Borderlands GOTY News

Uh oh, the Borderlands movie is off to an incredibly rough start, as the box office figures point all sign towards a flop.

I think it's pretty safe to say that Borderlands is a pretty popular series, right? Do we all agree there? It has to be, otherwise the idea of making a movie adaptation would be unthinkable. Said movie has been in the works since 2015, which is always a surefire sign of a hit, and was finally released last week after almost a decade of development. And how was it? Well, I gave it a singular star in my review, because I simply couldn't find anything to like about it. And it seems that that sentiment is pretty much universal, with the film sitting at a Metacritic critic score of 27/100, and a user score of 2.8 out of 10. So it shouldn't be any surprise to hear that, as reported by Variety, the film has opened with a painfully low $16.5 million on a $115 million budget.

Domestically it took home $8.8 million, with $7.7 million coming from international sales, painting a picture that quite clearly says "yeah, we're good thanks." Variety also notes that just under 60% of production costs for the film were covered by international presales, according to sources anyway, but it's still a result that is far behind expectations. I think it's pretty safe to say we won't be getting a sequel, at least not any time soon - the games will probably have to redeem the series' image a bit.

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I don't care what anyone says, the Borderlands games are exactly what they need to be. The looter shooter RPGs are filled with over-the-top guns, eccentric characters, and idiosyncratic writing to the point that many people turn away. I get it. Some of it has aged like milk and the tone isn't for everyone. But if you look past this and play each game for what it is, these are some incredibly dense, rewarding, and combat-heavy shooters that are a joy to play with friends. It helps that you can save over $100 on the whole collection for a limited time, too.

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The Borderlands movie could star Cate Blanchett as Lilith

It's pretty rare that I walk out of a movie theatre thinking "I truly just wasted 90+ minutes of my life watching that." Normally, I get something out of whatever it was I watched, be it joy or elation at best, perhaps anger or frustration at worst. Those negative feelings at least mean I'm feeling anything at all, they're feelings I can work with and talk about. But when I walked out of the Borderlands movie, I think all I felt was… apathy? A general sense of "what was the point"? Which is probably the most damning thing I could say about any piece of art, but calling the Borderlands movie 'art' is too generous.

A film adaptation of Borderlands has been in the works since 2015, and a decade later it's finally here. Who knows what the story was meant to be originally, but what we ended up with was this: Lilith (Cate Blanchett), a bounty talker who doesn't really seem to care about anyone or anything but making her next paycheck, is tasked by the head of a major corporation to rescue his daughter, Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt). Things don't exactly go to plan, and instead she sets off on a journey with Tina, alongside Roland (Kevin Hart), the mercenary that kidnapped Tina, Krieg (Florian Munteanu), a big hulk of a man that doesn't say much, Patricia Tannis (Jamie Lee Curtis), a doctor obsessed with finding a legendary vault, and Claptrap (Jack Black), an annoying robot that makes too many insufferable jokes.

For the most part, that's a strong cast. Both Blanchett and Curtis are Oscar-winning actresses. You'd assume that prestige would seep through into the film. But as Borderland's lead, Blanchett's performance feels like one dampened by regret. She has previously explained that she picked up the role to save her from madness during COVID lockdown, but none of that energy can be seen in the finished product. Every single line seems underlined by the fact she's not really sure why she's there, and it kind of rubs off on everyone else too.

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The long-in-the-works Borderlands movie packs an impressive all-star main cast which includes Jack Black and Kevin Hart, but the biggest surprise was Cate Blanchett as the lead. How did that happen?

During an interview for Empire, the actress, who's done a bit of everything (including The Lord of the Rings and Marvel) over the years, revealed what really got her into Eli Roth's Borderlands, and the answer is a bit surprising.

"The crazy asks are usually the things I gravitate towards; the things I could never conceive of," she explained, potentially justifying why she's taken on lighter roles such as Thor: Ragnarok's Hela or The House with a Clock in its Walls' Florence Zimmerman. She continued: "I think there also may have been a little Covid madness — I was spending a lot of time in the garden, using the chainsaw a little too freely. My husband said, 'This film could save your life.'" Her answer is both funny and intriguing, and one has to wonder how much the Covid lockdown and all the following Hollywood slowdown really affected her.

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