People are acting like someone rewrote the Bible or something. Geez. Okay, so first I'll lay down my Borderlands nerd cred so as to be allowed to have an opinion: I played Borderlands when it came out, obsessively. All the DLC's, Platinum trophy, etc. Then Borderlands 2 came out and there went my social life for a few more months. Played the Pre-sequel but wasn't quite as OCD-triggering. But I blamed the game less than just not really caring about video games so much anymore (they don't really mesh so hot with work, girls, life). I'd stopped playing games by Borderlands 3 but doesn't appear to apply to this movie much anyway.
So I've established that I enjoyed the video games and the world and invested hours and hours of my life. I enjoyed the snarky humor and repetitive carnage. Fun stuff. That being said, there's really no case to be made for the Borderlands lore or a beloved IP. The games are about scrounging around on a planet-sized scrap heap while gunning down psychopaths in barbed wire codpieces and constantly plowing thru weapons and perks to maximize your destructive capacity. It's a fairly loose criteria, which the movie follows. It's not the most awesome sauce result but it's not like they went and massively changed a lot: Lilith isn't a transsexual android and they're not trying to reverse the effects of global warming on Pandora, or similar changes that get many red states hackles up. It's just...violent but not bloody violent. Ooookay.
So I guess my big question to the naysayers is, "what were you expecting that u didn't get?" The movie looks right. The characters, the playable ones, never had an over abundance of personality. There's lots of violence and shooting. No loot hunting but I can't imagine that any way but utterly boring on screen:
"Damn this gun rules!!! Pow pow. Oh look, a crate. What's in here? A SLIGHTLY BETTER GUN THAT RELOADS 1.2secs FASTER? Holy turdballs!! I'm gonna take it and throw this old one on the ground, then I'm going to rearrange my backpack for 5mins... damn, this is some exciting cinema!!"
There's been a ton of complaining, much of it preemptive to actually seeing the movie. Most all of the complaints are upset about what they got but very short on what should've been. All seems to amount to "it should be funnier and bloodier." But it's not. It's just like any other video game to movie.. except they actually got a lot right. I'd say more than most games that transistion to film. But no no, gotta go on another Captain Marvel jihad cuz some cinematic widdle feelings have been offended. There's TONS of movies with jokes and blood. They're called horror movies and they do get old but go to town. If that's your main priority than you should be fairy easy to please (unless people are just being churlish and obstinate as a reflex... which is probable).
Now there are some valid issues. Kevin Hart is miscast. He does fine I guess it's just not the right dude for the part. Pretty much any game with multiple character classes will have a generic soldier/warrior and they're usually a tall average dude. They could've gotten Micheal Jai White for waaaay cheaper and had more cash for a decent villain (Edgar Ramirez wasn't that bad actually but he didn't bring much either). Hell, this might be one of the extremely few roles that would've been better with Eric Roberts. But we got Kevin Hart. Oh well, it could've been Tracy Morgan so cut your losses.
No, it's not very gory but that never really stood out to me while watching it. I get some people are craving the old ultra-violence but it gets old fast. Desensitizing. No one seems to care that Lilith's gun has infinite ammo. I guess cuz the game does that so it's okay?
My biggest issue is the ending. That's where the two directors annd the Eli Roth vs. Studio stank really shines. I don't know what happened before but there's several shots of Jamie Lee Curtis looking up at the climactic action and just awkwardly describing what's happening. Seems pretty clear they changed whatever originally happened then plugged in some reshoots with her going, "oh wow, look up there at blah blah. This means yadda yadda is happening!" Smooth.
Claptrap was fine, just kinda wasted. The Psycho is a psycho, whatever. Tiny Tina is lame but I don't recall her being super cool in the games. Though it's been years since I played them and things often look better in retrospect. Perhaps others are going off fond memory: like how "everything Star Wars sucks now cuz it's not as good as (insert whichever one they first saw as a kid). It's called growing up, don't blame the laser swords in space movie.
All this backlash might actually help. I didn't really care about this movie at first. Then all this awful stuff came out. Then after that people actually saw the movie and more negative feedback. By then I had sub-zero expectations, figured I'd watch it for kicks and was able to somewhat enjoy it. Doubt I'll go out of my way to watch it again but I'd rather rewatch this than many other worse movies that didn't get inundated with a storm of nasty predictions/opinions (depending on whether they hated the movie before they actually saw it, if ever).
I don't rate anything on here I haven't watched, and completed. If you want to punch out of a movie after 40 grueling minutes that's totally fine. But rating the whole thing without seeing it feels lousy. Same with rating higher to compensate for perceived over-negative ratings. It's entertainment, not a moral crusade. Go play the video game more if u want that experience. The pacing and overall dynamics of the story are totally different between the two mediums. Pointing out how yet another unoriginal movie isn't that great is about as clever as pointing out that poo stinks. Thanks for your guidance oh wise ones. This is a just another meh action movie, but not nearly as bad as the majority I've seen the past decade.
I'd be very interested in a directors cut. Kevin Hart would still be a little off but otherwise all the pieces are there, which is more than can be said for many other films.
