When Borderlands was announced ages ago I was intrigued.. I've played all of the games and a movie version could be fun. Then I saw the trailer and like the rest of the universe let out a giant 'ohhhh noooo'. As we learned more about the movie things only got worse.
Let's start with the positives. They really nailed the look of the games. The set designs and art direction painstakingly recreates many of the games more memorable locations. If you've played them you'll get a big kick out of this. They also tried to do right by the costumes and even gun design. However what's strange is what they left out or only mentioned in passing. Like the interesting aspects of the various guns, the chests, the interesting monsters, the interesting villains, the sirens, the eridians and most of their lore, etc. etc. etc. Some of this is given the briefest of mentions but none of it is really mined for anything of real story value.
Then there's the casting. It looked horrible from the trailers and is so in the movie. Cate Blanchett is horribly miscast as an action star especially given her age. Kevin Hart playing the tough as nails commando makes even less sense when they make him play the part more or less straight. The list goes on and on and on.. I think the worst is the Tiny Tina character who is not only not like the character in the game but also 100x more annoying especially when elevated to this movies Mcguffin character. This might be the worst cast movie ever.
The biggest issue however is the just mind boggingly horrible script. It's one of those movies that runs from scene to scene at breakneck speed with occasional exposition dumps to sort of explain whats going on. If you what character development, stakes, investment or a sensical plot.. this ain't that type of movie. I mean this is Highlander II levels of story here.. and I'm not talking about the directors cut.
So is this a good movie? No.
Is this the worst movie ever like has been widely reported? Also no. It's bad but it's at least watchable and interesting on a visual level. I certainly don't recommend it but if you are a fan of the games you'll definitely get a kick out of some of the things they recreated. For me personally this is going in my small but elite group of bad films I like to dub 'Hollywood spends millions of dollars dressing famous actors up in cosplay and doing a fanfilm' group.. joining movies like Super Mario Bros., Street Fighter and Batman & Robin.
If anything though I hope they learn a lesson and keep Eli Roth away from another big budget film like this.. but I suspect he's already working on something else.. maybe they can get Jarod Leto to star after he's done tanking Tron 3.
