Unless you’re already a fan of the Borderlands franchise of looter-shooter games, it’s tough to know whether the movie is worth getting excited over. On the plus side, it has an absolutely stacked cast led by Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Ariana Greenblatt, Edgar Ramirez, Jamie Lee Curtis, Florian Munteanu, and Gina Gershon. Lionsgate clearly wants you to focus on that, which is why the star power is front and center in the first official images, poster, and trailer.
People dropped the first photos from Borderlands yesterday. One features Blanchett sporting Lillith’s fiery red hair. The other gives us a shot of the entire team of vault hunters, in what I like to call “beatdown view”, as they peer down a well. There be loot down that well! What we get in the images and trailer are Blanchett as Lillith Hart as elite mercenary Roland, Black as the wise-cracking robot Claptrap, Curtis as the psychotic Dr. Tannis, Greenblatt as the feral Tiny Tina, and Munteanu as the muscle-bound Krieg.
The film is directed by Eli Roth, with shooting having begun back in 2021. So it’s been a while waiting for this one, and there have been concerns about the weeks of reshoots, not by Roth but by Deadpool director Tim Miller. Before anyone goes crazy over that, Roth was busy shooting Thanksgiving which is why he couldn’t do them himself. New script pages were penned by Zak Olkewicz, as well. Of some concern is the previously attached Craig Mazin (The Last of Us), who took his name off the project and was replaced by co-writer Joe Crombie.
I’ll be honest, it looks sorta generic to me, but I’m not a fan of the games and perhaps it will speak more to those who are.
Here’s the synopsis: Lilith (Blanchett), an infamous bounty hunter with a mysterious past, reluctantly returns to her home, Pandora, the most chaotic planet in the galaxy. Her mission is to find the missing daughter of Atlas (Ramírez), the universe’s most powerful S.O.B. Lilith forms an unexpected alliance with a ragtag team of misfits – Roland (Hart), a seasoned mercenary on a mission; Tiny Tina (Greenblatt), a feral pre-teen demolitionist; Krieg (Munteanu), Tina’s musclebound protector; Tannis (Curtis), the oddball scientist who’s seen it all; and Claptrap (Black), a wiseass robot. Together, these unlikely heroes must battle an alien species and dangerous bandits to uncover one of Pandora’s most explosive secrets. The fate of the universe could be in their hands – but they’ll be fighting for something more: each other. Based on one of the best-selling videogame franchises of all time, welcome to BORDERLANDS.
Lionsgate will release Borderlands into theaters on August 9th.
