Borderlands, the video game series, has millions in sales — 85 million to be exact — so, in a nutshell, it is popular enough to be made into a feature film. The thing is, history has recorded, time and again, that feature film adaptations of popular video games don’t quite get the same appraisal.

Case in point: Borderlands, the film adaptation, which has bad reviews and bad box-office (the film has only made 10 million dollars worldwide on its opening weekend).

Now, call me a sucker for escapist cliche, but I kinda liked it, predictable formula and all.

The film stars Cate Blanchett as Lilith, an outlaw with flaming red hair and a backstory that brings her back to her home-world of Pandora, a miner’s paradise in the known galaxy. Here she has to find and deliver Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblat), the teenage daughter of a megalomaniacal tycoon (Edgar Ramirez) who had been abducted early in the film by Roland (Kevin Hart), a mercenary soldier gone rogue.

Borderlands carries enough weight to make it work, at least for an evening of escapist action-film viewing

When she finds Tina, we learn — surprise, surprise — that her dad is the bad guy, and that the girl holds the power to trigger ancient artefacts left on Pandora by aliens. Like I said: predictable stuff.

Blanchett, who headlines a cast that includes Jamie Lee Curtis, the voice of Jack Black as the game’s robot-mascot Claptrap, Florian Munteanu and Gina Gershon, is really having fun with the role of a badass action heroine; her unconventional casting fits the bill and elevates the film, which could have easily been an episode of a science fiction series on American television.

And no, I am not looking down on television. There had been a time when much better episodes were written for TV (take Star Trek’s The Next Generation and Voyager as examples); they were more intelligent than films.

Today, television and films have jointly decided to be dismissible and uninvolving. To find a film that welcomes the fluff and dismissible nature of its concept, at least gives one enough reason to watch it.

Borderlands is directed by Eli Roth, and has Roth and Joe Crombie’s credits on screenwriting. There had been a long backstory about screenwriting issues — and frankly, the dumbed-down plot and the near neglect of its supporting cast, highlights the issues.

Still, the tone Borderlands carries is enough to make it work; at least for an evening of escapist action-film viewing.

It may not win awards, nor make you fall in love with cinema, nor make you buy the video games that the film is based on, but at least it ticks the boxes and delivers what it is meant to deliver: a fast-paced good-time.

Released by HKC and Lionsgate, Borderlands is rated PG-13, and features — and embraces — every cliched aspect of storytelling one can imagine

Published in Dawn, ICON, August 18th, 2024