Borderlands

Whoever let this get re-written and re-shot into PG13 hell should kicking themselves. It needed to be as deranged as the video games. What happened?? This could have been awesome but we got Jumanji without the Rock. (The Rock would've made this worse to be honest.) What I can give it a 4 for is the world-building, action sequences, effects, costumes and props. Not even Cate and Jamie-Lee could breathe life into some of the innane dialogue. Not even Jack Black's cheap CL4P-TP laughs were enough to add another star. I wanted to like this movie but I will stick to playing the games. Unless we somehow magically get that R-rated cut, write this one off.

So right up front I'm HUGE borderlands game fan. Always have been. Now with that in mind I came in with certain expectations. And I'm going to give you an honest review.

First the casting, I thought it would be dreadful, but to my surprise even though it wasn't the best casting, the actors did an amazing job playing their respective characters. Having said that the ones I would change out are Tina, Moxie, and Roland. They all did their thing, and it was good for them no doubt, but sadly they were not the right casting for those particular roles.

And here's how you can tell. Tina in this movie is a kind of lost girl with explosives, but you get this sense that she kind of needs protecting, and in the game it was completely the opposite. Even the bandits wouldn't mess with her because she was so wildly deranged. That insanity is her defining trait, not having it killed the character. Moxie was more sexy than badass in the game, in the movie the sexiness took a huge backseat and the problem with that is that it IS her personality. You can't just change that in a character. Which brings us to Roland, I love Kevin Hart. And he did a great job portraying Roland, but here's the thing Roland was a completely different physique and completely different personality in the games. He was way more serious, and that's not Kevin's forte, of course it's not, he's a comedian. So like I said, those are just bad casting choices.

Now onto the actual movie, the story was... well not the version of the story we had in the games, which is weird because you know the established fanbase wants that story right? It doesn't have to be the same exact one but it has to be close and this one wasn't it. Now even all of this I can forgive, but what I can't forgive is the PG-13 garbage. Borderlands games are a hardcore rated R+ genre, you absolutely can't change it to PG-13, gut the script to have stupid lines that don't go at all with the scenes and expect anyone to like it. It doesn't work.

6/10 Great acting, mediocre casting/plot, terrible writing. PG-13 rating sunk it.

A movie that pretends to be a game. Imagine that you are playing Borderlands for Lilith, but you cannot control her - it's the same thing. The aged, strong and independent Cate Blanchett waves her fists, tumbles, shoots endless rounds of ammunition, in general, everything is according to the laws of an interactive game, but the film is not a game. The script was adapted for a teenage audience and simplified everything so much that it is difficult to finish watching it... not everyone is able to watch it, or rather, not only everyone can watch it, few people succeed. I couldn't watch the rest of this movie, I wasn't interested, I wasn't having fun, everything was formulaic, self-repetition and borrowing.

The only part that was interesting in this movie is claptrap's lines, which were cheesy most of the time.

Absolutely mediocre live action adaptation. Movies like these should be exciting and unique, with a one of a kind twist that's newly introduced to the series. You as a director have so many characters and depth to work with in this universe, Yet the director decides to use the most generic and repetitive plots. It goes without saying that the acting in this movie was good (although lacked a bit of depth to the characters personalities imo) and the resemblance of the actors to their original counterparts were not all as accurate as it could've been. Overall, Such a shame to see this coming from a franchise this big.

Oh come on - it's not that bad! True, there isn't an original thought in it's hundred minute duration and it does look like a very poor relation to a video-game, but it's "Mad Max" meets "Buck Rogers" vibe just about entertained me. It's all about "Lilith" (Cate Blanchett) who is a renowned bounty hunter charged by gazillionaire "Atlas" (Edgar Ramirez) with finding his kidnapped daughter "Tina" (Ariana Greenblatt). Thing is, she's already been rescued by "Roland" (Kevin Hart) and is in no great rush to return to the loving arms of daddy. Whilst trying to track her down, "Lilith" encounters the true star of the film - the robot "Claptrap", a sarcastic pile of scrap who decides to help out whether she likes it or not, so off they go a-child-hunting. Yep - it proceeds exactly as you'd expect, except for the frankly bamboozling contribution of Jamie Lee Curtis (and her red glasses) who does look like she's enjoying herself on set but, like Blanchett, is just a complete fish out of water as the banal dialogue and set-piece combat scenes pass the entire project into the hands of the CGI developers. This is nothing at all special or memorable, just a predictable action enterprise that takes "Robot Wars" to the desert, but if you aim low and take it in the spirit it's clearly intended then it's a perfectly watchable summer adventure.