The Good, the “Bad” and the Utterly Terrible
Jamie Lee Curtis was asked in an interview recently “which Marvel phase they’re in?” and her answer was “bad”. She has apologized for her comment and said she’ll “do better”. This is a pretty silly comment to make about a franchise that has had it’s downs but majority of ups, while promoting a movie she stars in which is quite frankly “bad”. Personally, I think Jamie Lee Curtis is a great actress and her comment was just an attempt to be “funny”. I do hope she has better movies in the future as this was quite a waste of her talent and time.
Two Decades Too Late?
This movie felt….old. If it was made in the 00’s, I think it would pass as a good film. But it’s 2024 and quite frankly I expect better. The writing was cheesy and cliche. It had lines which I’ve heard hundreds of times from movies years ago. At one point I felt it’s supposed to be this way, but it just didn’t fit the rest of the movie. The movie is based of the Borderlands games and the first game was released in 2009, but the movie’s writing felt older than that. I’d be shocked if this movie became a franchise like the games.
Funny haha? Or Funny Weird?
Borderlands is a comedy, but I wasn’t laughing. Not once. It was filled with jokes that landed flat on their face which only a child would laugh at but as a 12A filled with gun violence, I don’t think the right target audience would even be going to watch it. With such comedic stars such as Jack Black and Kevin Hart, you would think you’d be leaving the cinema with your sides hurting from laughing too much, but this wasn’t the case. They somehow made Jack Black and Kevin Hart not funny…painful!
The Oscar goes to…Set Design & VFX!
While I was making a shopping list in my head and trying to ignore the unwitty commentary, I was mesmerized by the sets. When they weren’t clearly green screen, you could see the amount of details that went into the sets which were amazing. When set design was impossible to recreate, the VFX team really pulled it out the bag. Both teams deserve a pat on the back for making this world so realistic.
The Shining Star in the Darkness
Ariana Greenblatt stood amongst Oscar winning stars such as Cate Blanchett and Jamie Lee Curtis but still managed to stand out. She was the main thing holding this film together and is a star in her own right. She is one to watch.
Who Wrote This?
OK, so why was the writing so bad? The movie is written and directed by Eli Roth, who is well known for Horror movies. He wrote movies such as Thanksgiving, Cabin Fever and the Hostel franchise. Borderlands isn’t a horror, it’s an action movie. However, there’s another writer on the bill called Joe Crombie, which is actually a Pseudonym for apparently a great writer called Craig Mazin. He wrote incredible shows like The Last of Us, Chernobyl and a hilarious comedy franchised called “The Hangover”. So why is so bad? Well, Craig Mazin told Variety “I cannot claim any kind of authorship of ‘Borderlands,’ much less ‘co-writing. If the name in question is indeed a pseudonym, all I can say is…it’s not mine.” So who did write this and who is the mystery writer co-responsible? Or should Eli Roth stick to horror?
Waste of Money?
Borderlands has been reported to have cost $110-120 million to produce and Lionsgate spent $30 million on print and advertising. I think they’ll be lucky to break even. Madame Web made $100 million to compare and that was more due to curiosity to see how terrible it was. I don’t think Borderlands will have that kind of interest when there are a lot of better films still going strong at the cinemas. For it to make profit, it would need to do better than, The Beekeeper ($152m or Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga ($172m). Furiosa was also deemed a box office failure as great as the movie was to watch! I don’t think the studio is getting their money back on this one…
Summary
“In all, I thought it was a waste of my time. It wasn’t fun, it didn’t make me laugh and all I could think of was how long was left till it was finished. There was no escapism which is all I need right now during current events. I think teenagers might like it but the comments as people left weren’t positive, and one comment saying “nothing happened” in which I agree. I won’t be watching that again and I’d rather go watch something I’ve already seen before if I could go back in time.”
Borderlands (2024)
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WILL YOU BE WATCHING “BORDERLANDS”?
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