The Borderlands video game franchise has become a mainstay in the world of gaming that has accrued a massive following. With several successful games and countless collectibles out there, a Borderlands movie was bound to happen. Now that one has been released, let’s take a peek into the Vault to see if it lives up to the hopes of long-time fans.

The Good

Much of the production design looks incredible. The costumes the characters wear, the guns they use, and the vehicles they drive look like they’re pulled straight out of the games. It’s impressive how lifelike they were able to make these elements of the source material, and they overall look really cool. Outside of the traditional effects and fantastically-made props, the creatures from the games like the Skags and Rakks look just as cool as one would hope in Hollywood-level CGI.

Claptrap, who essentially serves as a mascot of the series, is handled very well in the movie. Jack Black may not be the original voice actor, but he captures his essence shockingly well. He looks great, and he’s quite funny. There are occasional lines that are humorous to laugh at, and most of them come from Claptrap. The way he interacts with the rest of the characters and the way they all look at him feels exactly like how he does in the games. He’s the perfect balance of annoying and entertaining.

There are some bits of the action that are rather entertaining. Tiny Tina throwing explosive stuffed animals, Krieg smashing bandits’ skulls, and the rest showing off their impressive gunplay skills does lead to some fun moments. It’s far from the most noteworthy action seen in a modern movie, but there are still entertaining moments throughout these fight sequences.

Lilith and Tina have some heartfelt moments throughout that are quite touching. Lilith had a traumatic childhood and she doesn’t want Tina to have the same experiences. Tina learns to trust Lilith over time. These moments aren’t worthy of tearing up over, but seeing them bond throughout the story is genuinely quite nice.

The Bad

While the production design for what the characters were interacting with looked excellent, a lot of the CGI and green screen backgrounds look terrible. They’re so ugly they’re hard to look at. Some green screened scenes might even lead to motion sickness. A lot of it looks unfinished while the rest of it is just so poor quality it would break any immersion one does have while watching the movie.

Claptrap may have lines worth chuckling at, most of the other humor doesn’t land. Each of the characters make attempts at jokes and one-liners, but they aren’t funny. It’s clear that their lines are meant to be funny, but they’re just not. None of the attempted slapstick moments lead to laughs either, just sighs and cringes.

There are blatant mistakes left in the film. A can of Axe body spray is left out on a bar in some shots. A crewmember can be seen helping Krieg open a latch door. The movie was in development so long that they had plenty of time to remove these obvious errors, but they didn’t. It’s just plain lazy.

The majority of the dialogue was just forced exposition, and yet it doesn’t feel like it explains enough for casual moviegoers. There are lines that just sort of insert names of things from the games, like the Eridians or Dahl, without really going in-depth about them. They’re just buzzwords for fans to recognize. Since this takes up most of the dialogue, none of it feels natural.

Out of the main team of characters, about half of them serve as the comic relief. They’re there to joke around, and they add nothing to the plot whatsoever. They could have been replaced by rocks and it wouldn’t have made a difference. In addition to half the team adding nothing, we don’t get a sense of who most of them are as characters. They exist only to spew bad jokes or forced exposition.

The film’s pacing is rough, to say the least. It’s constantly trying to quickly move on to the next part without giving the audience enough time to enjoy anything along the way. The scenes in which things are slowed down don’t feel important enough to be the ones getting the focus. The action may feel fun at times, but most action sequences end so quickly that it doesn’t even matter. There’s a moment that has Roland potentially making a sacrifice to make sure the others get out of a dangerous situation, but all emotion is eliminated because the scene is rushed along.

The third act was clearly meant to be massive and high-stakes. However, unfortunately, it feels rather small and that nothing of value was to be gained or lost for the planet of Pandora. It’s just roughly 30 nameless guards easily being taken out in a little canyon. The Vault is opened but doesn’t feel important at all. It all ends on such an odd anticlimax.

On top of all these things wrong with it as a movie, it also spectacularly fails to adapt the most basic elements of the source material. Marcus, Claptrap, costumes, weapons, and vehicles are handled accurately, but that’s it. None of the other characters act like their video game counterparts, and the actors are mostly miscasts. Brick and Mordecai are missing completely. Tina is a clone that Atlas made and has no ties to Hyperion. They got Krom and Mouthpiece mixed up. Lilith doesn’t even know she has powers until the very end of the movie. This list could go on and on and on. It’s pretty devastating as a Borderlands fan.

Conclusion

Ignoring source material, Borderlands is a resounding “meh” and is forgettable at best whether you’re a diehard fan of the gaming franchise or someone just looking to see the latest sci fi action flick. That paired with how much of the source material was thrown out makes the movie stumble into “downright bad” territory. It’s not the worst movie out there, and isn’t even the worst video game adaptation. It’s just a really rough watch. It’s clear that the script jumped from writer to writer, and that way too many changes were made during its time in development hell. Weird and baffling choices were made throughout the entire runtime, most of the jokes aren’t funny, the pacing is a mess, and the green screen backgrounds are miserable. But hey, some things like the costumes and weapons look really cool, and Claptrap is funny at times, so there’s that, right?

Rating: 4/10

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