The first trailer for Gearbox and Eli Roth’s long in-development Borderlands movie is finally here. First impression? It looks alright.
Cate Blanchett just seems to be going along for the ride as Lilith while the others energetically deliver Guardians of the Galaxy-style banter. I’m not sure why they bothered casting Jack Black as Claptrap, since he just sounds like Claptrap, but I guess it’s another name for the poster. On the flipside, Kevin Hart’s performance is more Kevin Hart than it is Roland, who I recall being more of a straight man in Borderlands 2. But I have no strong feelings about Roland’s character.
Meanwhile, I think it was wise for Ariana Greenblatt to tone down Tiny Tina a tad rather than trying to emulate Ashly Burch’s voice acting from the game. Rewatch Tina’s intro in Borderlands 2 and it’s hard to imagine a non-cartoon actor embodying that character for 90 minutes in a way that doesn’t make audiences want to be devoured by the Dune 2 popcorn bucket.
The more popular reactions to the trailer are not precisely positive. “It simultaneously looks better than I expected but also an absolute train wreck,” reads the top comment in one Reddit thread about the trailer. “It kinda looks as good as a Borderlands movie could,” reads another.
Mountain Dew, the soda, said that it’s “so excited,” though, and if gamers can’t trust The Dew, then who can we trust?
In the PC Gamer staff’s mostly unimpressed discussion of the trailer, it was brought up that Telltale did quite a good job writing for the Borderlands universe in its episodic Tales from the Borderlands adventure without genericizing the established characters or adhering so strictly to contemporary action-adventure movie convention. And it’s true, that’s a good game—probably better than this movie, from the looks of the trailer. But as something to stream on some dull Sunday afternoon in the future, the movie looks entertaining enough. The piss gag was alright!
The Borderlands movie has been a long time coming. Roth finished filming it all the way back in 2021 and then went on to direct and release another movie, Thanksgiving, while Deadpool director Tim Miller handled reshoots. Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford finally announced last year the Borderlands will be in theaters on August 9, 2024.