The Borderlands movie is a disservice to all video game adaptations

Borderlands is worse than just being bad; it directly hurts the reputation of good video game adaptations.

The Borderlands film is real, unfortunately. / Lionsgate

The Borderlands movie is bad, but I don’t hate it. As a film, it’s aggressively mid, as the kids would call it, and at times, painfully obnoxious. But it is easy to see that good money has been spent on trying to make an entertaining product for the mass audience. If this were another run-of-the-mill Hollywood blockbuster with no soul, no one would care. However, as a video game adaptation coming out in 2024, it is a severely undercooked product. 

I struggle to call it a film though, so let’s use a more appropriate word: “content”. Whatever goodwill video game adaptations started to garner in the latter half of the last decade may be squandered by this film should it be rewarded with a successful box office run. However, it looks like the general audience also dislikes the film. Do I think it deserves to be sitting at a single–digit aggregate score on Rotten Tomatoes? No. It’s bad, but it’s not as dull as something like the Assassin's Creed movie. 

The Borderlands cast tries, but fails to save the film from its doom. / Lionsgate

Video games have been getting good, great even, adaptations in the last few years. But there’s an inherent issue with them whenever they’re presented as a feature-length film. Video games lend themselves to long-form storytelling more naturally. For every Super Mario Bros. Movie, there are a dozen The Last of Us and Arcane projects. When you try to cram the worldbuilding of a game into a two-hour film, compromises have to be made, and it’s tuned for the most casual audience to make its money back. However, even in those projects, the creators seem to remember, and sometimes respect, the fact that it’s based on a video game. While they may have paper-thin plots, they know tunes to play and what experience to recreate to make the original fans happy.

My problem with Borderlands has nothing to do with maintaining accuracy with the source material. No amount of accuracy can save a soulless corporate cash–grab like this. I have a problem with two things; that it’s not a good film in itself, and it seems to be embarrassed of being a video game adaptation.

The film's jokes are dated, crass, and treat the audience like they're stupider than its characters. / Lionsgate

Here are some things that Borderlands fans love: crazy guns, tons of loot, and slapstick humor that it’s proud to wear on its sleeve. The Borderlands movie has the last bit, except it’s at the audience’s expense. Jokes that some executives thought were funny, but were met with silence at the theater. What’s another thing we can throw at the film to appeal to young gamers? Sex appeal that clashes with the tone of the film. I don’t know whose idea it was to cast Cate Blanchett and Jamie Lee Curtis and have them pose in awkwardly tight outfits and act like their characters are 20–30 years younger than they look, but the result didn’t satisfy fans of the game nor die-hard followers of the actors.

During my screening, I joked to a friend that it would be funny to see damage numbers pop up every time someone shoots something. As visually noisy and loud as that would’ve become, at least it would’ve added some zingy personality. The film’s sets are cool, but they struggle to sell me on the idea that this is a real planet. Most of the world-building is reliant upon tedious voiceovers from Blanchett, who’d rather be anywhere else. There are somewhat ambitious ideas for set pieces that crumble with either spotty CGI or poorly planned, dated action sequences. It’s a game about wacky guns, right? Maybe add a Star Wars-inspired blaster sound effect to some of them? Heck, let Kevin Hart go over the top and do his thing, at least that would get a laugh out of me.

What separates Borderlands from most other adaptations is its unwillingness to dive below the surface-level characterization and a complete tonal mishmash. Any moments of genuine emotion feel manufactured, like the composer is working overtime to extract any ounce of pathos from the performers’ muted, or sometimes unearned, over-the-top reactions. If adaptations are meant to increase the value of an IP by driving more people to it, then the film has failed spectacularly. A 5-minute compilation of the games’ craziest guns would do a better job of convincing someone to give it a try. The film, unfortunately, will push them elsewhere. It doesn’t feel good to see someone react badly to something you love, and I’m guessing that’s what most Borderlands fans will feel when sitting next to those who aren’t familiar with it in the theater.

I thought we had moved on from poor video game adaptations like Borderlands. I thought studio executives and producers would have learned the right lessons from the failures of the genre. Most seem to have learned that, and we’re entering a golden age of video game adaptations as Hollywood starts to run out of steam from mining comic books. Let's hope studios aim to deliver a good movie first before dreaming of a whole cinematic universe around them. It remains to be seen how the industry moves on from here but until then, I’d rather be playing the existing Borderlands games than be reminded of this pale imitation.

Borderlands is playing in theaters now, but you’ll probably have a much better time playing the games from the comfort of your own home.