Gearbox’s Borderlands games are known for quite a few things, but the biggest among those is arguably its sense of humor. It was Borderlands 2 where the franchise’s sense of comedy really took shape, and the series has since been littered with humor largely in the vein of crass or internet humor. No surprise then that carries over to the live-action film, whose first clip is…well, it is what it is.
Lionsgate came to IGN Fan Fest with a new clip for the film, which features series mascot Claptrap (as voiced by Jack Black) shitting out a lot of bullets. Thankfully it doesn’t go on too long, but it’s still a bit of weirdness that probably lands more if you groove with the games’ general sense of humor.(Which can be legit funny sometimes, even outside the more-regarded Tales from the Borderlands spinoff!) If not…well, that visual’s in your head now, so sorry about that.
On the bright side, the rest of the clip has decent-looking action featuring the Vault Hunters—Roland (Kevin Hart), Tannis (Jamie Lee Curtis), Tina (Ariana Greenblatt), Krieg (Florian Munteau), and Lilith (Cate Blanchett) going up against a group of raiders. This part is the most Borderlands-ass part of the entire clip, minus how no one’s using of their class skills to make this fight significantly shorter. If you need something in this movie to latch onto, it looks like Blanchett will be your lifeline. She looks to be doing an alright impression of a sci-fi gunslinger, something the movie seems to recognize since she gets to be the most involved in this fight.
The bigger issue here might be that the clip is too sterile for its own good. Borderlands games aren’t bloody to the degree of a Mortal Kombat or Gears of War, but their approach to violence is delightfully cartoonish because the guns are goofy as all hell. There needs to be more flavor here; one of these guys needs a gun that melts these raiders or electrocutes or lights them on fire. (Maybe a combination of all three, since the later games have guns with two element types?)
Borderlands comes to theaters on August 9, and hopefully between now and then, the movie looks more like the games in the way that matters: endearingly stupid violence and humor that feels like there was intent behind it.
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