An hour after leaving a screening of a new movie Border areas The movie directed by Eli Roth (Hostel) and starring Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Ariana Greenblatt, I'm staring at a blinking cursor in a blank Google Doc, hoping for inspiration.
A live-action movie based on 2K and Gearbox’s wildly successful Edgelord video game series would certainly inspire a few hundred words, right? Sure, the star-studded cast, which includes several Oscar winners (and Jack Black), would spark creativity. Sure, the vibrant visuals, cacophonous explosions, and poop and pee jokes would break through the dam of writer’s block and send out a wave of witty words and pithy sentences. But I’m lost.
Border areas Not only is it bad, it's also demoralizing.
On the verge of collapse
I saw Border areas At an early screening at the Alamo Drafthouse, where cosplay was encouraged. No one was in costume, and the theater was solemnly silent, as if we were about to watch archival video of the deadliest World War II battle or found footage from 9/11. R-rated trailers had been released before that, leading me to question whether this Roth-directed film (known for its bloody, disgusting violence) was rated R (it wasn't).
Before I have a chance to double-check the rating, Cate Blanchett’s voice echoes through the theater. “A long time ago, our galaxy was ruled by an alien race,” she says, sounding oddly flat for an incredibly talented actor trying to deliver a fun, campy performance in yet another superficial 2017 movie. Thor: RagnarokAs Blanchett (who plays Lilith, a character who so captivated me in my early twenties that I had one of her quotes tattooed on me) introduces us to the film’s broad strokes with as much energy as a housewife mixing mood stabilizers and martinis in the ’50s, I’m immediately assaulted by aggressive, hasty cuts and flashy CGI images of guns, neon signs and Psycho.
Lilith says the Eridians laid the foundations of this galaxy, then disappeared, and that a hidden vault on the planet Pandora contains the powerful remnants of a long-lost civilization. “This all sounds like some crazy nonsense, doesn’t it?” Blanchett asks. I stifle a groan, taking a huge bite of my burger. To moviegoers, Border areas Compared to the story presented by the games, the film is incredibly linear and straightforward: Bounty hunter Lilith is hired by the head of weapons manufacturer Atlas Industries to track down his daughter Tiny Tina across Pandora.
We're introduced to almost the entire main cast pretty quickly: Hart as Roland, Greenblatt as Tiny Tina, Florian Munteanu as a Psycho named Kreig. Roland breaks Tiny Tina out of a facility in a fairly generic action scene, during which he punches a guard and calls her a “fake Stormtrooper-ass bitch.” I guess that's what this means Star wars There is in it Border areas The universe? It doesn't get any better from now on.
If you told me Border areas If you used AI for your dialogue, I would believe you without a doubt. Almost every line, delivered with the kind of fake liveliness I reserve for elementary school cheerleading competitions, is a limp “edgy” joke that wouldn't even merit a single Reddit vote, or “I'm too old for this shit” and “This is a Really “It's been a long day.” I could count on one hand the lines that are completely true—or at least the ones that aren't dripping with so much sarcasm that they're almost sticky. There's no humanity here, just people with no sense of humor.
When a needle drop of Muse's “Supermassive Black Hole” mixed in with a scene playing over speakers at the Pandoran bar, I nearly hit my head on the table. What are we doing here?
We need to talk about Tina
Happily, Border areas it's not a very long film, and the film's breakneck pace means we meet Jamie Lee Curtis's Tannis just as I need to go to the loo (I've had a beer). Curtis plays her with a socially awkward nervousness that I didn't expect from the actor, and while there's an attempt to give the character some personality, it's incredibly grating. But she's still tried – Blanchett slacks off, Hart isn't right for playing the serious guy, and Greenblatt tries his best with material that relies on a white character doing a black thing (which the film, thankfully, avoids), but even he can't salvage a line that requires him to say “badonkadonk” in the year 2024, our lord.
And also, I don't mean to be ageist, but why is everyone so stale? Lilith is originally 22 years old Border areas The play and Tannis are in their thirties; aside from the star power provided by casting Blanchett and Curtis, the only reason to age these characters is so they can play maternal figures to Greenblatt's Tina.
And therein lies the real problem: centering on Tina. The plot revolves around her believing she is Eridia’s child and the key to opening the vault, and the film places all of its emotional weight on a character who wears a bunny-eared headband and throws explosive teddy bears at people while spouting one-liners like an 11-year-old craving candy. Fortnite lobby. Despite Greenblatt's valiant efforts and Blanchett's solo efforts, it fails to evoke any empathy whatsoever. real They act by appearing together in scenes. It's like a Gears of War a movie with the Carmine brothers at its center—will be nerve-wracking from the get-go.
All of this takes place in a strange CGI world that sometimes looks good, but is mostly an unreadable green-screen mess of explosions or muddy, dark, blurry nonsense. Lilith's flame-orange hair and comic-book costume against a dusty, bland landscape and crumbling industrial buildings are visually and tonally jarring, as if the filmmakers were halfway through making a movie inspired by a cel-shaded world. Border areas and then dumped it all into the used sets Halo series. Speaking of costumes, I'd love to know what the budget was for the push-up bras. Tannis, Mad Moxxi, and Lilith have their breasts pushed up almost to their throats—it's 2006 and it looks so much like the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show that I couldn't help but chuckle. Boobs, am I right?
By the time the movie ends and Jack Black's Claptrap comes on screen during the credits to lament the loss of the Easter egg, I'm ready to go home and cleanse my palate. I need some proper 2000s junk, expensive needlepoints, and questionable costumes. I get home, collapse on the couch, and turn on the TV. Gossip Girl.At least this one has some personality.
The Border areas The movie isn't so good that it's surprising, and it isn't so bad that it's worth watching with hatred. It's just sad. It feels like the result of a bunch of suits sitting around a shiny mahogany table (like in that picture Key and Peel draft) and reminisced about the early 2000s, before the financial crisis, when the term “cancelled” was only used for TV shows, and Muse were one of the biggest rock bands on the planet.
Despite her best efforts, she lacks the humanity and personality to prove that she is a weirdo. She is the woman in the grocery store with the frozen pea on her head—That's so much crazyLove him!It shouldn't be.
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