Borderlands
Borderlands is what happens when a studio spends $115 million trying to turn a beloved M-rated video game into a PG-13 Guardians of the Galaxy knockoff.…
Full analysis below
This film draws you in for a significant portion of its runtime with traditional or neutral content before springing its woke agenda. Know before you go!
NOT A WOKE TRAP. Borderlands wears its ideological leanings openly from the first trailer. The female-dominated ensemble, the race-swapped Roland casting, and the girlboss Lilith protagonist were all visible in marketing materials long before release. Nothing is hidden or deployed as a late-film pivot. Conservative audiences who object to these choices had every opportunity to identify them before buying a ticket. This is a woke-leaning movie that advertised itself as such. Not a trap.
Our Verdict on Borderlands
Borderlands is what happens when a studio spends $115 million trying to turn a beloved M-rated video game into a PG-13 Guardians of the Galaxy knockoff. The result is a film so creatively bankrupt that it debuted at 0% on Rotten Tomatoes, earned a D+ CinemaScore from opening-weekend audiences, grossed $33 million against a $115 million production budget (plus $30 million in marketing), and lost Lionsgate an estimated $80 million. It is, by every measurable standard, one of the worst major studio releases of 2024.
The premise borrows loosely from the games. Lilith (Cate Blanchett), a bounty hunter, is hired by Atlas (Edgar Ramirez), a corporate villain, to retrieve his kidnapped daughter Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt) from the lawless planet Pandora. Once there, Lilith discovers that Atlas wants Tina for her ability to open an ancient alien vault. Lilith teams up with Roland (Kevin Hart), Krieg (Florian Munteanu), her foster mother Dr. Tannis (Jamie Lee Curtis), and the robot Claptrap (Jack Black) to protect Tina and reach the vault first.
If this sounds like every sci-fi action movie you've seen since 2014, that's because it is. The plot is a fetch quest interrupted by bus rides, convenient discoveries, and characters literally stumbling over plot devices. Lilith 'gets a feeling' about where to go. Things are found exactly when they need to be found. The vault key appears in an underground maze that the team navigates with minimal actual difficulty. Every narrative beat arrives on schedule with zero tension or surprise.
The ensemble, despite costing what must have been a significant portion of the budget in salary alone, generates approximately zero chemistry. Blanchett sleepwalks through a role that requires her to be a battle-hardened badass on a planet she abandoned as a child. She's a fine actress doing nothing with nothing. Hart's Roland is so marginal to the story that multiple reviewers reported forgetting he was in the film. The character who was a stoic military leader in the games becomes a background player who occasionally shoots things. Curtis collects a paycheck as the eccentric scientist foster mom. Jack Black voices Claptrap with the energy of someone recording dialogue during a lunch break.
The only cast member who seems calibrated to the material is Ariana Greenblatt as Tiny Tina, who brings actual manic energy to a role that demands it. Everyone else is either miscast, underwritten, or both.
The PG-13 rating is the film's original sin. Borderlands the video game franchise is defined by over-the-top violence, crude humor, dark comedy, and anarchic energy. The games are rated M for Mature. They feature exploding heads, rivers of blood, psychopaths screaming about meat, and humor that ranges from juvenile to genuinely transgressive. Stripping all of that away to chase a broader audience is like adapting Deadpool without the R rating. Oh wait, they did that too, and it also didn't work until they brought the R rating back.
Stunt coordinator Jimmy O'Dee confirmed that scenes with heads being blown up and feet being cut off were filmed and then cut to maintain PG-13. Eli Roth, a director whose entire career is built on graphic horror violence, was hired to make a sanitized family-friendly action comedy. The creative dissonance is staggering. Hiring Eli Roth and then telling him not to be Eli Roth is studio decision-making at its most self-defeating.
The production history tells the real story. Nine writers worked on the script across eight years. Craig Mazin wrote the original screenplay, then removed his name entirely. Tim Miller directed reshoots because Roth was busy with another movie. The studio reportedly hated Roth's original cut. The result is a film directed by two different people, written by nine different people, and produced by a committee that couldn't agree on what kind of movie they were making. It plays exactly like what it is: a corporate product assembled from spare parts by people who had conflicting visions and ultimately agreed on nothing.
The film's ideological content is secondary to its incompetence, but it's there. Lilith is structured as a Mary Sue. She has a tragic past, supernatural powers she doesn't know about, and the entire plot resolves when she accepts how special she truly is. The 'Firehawk' reveal at the climax is a chosen-one coronation that earns nothing because the film never builds toward it with any dramatic weight. The female-dominated ensemble relegates every male character to villain (Atlas), sidekick (Claptrap, Roland), or near-mute muscle (Krieg). This isn't an inherently woke choice. Plenty of great films center women. But when the male characters are systematically stripped of competence, agency, and screen time to ensure the female lead shines, it starts to look less like storytelling and more like quota-filling.
Kevin Hart's Roland is the most glaring example. In the games, Roland is the leader. He's a commanding military presence. He dies heroically in Borderlands 2 in a moment that devastated the fan community. In the movie, he's a short comedian doing a 'serious' turn that the film doesn't know how to use, so it mostly doesn't. Hart trained with Navy SEALs to prepare for a role that the script forgot to write.
The box office tells the definitive story. $8.6 million opening weekend. $33 million total worldwide. Against a combined production and marketing budget north of $145 million. Lionsgate lost an estimated $80 million. The film was pulled to digital just three weeks after theatrical release, an unprecedented speed that tells you exactly how fast the studio wanted to stop the bleeding.
Borderlands joins a long list of video game adaptations that failed because the people making them didn't understand or didn't care about what made the source material work. The Borderlands games are anarchic, violent, funny, and self-aware. The movie is sterile, safe, unfunny, and oblivious. It took everything distinctive about the franchise, sanded it down to nothing, and served the remainder in a Guardians of the Galaxy costume that doesn't fit.
10% on Rotten Tomatoes. 48% audience score. D+ CinemaScore. $80 million in losses. A stacked cast of Oscar winners and box office draws couldn't save it. Borderlands isn't just a bad video game movie. It's a case study in how not to adapt anything.
Woke Tropes & Content Analysis
Formula: Weighted Score = Severity × Authenticity Multiplier × Centrality Multiplier
🔴 Woke Tropes
| Trope | Severity | Authenticity | Centrality | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Girlboss Protagonist / Mary Sue | 4 | 1 | 1.8 | 7.2 |
| Systematic Male Marginalization | 3 | 1.4 | 1 | 4.2 |
| Source Material Character Alteration (Roland) | 3 | 1.4 | 0.5 | 2.1 |
| Sanitization of Source Material | 3 | 1 | 1 | 3 |
| Corporate Villain as Sole Male Authority | 2 | 1 | 0.5 | 1 |
| TOTAL WOKE | 17.5 | |||
🟢 Traditional Tropes
| Trope | Severity | Authenticity | Centrality | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Found Family / Chosen Bonds | 3 | 0.7 | 1.8 | 3.78 |
| Maternal Protection and Sacrifice | 3 | 0.7 | 1 | 2.1 |
| Anti-Corporate / Individual vs. Institution | 2 | 0.7 | 1 | 1.4 |
| Self-Reliance and Competence | 2 | 0.7 | 0.5 | 0.7 |
| Rejection of Authoritarian Control | 1 | 0.7 | 0.5 | 0.28 |
| TOTAL TRADITIONAL | 8.3 | |||
Score Margin: -9.2 WOKE
Director: Eli Roth
MAINSTREAM HOLLYWOOD / APOLITICAL GENRE. Roth is known for ultra-violent horror (Hostel, The Green Inferno, Thanksgiving) and operates within the Hollywood studio system without a distinct ideological brand. His work tends toward exploitation and genre filmmaking rather than political messaging. The Green Inferno drew accusations of racism for its portrayal of indigenous cannibals, but Roth framed it as homage to Italian cannibal films. He also directed the 2018 Death Wish remake, a property associated with conservative self-defense themes. Roth's ideological footprint is inconsistent and commercially driven rather than activist.Eli Roth is an American filmmaker born April 18, 1972. He came to prominence with Cabin Fever (2002) and became a leading figure of the 'Splat Pack' with Hostel (2005) and Hostel: Part II (2007). His filmography includes The Green Inferno (2013), Knock Knock (2015), Death Wish (2018), The House with a Clock in Its Walls (2018), Thanksgiving (2023), and Borderlands (2024). Roth also appeared as an actor in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds (2009). His directing career has bounced between horror, action, and family-friendly fare without a consistent ideological through-line. Borderlands represents his biggest-budget project and his biggest commercial failure. Reports indicate the studio was unhappy with Roth's original cut, leading to Tim Miller (Deadpool) being brought in for reshoots in early 2023. Craig Mazin, the original screenwriter and creator of HBO's Chernobyl and The Last of Us, removed his name from the project entirely, a devastating signal of creative disagreement. The final screenplay credit went to Roth and 'Joe Crombie,' with additional literary material credited to Aaron Berg, Oren Uziel, Juel Taylor, Tony Rettenmaier, Zak Olkewicz, Chris Bremner, and Sam Levinson. Seven additional writers on a single script is a reliable indicator of a troubled production.
Writer: Eli Roth & Joe Crombie (screenplay); additional literary material by Aaron Berg, Oren Uziel, Juel Taylor, Tony Rettenmaier, Zak Olkewicz, Chris Bremner, Sam Levinson
The credited screenplay is by Roth and 'Joe Crombie.' Craig Mazin (Chernobyl, The Last of Us) originally wrote the screenplay but removed his name from the project in June 2023, declining even to use a pseudonym. 'Joe Crombie' has no other credits and is widely believed to be either a pseudonym for another writer or a composite credit. The WGA listed no hyperlink to a Joe Crombie member page. The additional literary material credits read like a casualty list: Aaron Berg wrote an initial R-rated draft in 2016. Oren Uziel rewrote in 2018. Juel Taylor and Tony Rettenmaier rewrote in 2021. Zak Olkewicz wrote new pages for Tim Miller's reshoots. Chris Bremner and Sam Levinson contributed additional material. Nine writers across eight years of development hell. The result reads exactly like what it is: a script written and rewritten by committee until every trace of personality was sanded off.
Content Breakdown
Adult Viewer Insight
Conservative viewers will find Borderlands mildly annoying on the ideological front but mostly just boring. The girlboss structure is present but not aggressive enough to be genuinely offensive. It's more lazy than ideological. The real problem is quality. The film is tedious, unoriginal, and wastes its entire cast. If you're looking for ideological ammunition, there's some here: the female-first ensemble that sidelines every male character, the Mary Sue protagonist, the casting choices that prioritize star power and demographic boxes over character accuracy. But honestly? The movie isn't interesting enough to generate real outrage. It's not trying to lecture you. It's trying to be a fun space adventure and failing at every level. Save your money. Play the games instead. They're actually good, actually funny, and actually R-rated.
Parental Guidance
Rated PG-13 for sequences of action and violence, some suggestive material, and language. Despite the M-rated source material, the film contains no blood, no gore, no strong language, and no sexual content. The action is thoroughly sanitized. A robot defecates on screen for comedy. Some dark underground environments may be mildly scary for very young children. Safe for ages 10 and up. The bigger concern is your children's taste in cinema. This is bad enough to potentially damage their developing appreciation for good filmmaking.
Is Borderlands Safe for Kids?
Parents should know that Borderlands contains moderate profanity including occasional use of stronger language, though it avoids the heaviest expletives given its PG-13 target audience. Sexual content is minimal, with some innuendo and brief suggestive references but no nudity or sexual situations depicted on screen. Violence is action-movie standard for the sci-fi genre, featuring gunfire, explosions, and combat sequences with alien creatures and armed antagonists. The action is stylized rather than realistic, with minimal blood or gore shown. Most violent moments are played for comedic effect rather than dramatic impact. Alcohol and drug use appear in the film, primarily as background elements in a sci-fi setting. No substance abuse is glorified, though drugs are referenced and occasionally visible in the narrative context. Spiritual content is minimal. There are no significant religious references, positive or negative, that would concern most families from either perspective. The film's PG-13 rating generally aligns with its content, making it technically accessible to younger viewers. However, given the action-adventure tone and occasional strong language, parental discretion is recommended for children under 10. Teenagers 13 and older should find the content generally appropriate, though the film's poor critical reception suggests parents may want to preview it themselves or consider it a rental rather than a theatrical experience.
Find Borderlands on Amazon Prime Video, rent, or buy:
▶ Stream or Buy on AmazonAs an Amazon Associate, VirtueVigil earns from qualifying purchases.
Community Discussion 0
Subscribe to comment.
Join the VirtueVigil community to share your perspective on this review.