: why?
In case I haven’t made this clear enough, “Borderlands” as a series has a paper thin story and provides little to adapt into a movie. The characters are fun, sure, but they are paper thin as well, and the best ones act purely as comic relief to inject some laughs into all the cartoon carnage. “Borderlands” games are great because they are fun to play, but you can’t play a movie. Beyond this, there are plenty of other reasons to believe this movie is going to suck. Adding Edgar Ramirez as Atlas comes off as a move by the studio to insert a generic movie villain into a world whose best villains (like fan-favorite Handsome Jack) are comical. It is likely an attempt to make the “Borderlands” world work better in a cinematic context, but I’m almost certain no one will remember Atlas when all is said and done. Then there is the historically bad track record of video game movies in general. From “Doom“, to “Tomb Raider”, “Far Cry” and more, video game movies are almost always utter garbage, to the point that even real cinematic auteurs like Justin Kurzel can’t make a good one. Eli Roth is certainly a competent filmmaker, but he’s never made anything exceptional to this point in his career. Unless he can pull off a miracle, Borderlands is likely destined to be another video game movie headed for the dustbin.
Studios and their crippling addiction to IP has them growing ever more desperate, it seems. “Borderlands” is a well-liked series, but I wasn’t under the impression that it is popular enough to justify a multi-million dollar cinematic adaptation. Who knows what other IP studios will turn to in order to cover for their lack of originality? With any luck, this movie and others like it will be a big-enough bust that original content starts getting some funding again. Or maybe the studios will move on to adapting Tik-Tok memes. Knowing how Hollywood thinks, I might actually bet on the latter.
