“Zero percent! You don’t see that very often!”
That’s Claptrap (Jack Black), the robot in Borderlands, after being asked to calculate the odds of surviving an encounter with some Psychos in the Caustic Caverns beneath Pandora.
Coincidentally, “zero percent” was Borderlands score on Rotten Tomatoes when I checked it last weekend.
I only get preview screenings on very rare occasions these days. (Is it something I said? Knowing me, it probably was.) I usually don’t read any other critics before I watch a film for review. Like most pros, I have a love-hate relationship with Rotten Tomatoes. On the one hand, a congregator for reviews seems like a good idea. On the other hand, the site has reduced many people’s relationship with cinema culture and film criticism to a single statistical number, derived through means that sound scientific on the surface but are in fact quite dicey. On the third hand, they did invite me to contribute my reviews and remind me when I forget. So at least someone is paying attention to me!
This week, I was trying to decide between It Ends With Us, based on a romance novel by Colleen Hoover, the bestselling author of the decade, and Borderlands, based on a video game series I was vaguely familiar with. Word on the socials was that Borderlands was an epic stinker, so I glanced at the RT score. Zero percent is, like the robot says, not something you see very often. It’s Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever and Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 territory. Now, my choice was clear.
An RT goose egg doesn’t scare me. I saw Highlander II: The Quickening in the theater. Voluntarily. I had to see what was so bad about Borderlands. Maybe director Eli Roth would turn the aesthetic corner and create a film so bad it’s good! As a frequent flyer at Black Lodge Shitfest, I appreciate a good trainwreck. For me, the last so-bad-its-good pic — what the SubGenius community calls badfilm — was Gods of Egypt. It’s got everything: Geoffrey Rush phoning it in as the sun god Ra! Chadwick Boseman solving the riddle of the sphinx! Tiny Courtney Eaton! I can’t look away.
Gods of Egypt got 14 percent “good” reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. Checking RT as I write this, after opening weekend, Borderlands has soared to 8 percent. The positive notices come mostly from sources that aren’t exactly cinematic tastemakers — like Polygon, who praise anything related to video games.
So how bad is Borderlands? I regret to inform you, it is a very bad film, but not badfilm. Borderlands the game is a first-person shooter released in 2009. Even the original was excessively derivative. Pandora, the planet on which the action takes place, shares a name with the homeworld of Avatar’s Na’vi, but it looks like Mad Max’s post-apocalyptic Australia. More accurately, it looks like Fallout, the classic video game from 1988 whose developers were among the first people to adapt George Miller’s outback junkyard aesthetic. It’s also the second film I’ve seen this year to rip off Miller’s Furiosa, the first being Deadpool & Wolverine. (Seriously, if you haven’t seen it, give Furiosa a chance.)
The star of the show is Cate Blanchett as Lilith, one of four playable characters from the original Borderlands. Blanchett is cursed with a stiff red hairdo that, for badfilm aficionados, will bring up memories of Frances McDormand’s fright wig in Æon Flux. Lilith is a space bounty hunter who’s “getting too old for this shit.” When she’s offered a very impressive sum by Atlas (Édgar Ramírez) to rescue his daughter Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt) from rogue trooper Roland (Kevin Hart), who has taken her to Pandora, she responds by killing the messenger. Literally.
After hooking up with Claptrap, the mandatory R2-D2 figure, Lilith finds Tiny Tina, who has befriended another playable character, Krieg (Florian Munteanu). He is a renegade Psycho, the oh-so creatively named legion of canon fodder every first-person shooter needs. After evading Atlas’ goon squad, they end up at, what else, a crazy frontier bar owned by Mad Moxxi (Gina Gershon). There, they meet Dr. Tannis (Jamie Lee Curtis, feathering her 401(k)), an archeologist who knows the way to the Vault, the lost alien treasure repository that is Pandora’s only tourist attraction. (Get it? Pandora’s Box? It wasn’t funny in 2009, either.)
Borderlands’ vibes feel as mercenary as the characters. Blanchett, who may be physically incapable of giving a bad performance, hits her marks and sneers. Hart and Curtis seem to be devoted to expending as little energy as possible. Ramírez delivers not one but two slow claps. Greenblatt’s screen presence is like nails on a chalkboard. Badfilm legend Gershon, of Cocktail and Showgirls fame, brings the same vacuous energy here.
Borderlands channels all of the worst tics from the two decades of mediocre blockbuster cinema. It’s got that flat Marvel lighting; characters who appear just to check a box on some Reddit filmbro’s wish list, then disappear without a trace; hyper-violent yet listless action sequences; an off-putting sadistic streak; and the kind of quippy dialogue that would cause Joss Whedon to yell at an entire writer’s room. (Credited writer Joe Crombie is a pseudonym. At least eight other writers reportedly worked on the script, but none of them would put their name on it.) Everything about Borderlands reminded me of, and made me wish I was watching, another, better movie.
Anyway, I hear It Ends With Us is okay.
Borderlands
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