Video game fans will probably have a strong opinion on how the new sci-fi movie Borderlands fares as an adaptation of the game franchise. (A negative one seems most likely, based on any number of factors.) But for a different genre of nerd, Eli Roth’s long-delayed, faux-irreverent space adventure will feel like something out of 90s comic books, crossbred with contemporary superhero movies. Specifically, this incarnation of Borderlands is reminiscent of a third-tier title from a company nipping at the heels of DC or Marvel. It’s as if early-period Dark Horse or Image Comics tried their hand at ripping off Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy or DC’s Suicide Squad, in all their needle-dropping, ragtag boldness.
Lining up the knockoffs with their bigger-name equivalents is almost fun: Lilith (Cate Blanchett) is a distaff Star-Lord or, going back further, Han Solo, a bounty hunter offered untold riches to retrieve Tina (Ariana Greenblatt), the teenage daughter of Atlas (Edgar Ramírez), a powerful corporate exec – though functionally, Tina is more like the spawn of Harley Quinn and Baby Groot. Others joining the hunt and just maybe forming a quarrelsome makeshift family include the sassy robot Claptrap (Jack Black), sort of a Rocket Raccoon take on the Star Wars droids; fearsome-looking Krieg (Florian Munteanu), a low-budget Drax; and Roland (Kevin Hart), a Rick Flagg type (he’s in the Suicide Squad; no need to look it up). They converge on the planet of Pandora – not the pretty one from the Avatar movies, but a junk heap that’s like several different Mad Max societies smushed together – where plenty of other shady types are on the hunt for the key to a vault that holds vast and powerful … knowledge? Technology? I lost track. There’s also a vaguely sourced but intensely predictable prophecy involved.
