Hello, I took a break. I didn’t have anything to draw for the last couple of weeks. I did see a couple of movies and go to a Cubs game. Also I saw Pelican twice, where they played material from their next album, so that was awesome. Why don’t I focus on one of the movies I saw?

What did you see? The delayed and re-shot boring mess of an action film, Borderlands (2024).

That seems like your review right there. Just stop typing. They should have stopped filming but they didn’t, so why not.

Borderlands is a series of first person shooter video games that focuses on finding permutations of the same hundred weapons or so and using them to blow up screaming digital baddies for the vague macguffin, “the Vault.” Also your character has powers and abilities that level up. The 2nd game is the best of the series, and recently there was a spin-off of a D&D adventure that had a lot of charm to it.

There was some humor to it from its growing cast of characters, so maybe a movie adaptation? Well, horror movie gross out expert Eli Roth said “sure” and then forgot about it mid-way or something. How long ago this process was started and then restarted and re-done, who knows. Does the feeling of it all being a lazy afterthought show through the movie? Yes. Are there flashes of originality at any point? Maybe. Is there anything redeemable that would suggest for even a casual viewing? No.

The story is that a bunch of characters introduce themselves to each other by name, and then we’re introduced to other characters, and fans of the video games can’t even get excited about the lazy reveals. Lilith is a bounty hunter and she’s approached by a rich guy Atlas to find his pre-teen daughter Tina who was rescued from a prison complex by Roland, a soldier of some sort. In that same prison was Krieg, a large crazy man, who escaped with them. He has a bond with Tina from then on? I guess. Lilith reluctantly agrees to go to the planet, happens to awaken a robot Claptrap who has been waiting to be her guardian of some sort, as she seeks out Tina.

Altas’ private army is behind them and they try to kill our heroes in a vehicle chase along a desert full of urine and underground monsters (threshers). The group escapes to Sanctuary and are hidden by Moxxxi and then escape from Atlas’ army by going into a tunnel and then another tunnel and stuff happens. The group fights some crazy people and this goes on for some time. It turns out that Tiny might be genetically engineered to open The Vault that I forgot was mentioned earlier. But, get this, it’s Lillith, she was the special powered character this whole time. You find out in the last act when they make their way to another blah desert canyon setting, but with a bunch of bottomless pits?, and they fight Atlas’ army including a bunch of characters that weren’t introduced earlier in the film.

I can’t stress how static some of these locations are. Just boring blah areas that are of no importance whatsoever. Most of the original Borderlands game is kind of like this, but there’s some interesting areas that were designed that the movie production team never looked up, or had time to build up on themselves. And, spoiler, they get into “The Vault,” a portal to just a dark bluish room with a tentacled monster hidden away somewhere, and that’s pretty much it.

That’s it? Pretty much.

The last bit in that dreary canyon area whose only notable feature are the bottomless pits, where everyone just stands shooting at each other…it’s embarrassing. Everything about this movie is someone reminding Roth and the reshoots director Tim Miller about various movie tropes and them nearly adhering to it because no one is sure how to make this movie, its characters, its look, stand out at any point. This is such a dry, boring, listless action movie. Are they shooting at the crazy people who are chasing them in the tunnels? Is this still going on? Oh, are they talking now about Lilith’s backstory or Tina’s specialness in relation to the Vault between these gun battles?

Claptrap’s not even funny. It’s voiced by Jack Black. This is a star studded cast for so few characters. There’s plenty of material for the writers and cast to reference in developing these characters, but maybe Too-Cool-For-This Cate Blanchett barely comes closest to the Lilith from the video games. That’s fine, some room to explore possibly empty video game characters, but I like the BL2 game cast. I like the dialog, the jokes. The way Moxxxi is written in the games, this woman hilariously throwing out innuendo and occasionally failing (or others taking it the wrong way) – instead, Gina Gershon tries to sound like Mae West. Like c’mon, you have a character to build on, build on that, not another actress. And Handsome Jack is such a great villain, did they save him for the sequel that’s never coming? What danger does Atlas present? He doesn’t even show up to pretend to miss his daughter. I remember he has a shield to prevent him from getting shot. Seriously, describe the guy – has a trenchcoat. Pretty much it. Claptrap – CLAPTRAP, the hilarious robot in these games, voiced by a hilarious actor, IS NOT ONE BIT FUNNY. The extras are mostly soldiers or a supposed mob of screaming weirdos. Are they in danger? I guess? Will they get out of it? Probably? Do I care about them? No?

You get to see some of the guns but nothing like Tediore weapons being tossed and exploding, or Maliwan guns melting people with acid, things like that. There’s a reference to an Infinity gun, is that supposed to get applause from the audience that didn’t show?

It was not good. It doesn’t even try and fail, it’s just a disappointment that barely registers as a movie. I think there was one moment of exaggerated physics when Tina is throwing bombs at Lillith, but it could have also been lazy staging. Ooh, this movie was lazy. Sorry. I didn’t want to hate it. Maybe I don’t. But I won’t think of it again.