The new Borderlands movie wants to bring the action game to the big screen. He has an unexpected horror reinforcement on his side. The resemblance to Guardians of the Galaxy is said to be purely coincidental.
Adaptations of computer games often score only a poor number of points, are cumbersome, not fun – simply game over. Only recently have some managed to break this curse. For all the great pieces, let’s name at least the Arcane series (based on the motives of League of Legends), which is one of the more accessible ones.
Borderlands is the next to try, based on the game series that has been published since 2009. The circumstances under which it is coming to theaters are a little unexpected. How to make a movie based on a colorful space shooter?
Will it be a hit or miss, like the fir tree?
Unexpected horror with Borderlands
There will be no shortage of surprises. Something unexpected is already in the headlines. The director of the film is Eli Roth, who became famous as the author of bloody horror films. On the other hand, he also has behind him the adventure animated series Fright Krewe about a group of young heroes who defend the city of New Orleans from rampaging monsters.
Or the chilling fantasy The Sorcerer’s Hour about a boy who has a wizard uncle and experiences sometimes humorous and other times scary moments with him. Roth does not hide that horror films are his undying love. But he says he also likes science fiction. And that he wanted to make a big, fun, totally crazy movie in the style of The Fifth Element for a long time. The kind he would have liked to see at the age of twelve.
A completely different Pandora
The plot of Borderlands takes place on the planet Pandora, which is not at all similar to the moon of the same name from Avatar. A dangerous but unexpectedly busy wasteland teems with strange creatures, giant monsters, weird studs, and not-so-appealing sights like a valley where urine spontaneously escapes from geysers.
Borderlands or Guardians of the Galaxy? • Etiquette film
And somewhere among the armed villains, whizzing spaceships and loud explosions, there is a safe hidden with an unimaginable treasure. Whoever wants to get it will need helpers. Even if they should be downright dubious.
Unexpected humor
A disparate group finds itself at the center of an explosive event. Lilith the gunslinger, Roland the mercenary, Tannis the scientist, Krieg the masked muscle man, and Claptrap the messenger robot reluctantly join forces to find young Tiny Tina. An unpredictable teenage bomb expert of all kinds, she is the lost daughter of local villain Atlas.
As soon as general chaos breaks out and bullets and jokes start raining, the path to the mythical treasure also opens. At the same time, it turns out that these deranged heroes hold the fate of the entire universe in their hands. Director Roth insists that the resemblance to certain Guardians of the Galaxy is unmistakable at first glance, but he says it’s only coincidental.
Shooting game
Roth’s goal was not to make an ordinary game adaptation. But extraordinary science fiction. He found a way to distinguish himself from other action spectacles in the graphic processing.
Borderlands adopts the style of frantic animated comedies, where everything stands (and mostly falls) on action-packed humorous skits. Seven parts have already been released in the game series. If the film manages to hit the nail on the head, its heroes are quite well charged.
Borderlands
Directed by: Eli Roth
Cast: Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jamie Lee Curtis, Florian Munteanu, Ariana Greenblatt
Premiere: August 8, 2024
Borderlands Game Series:
The first game in the Borderlands series was signed by the Gearbox studio in 2009. Originally, it was supposed to be a shooter with realistic graphics, but one of the graphic designers got the idea to dress the game in a comic book style. And they liked that, so the shape of the whole game changed. A colorful crazy shooter with RPG elements was born, in which there was no shortage of enemies – or weapons.
There were literally countless of them, because they were randomly composed of different parts. The number of their combinations reached 15 million. Add successful multiplayer and success is guaranteed – in the following years, other games were released, including the story-based Tales from Borderlands, and Tiny Tina was introduced.
