Borderlands, the smash hit video game series from 2K Games, released their first trailer for the upcoming movie adaptation. The trailer, showing the cast of Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Edgar Ramírez, Ariana Greenblatt, Florian Munteanu, Gina Gershon, and Jamie Lee Curtis in action has fans and general audiences split over the look, feel, and casting.
Borderlands sees Lilith (Blanchett), an infamous bounty hunter with a mysterious past, reluctantly return to her home, Pandora, the most chaotic planet in the galaxy. Her mission is to find the missing daughter of Atlas (Ramírez), the universe’s most powerful S.O.B. Lilith forms an unexpected alliance with a ragtag team of misfits – Roland (Hart), a seasoned mercenary on a mission; Tiny Tina (Greenblatt), a feral pre-teen demolitionist; Krieg (Munteanu), Tina’s musclebound protector; Tannis (Curtis), the oddball scientist who’s seen it all; and Claptrap (Black), a wiseass robot.
Together, these unlikely heroes must battle an alien species and dangerous bandits to uncover one of Pandora’s most explosive secrets. The fate of the universe could be in their hands – but they’ll be fighting for something more: each other. Based on one of the best-selling videogame franchises of all time, welcome to BORDERLANDS.
“Get ready to joy puke your face off!” said Randy Pitchford, founder and CEO of the Gearbox Entertainment Company. “Borderlands is a fun, one-of-kind, wild ride where we’ve taken our beloved characters and themes of our award-winning, record-setting Borderlands universe and brought them into a live-action, vivid, vibrant, and exciting new cinematic experience that will thrill audiences with surprise, delight, and an extra dose of badonkadonk!”
The controversy hits mostly due to the casting of the characters in Borderlands, with Blanchett, Hart, and Curtis getting to brunt of “hardcore fans” anger due to their age or not being known as a “serious actor”. Also complained about were the locations used for shooting, with “fans” stating that the locations are “too generic” for the Apocalyptic Looter Shooter’s main planet of Pandora. This has led to “fan” backlash on X (Formerly known as Twitter), and the downvote ratio on any YouTube posting of the trailer.
According to complainers, and hate video content creators, Blanchett (Age 52) is too old to play the Siren Lilith, even though Blanchett looks like a more mature version of the character, though the Lilith character is alleged to be somewhere between 20 to 30 years old when Tales of the Borderlands (The prequel to the original Borderlands) was released, with no official age being stated ANYWHERE outside of fan speculation.
The same is being said about Jamie Lee Curtis as Dr. Tannis. According to self-proclaimed “experts” online, Dr. Tannis is somewhere in the same age bracket as Lilith in Borderlands, making her between 20 to 30 years of age. This means that Curtis, age 65, is too old for the character and the movie business in general. This is also done with no official media stating any age of the character. (Side note: Sources have stated that Curtis wanted a role in this movie as she has played and is a fan of the series)
Kevin Hart also cops his share of the fan hate too, mostly because people only see him as a joke comedy actor who doesn’t do serious roles, which is what these “fans” expect Roland to be. Hart is a comedian at heart, but he is also an actor who can do serious roles when he is required to do so. This is nothing more than fan expectation creating false negative expectations.
As a fan of Borderlands, with all the games played and finished many times by myself and with friends, I can understand some of the age criticism surrounding the movie, but I have faith in the actors involved that they will create a great comedy action movie experience that will do the game justice.
Borderlands, a COMEDY ACTION video game, becomes a COMEDY ACTION movie with a release date of August 9, 2024.
