Borderlands sure seems like it’s coming out with a movie about ten years too late. The absolute peak of the video game series’s popularity has seemingly come and gone. However, most of the people who enjoyed the first game in the series Borderlands, back in October 2009, are of age to have a family and fondly remember the games of their youth. Borderlands does look to capture that a bit, especially with an all-star cast. The only wrinkle is that the video game movie/TV series craze wasn’t a thing ten years ago. So now we’re getting a movie that does feel a bit dated by today’s standards that simultaneously does and doesn’t pay homage to the series it’s adapting.

I’ll explain that a bit more because it could be confusing. First off, the good. The costumes in Borderlands are exquisite. Besides Lilith’s hair, which is ridiculous, it was a bit ridiculous in the games, too; the characters are dressed to the nines in their actual outfits from the games. The actual “look” of Pandora and the world also captures it. The different guns, Psychos, landscapes, Skags, and everything else fit. You can tell the art department were the ones that did their homework here.

That look is a blessing and a curse, though, because Borderlands has some extraordinarily rough-looking CG. It functionally does the job, but everything looks smooth and squeaky clean. A truck or vehicle on Pandora should not be that smooth and pretty. During heavy action scenes, it’s almost distracting to be able to see when someone or something transitions from real motion to CG. I don’t normally like ripping effects like this, I generally fall back on the fact that CG workers are overworked and underpaid, but you can tell there was either some rushed effects here or something else with the budget.

The cast includes Cate Blanchett as Lillith, Kevin Hart as Roland, Jamie Lee Curtis as Tannis, Ariana Greenblatt as Tiny Tina, Florian Munteanu as Krieg, Edgar Ramirez as Atlas, and Jack Black voices Claptrap. The cast does a tremendous job with what they’re given from the script. Jack Black provides all of the laughs in between groan-worthy dialogue that Blanchett, Greenblatt, and Hart all try to spice up. I would list Janina Gavankar as part of the cast, but her character Knoxx is so wasted, and her somewhat jokingly-played exit from the film ends up with confusing motivations that are barely mentioned at all.

The backstories of almost all of the characters are changed from the games. I understand that’s needed for the movie, but when you have a massive pile of lore to take from, and you choose to make up your own, it’s kind of a slap to the original series. When you combine that with making the movie backstories about as lazy as possible and coincidental feeling as the story unfolds, it’s cheap.

When Borderlands feels like you’re watching a third-person version of the games, when the action is frenetic and quirky, it works. That just doesn’t happen very often. It’s trying to play off like those campy science-fiction films of the late ’70s and ’80s that had heart and soul but didn’t have the budget to compensate. This movie does have the budget to compensate but doesn’t have the soul to make you care about these characters coming together. Everything feels like it’s just moving along on a line instead of twisting and turning. It all really stems from a script that explains things in a hamfisted way, the look of the movie being off (the original games were cel-shaded and dirty-looking), and just a meandering plot that doesn’t capture the feel/humor of some of the movies that are clearly influencing it.

The most frustrating part of Borderlands is that there are elements here that could have made it special. The costumes, the performances, and the parts where it looks and feels like stepping into the games are a testament to that. But the dialogue, the effects, and a meandering plot that’s full of coincidences or easy explanations sink this one into the deserts of Pandora.

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