It's the worst of all worlds

Disastrous 'Borderlands' alienates fans of the franchise and is incomprehensible to the casual viewer. And 'It Ends with Us' struggles with its subject matter, writes Clarisse Loughrey

- Clarisse Loughrey

Borderlands is a disaster. And while it might not singlehandedly undo the goodwill built up around recent video game adaptations – specifically television’s The Last of Us and Fallout – it’s dragged us back to a time when studios used to make these with all the grace and acuity of a drunk person attempting to place a 3am chicken nugget order.

The first mistake here may have been to even try to adapt Borderlands. Granted, it’s one of the bestselling franchises of all time, and its snarky take on the intergalactic, dystopian western is distinctive and well-known in its own right. But it’s also not a series you’ll regularly hear praised for its storytelling – take the controller out of the audience’s hands and put Hostel’s Eli Roth in the director’s chair, and all you can then do is simply bear witness to a series of profoundly unlikeable characters on a journey to achieve something we’ve been given no reason to care about.

It’s a worst-of-all-worlds situation. Lore is delivered with straitlaced, Zack Snyder-esque solemnity, as we’re introduced to the far-future planet of Pandora, an untamed territory where corporations and fortune seekers search out the contents of a hidden vault built by an ancient race known as Eridians. It can only be unlocked by a daughter of Eridia destined to do so. Oh, yes, there’s a prophecy in this one.

When Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt), daughter of CEO Atlas (Edgar Ramirez), is kidnapped by former mercenary Roland (Kevin Hart), a bounty hunter named Lilith (Cate Blanchett) is hired to retrieve her from Pandora. In time, a ragtag crew is assembled, complete with the muscle (Florian Munteanu’s Krieg), the brains (Jamie Lee Curtis’s scientist Tannis), and the irritating robot (the Jack Black-voiced Claptrap).