IMDB’s description:
Based on the best-selling videogame, this all-star action-adventure follows a ragtag team of misfits on a mission to save a missing girl who holds the key to unimaginable power.
Let me preface this by saying I have never played any of the Borderlands games. Would my opinion be different had I been a loyal fan of the game franchise? Based on online reviews the answer is probably not. Also, spoilers (I don’t normally warn for spoilers, but this movie is very new).
The movie begins with some exposition. A long time ago the galaxy was ruled a race of beings who had amazing technology but then one day decided to call it quits. Humanity came along and found little trinkets of leftover tech and were able to spread across the galaxy. Somehow they decided a crappy desert planet named Pandora held a secret cave of wonders and there was also a prophesy (no explanation of where that came from) that a “daughter” of said race would someday return to the planet and unlock its secrets. Why is it called Borderlands? Shouldn’t it be called Borderplanets? Whatever.
We start on a space station, which is blowing up. A girl (Ariana Grande…er Greenblatt) named Tina is in a room. A solder with a mask enters, and immediately complains about the mask restricting his breathing. It is comedy relief character Kevin Hart, playing a non-comedy relief character named Roland. Roland says he was tasked by Tina’s father to get her to safety. They run through the station and against all odds and physics Kevin Hart is killing people and beating them up. Then a giant Bane lookalike named Krieg (Florian Munteanu, but since we never see his face it could be anyone, including Pedro Pascal) comes out and is immediately befriended by Tina. And the three of them presumably escape.
Now we are in a large city, and Cate Blanchett, playing Lilith, is giving us more voiceover exposition. She is a bounty hunter, which I am pretty sure represents about 50% of all occupations available in scifi movies. She keeps beating up her bounty, a full grown man, despite that fact that she is a 55 year-old-woman who probably weighs 125lbs. She goes to a bar to unwind and there are some ruffians who want to hire her. She promptly kills them, but a guy uses a face projector to convince her to take a new bounty. The guy is Atlas, the father of Tina, and rather than the rescue we were led to believe in the opening scene, it turns out Kevin Kart is a kidnapper. Shame on you Kevin Hart.
“No amount of money can make me go back to Pandora” says Lilith, and then literally 2 seconds later says “oh that amount of money can.” I was actually under the impression we were still on Pandora, just in a city ruled by Atlas, but no, next we see Lilith arrive on the garbage planet in a box. More exposition, she was born here, the planet is terrible, she never wanted to return but her resolve can easily be swayed with money, etc, etc.
Seconds after landing on the planet Lilith then goes on a killing spree. Shooting a bunch of various thugs. Then inexplicably boards a tour bus to some other part of the planet. The bus driver spends the whole time trying to convince her she is looking for Ali Baba’s Cave, but she is having none of it. Her resolve is such that it is obvious that is what she will end up doing. She camps in the skeleton of some beast and a robot shows up. This robot is Flapjack or something, despite a shocking lack of pancakes. Apparently voiced by Jack Black, I didn’t realize that until I was checking IMDB for information. Flapjack says it was in power-down mode for 30 some odd years until she arrived on the planet. How did it know she arrived? I guess it isn’t important. He is able to scan a picture of Tina and tells Lilith where she is.
Lilith kills a psycho (which must certainly be a bad guy in the game, they all have a bunch of canned things they say, which is apparently all they say) and takes its… vehicle. She and the robot drive to Tina. Tina says something along the lines that Kevin Hart abandoned her and oh thank you for rescuing me. The double-cross is obvious, and seconds later Lilith is double-crossed by Tina. Lilith fights Tina’s psycho and is unable to kill him, despite shooting him repeatedly. A group of mercenaries in red show up to acquire Tina. And Kevin Hart shows up and they all have a big chase scene. At some point the small teenager Tina punches a few thugs. This movie is doing everything it can to try and convince us that small light people are able to easily knock much larger people around.
Now, this chase scene and other elements in the movie make it seem like they wanted to film a video game in action. Often the camera is just over the shoulder of the character performing the action, just like in many games, and sometimes almost takes on a first person view. Anyways, it is not endearing.
So after they get chased around and then drive the car through the mouth of a monster they eventually end up at a different city. And they sneak in and go to a brothel which is the secret entrance to meet the great xeno-biologist, who has all the secrets of the vault. This person ends up being Jamie Lee Curtis. Apparently Jamie and Lilith have a past, in that when Lilith’s mother died Jamie dumped her off world. Lilith won’t stay there or talk to her, but then like all of Lilith’s convictions, they are immediately forgotten and she is fine with it. Jamie gives them information on the next key (they are looking for 3 keys to the Cave of Wonders, though why they don’t just use Aladdin is beyond me) and then they have to sneak out of city.
They already have one key. The second key is in an abandoned mine. But literally seconds after they enter the mine they discover it is not abandoned, but full of super Psychos, who apparently just spend all day every day killing each other. Well they sneak past them and then find a huge warehouse. Lilith wanders around and immediately finds the second key. Then the super Psychos show up and it is an overly long battle in which for a very brief time they want you to think maybe Kevin Hart made the noble play for the team. They use a very fast elevator to the surface and at the last moment they teleport to somewhere else. The assumption is that Tina, who has been revealed to be a genetic clone of the Pandorians or whatever they are called, must have super powers. I am not sure why the Pandorians look exactly like humans.
Atlas uses a drone to talk to Lilith and blackmail her, and Tina overhears and runs off with Jamie Lee Curtis and Bane. Tina bombs Lilith and knocks her out. The next morning Lilith wakes up and realizes she is in her old village. She finds her home and the Flapjack the robot plays a message R2D2 style of her mother saying goodbye. Now so far there have been multiple “hints” that Lilith is the actual daughter of Pandora and not Tina. I leaned over to my nephew sitting next to me and said “the big reveal will be Lilith is the third key” and he was half asleep.
Five minutes later Lilith is revealed to be the Diamond in the Rough (oh Jamie Lee Curtis said the third key was a person), my nephew said I spoiled the movie for him. I am confident that had he kept awake throughout the movie he would have reached the same conclusion as me before the reveal. Tina and company try to open the portal but can’t, Atlas shows up with an army. Then Lilith teleports in and suddenly has flaming wings and telekinetic powers. They battle with Atlas and his men, all of henchmen die, but none of the main characters die. Even Kevin Hart shows up in time.
Battle battle battle. During this fight the Bane lookalike fights a Sauron lookalike and says “nobody kills me but me.” Which again I have to assume is something that enemy says all the time if you play the actual game. The battle over, Atlas has Tina in a choke hold and threatens to kill her. Lilith takes herself, Atlas, and Tina into the portal. The portal is just a bunch of floating cubes, and a giant monster that eats Atlas. Lilith and company go back to the city where the brothel is, and everyone has a nice party. Lilith flies around like a red angel (I think we call those devils though).
So to sum up, Borderplanets is a bizarre take on the movie Aladdin. Lilith is Aladdin, Tina is fake Aladdin and the rebellious princess but without the love interest. Flapjack is Abu. Atlas is Jafar. The woman soldier who was Kevin Hart’s love interest that I am only mentioning now is maybe… Iago. And the other characters don’t really slot into any of the Disney characters because there really are only like 5 roles in that movie. And there is no Genie, so you cannot wish this movie away. Try as you might.