right let's not mince words here gentlemen because this movie deserves none whatsoever Borderlands is 102 minutes of complete unmitigated dog feces a wretchedly terrible horribly written collection of lame bloodless tediously protracted action sequences strung together by the most paper thin nonsensical excuse for a plot revolving around a group of one-dimensional nobodies who barely even qualify as characters played by some of the most laughably miscast actors in cinema and relentlessly hammered home with appallingly bad CGI and forced dated cring and ju and humor that's about as funny as a terminal cancer diagnosis in short it's an
absolutely terrible film that shames the very concept of video game adaptations somehow managing to feel rushed and oversimplified but also sluggish and dull at the same time a movie that barely lasted an hour and a half but honestly felt like it would never end a movie that I've got the dubious honor of reviewing right here so abandon all hope ye who enter here because we're about to venture into the living nightmare that is Borderlands okay so whatever passes for a plot centers around Bounty Hunter Lilith played by a board and embarrassed looking Kate Blanchet who
acts like she signed up for a completely different movie but we'll talk more about that later believe that anyway after acting like a generic Hollywood tough girl for a while to prove how hard she is Lilith is contacted by a powerful business tycoon named Atlas Atlas wants her to travel to the planet Pandora to recover his daughter Tina who's been kidnapped by a rebel faction and in return he's willing to reward her handsomely pretty soon she's on the trail where she runs immediately into a robot named clap trap voiced by Jack Black who is without
a doubt the most annoying [ __ ] creation to come out of Hollywood since some [ __ ] convinced Aquafina that she could sing remember the SW remember my s in a swap and I was like I mean I wasn't a huge fan of the video game version of clap trap either but at least he wasn't too intrusive and even got a few decent on liners from time to time this version is like someone locked Jack Black in a sound booth with no script and no prep time and just yelled be funny and it went
about as well as you might expect anyway wouldn't you know it clap trap happens to know exactly where Tina's being held and after traveling there to rescue her Lilith discovers that her captors are actually trying to keep her safe from Atlas see it turns out that Tina is a cloned Recreation of an ancient alien race called the Arians that once dominated the Galaxy and who left the secrets of their advanced technology behind in a giant Vault beneath the surface of Pandora only a true aridian can actually open the vault which is why Tina was created
by Atlas so that he could steal all the technology inside that's right Tina is quite literally the girl who's the key to everything [ __ ] so anyway they go on a couple of fetch quests to find some keys because there's literally no other way to move plots like this along and they eventually find the Vault but oh no Atlas shows up to crash the party who could possibly have predicted this then Lilith turns into a fire demon Angel thing and kills all the bad guys because it turns out that she was actually the girl
who's the key to everything all along no way and then she takes Atlas into the Vault and leaves him there to get eaten by a monster and that's it that's whatever passes for a plot for Borderlands you know thinking about what to criticizing this movie makes me feel like Boogie at an all you can eat restaurant there's just so many options that I don't know where to begin I mean on a purely aesthetic level this movie sucks in ways that actually made my eyes hurt the CGI is complete monkey [ __ ] the kind of
thing you'd expect from an early 2000s made for TV sci-fi movie with very obvious green screens and completely able animation combined with cheap fake looking sets that looked like they were thrown together a couple of minutes before shooting began and costumes that your average cosplayer would be embarrassed to put on and you've got all the makings of a visually depressing movie how the [ __ ] did this thing cost $120 million you could literally have made Godzilla minus one eight times over for the cost of this turd the story like I said earlier feels like
a paper thin excuse for the next action scene it's basically just a series of fetch Quest leading to the end goal find the girl then find two keys then combine them all together to open the vault and fight off some generic bad guys along the way that's basically all there is to it also I get the distinct impression that there was originally a much longer cut of this movie that got buted in the editing room which is why there's weird out ofpl narration from Lilith to help plug the very obvious gaps the film relies heavily
on action to keep the audience engaged but even that doesn't generate much interest because most of the set pieces go on way too long and the complete lack of blood violence and consequences kills any sense of stakes from what I understand the original plan was to make this movie R-rated which would have been much more in keeping with the spirit of the games as it stands the action scenes become just another tiresome thing that you have to SLO through the characters are either annoying or boring as [ __ ] or both I get the feeling
that they were trying for a Guardians of the Galaxy Style teamup movie but the difference is that the Guardians were all interesting well written fleshed out characters whose personal history and motivations actually had an impact on the plot their banter was witty and fun and they all sparked well off each other most of the gang in Borderlands get almost no backstory or development especially guys like Roland and C who are just kind of there Tannis adds nothing to the story and could easily have been left out and as for Tina she's such a simplistic caricature
with no actual human emotion that it's tough to feel much of anything for her she doesn't seem to care too much about anything that's going on around her and as a result neither did I Lilith on the other hand falls neatly into the category of tedious tough talking overpowered girl boss a Trope so thoroughly played out by now that it makes the whole movie feel weirdly dated like it should have come out 5 years ago when this stuff was at its peak and to make matters worth she's played by a horribly miscast Kate Blanchett don't
get me wrong Kate's definitely a good actress but playing a tough talking hard as Nails Bounty Hunter just really isn't her thing and 55 years old she looks tired bored and kind of embarrassed to be there and I can't say I blame her a character like Lilith really feels like she should have been played by a much younger and more energetic actress who can inject some much needed fun and enthusiasm into the part Blanchette just sucks all the life out of her scenes ultimately I think this film's disastrous opening weekend speaks for itself nobody was
excited to see it the cast didn't seem to want to be in it and released as it was into the August Dumping Ground it pretty obvious the studio had no faith in it which begs the very obvious question why even bother making this thing in the first place I don't know and quite frankly I don't [ __ ] care my only advice to you is don't waste your money on it anyway that's all I've got for today go away now
