In a galaxy far, far away, a psychotic wasteland dweller is strapped to a pole with explosives. Thirteen-year-old Tiny Tina comes skipping along, singing “Pop Goes the Weasel” before detonating the explosives and causing bits of the psychotic wasteland dweller to litter the landscape. She then introduces our hero to “the fine-ass ladies”—two explosive-stuffed rabbits named Mushy Snugglebites and Felicia Sexopants—who can help them with a major heist.
As juvenile as that description is, I wish I could tell you that Eli Roth’s Borderlands starts by directly copying an iconic scene from the Borderlands 2 game that introduces the ever-chaotic and maniacally performed Tiny Tina in an act of cartoonish violence. At least that would show that, like the games in the series, the film had some semblance of a personality, even if it’s a 4chan anon’s idea of one. And that would at least be an intro worthy of Roth’s résumé, keyed right into some of his older sensibilities, maybe hinting that the guy who grew up enough to make Thanksgiving and House with a Clock in Its Walls could still tap into a wicked streak.
Instead, about five minutes after the Lionsgate logo disappears from the screen and Borderlands starts, we’re introduced to Arianna Greenblatt’s Tiny Tina like she’s Princess Leia on Xanax, held captive in a futuristic prison by her evil father, Atlas (Edgar Ramirez)—a man instead of an evil corporation like in the games, because doing otherwise would’ve required a grasp on satire—until she’s rescued by a mercenary named Roland (Kevin Hart). They eventually hook up with neon red-headed bounty hunter Lilith (Cate Blanchett), a monosyllabic brute named Krieg (Florian Munteanu), and an annoying motormouthed droid named CL4P-TR4P (Jack Black, the sole performer here who’s fully keyed to the tone of the games).
There are jokes, theoretically, in this Borderlands, but there’s no life behind their writing or execution, which makes sense for a film that casts an energetic comic like Hart as the po-faced straight man. And when the bunny-eared Tiny Tina does finally get the spotlight all to herself, you get the sense that all of Greenblatt’s line readings could’ve been accomplished by hooking Siri to a loudspeaker. These are mind-boggling choices for an adaptation of a game series so inseparable from its obnoxiously rough-and-tumble tone, characters, and humor.
Borderlands feels like an escapee from the misguided, bad old days of cash-in video game adaptations, a la Hitman, Max Payne, and DOA: Dead or Alive. This is a film trying to make the endlessly profane Borderlands series fit into a kinder, gentler Guardians of the Galaxy-shaped mold for maximum profit. That would sound like pure speculation if not for the number of times throughout the film that clear, abrupt edits around extreme violence and salty language occur, and the fact that Roth shares screenwriting credit with a Judas Booth-style pseudonym.
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