2020-2029, Film Review

Borderlands (2024)

Posted on August 28, 2024September 2, 2024 by Martin: Through the Silver Screen

**© Lionsgate Films, Summit Entertainment, Media Capital Technologies, Arad Productions, Picturestart, Gearbox Studios and 2K**

Borderlands – Film Review

Cast: Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Edgar Ramírez, Ariana Greenblatt, Florian Munteanu, Gina Gershon, Jamie Lee Curtis

Director: Eli Roth

Synopsis: A bounty hunter is tasked by a powerful businessman to find and rescue his daughter on an inhospitable planet…

Review: Film adaptations of video games offer filmmakers so much potential. There is no shortage of games that are developed with such scope in their world-building and their richly developed characters to represent ripe material for them to translate these incredible adventures to the big screen and introduce these stories to a wider audience. It is a fundamental aspect for anyone who sets about this task that they honour its source material and adapt it in a manner that delivers thrills for both fans of the games and wider audiences in general. Who knows, perhaps it could inspire some to pick up a controller and dive into the world on which it was inspired? While recent video games such as The Last of Us, Fallout and the two Sonic movies succeeded, Eli Roth’s adaptation of Gearbox Software’s Borderlands fails and fails miserably.

After a massive dump of exposition about the world of Pandora (sadly not that one) and why everyone in this world might be interested in this mysterious vault, we meet infamous bounty hunter Lilith (Blanchett) on some other planet whose name you almost certainly won’t remember once the credits have rolled. Lilith is approached by a powerful businessman named Atlas (Ramirez) who tasks her with finding and rescuing his daughter Tiny Tina (Greenblatt) as Tina may hold the key to unlocking whatever is being kept in this vault. Lilith reluctantly returns to Pandora to find Tina. Along the way, she encounters and joins forces with a mercenary named Roland (Hart) and the brutish Krieg (Munteau) with a rag-tag group of characters on a quest to find some MacGuffins on a quest so generic you have seen a million times before, and also done so much better. You will wish you were watching that movie and not this derivative pile of junk.

**“Somewhere down here is a better script than the one we used…”**

A rag-tag, oddball collection of personalities brought together by circumstances on a mission with significant consequences at stake. It cannot be denied that Roth is trying to channel the Guardians of the Galaxy vibe, with tonnes of mic-drops to boot. Unfortunately, unlike what James Gunn accomplished with his trilogy of the Galaxy’s most lovable collection of a-holes, the script, credited to Roth and Joe Crombie, does absolutely nothing to put a shred of development on any of these characters or why you should even remotely care about their mission and whether they succeed. The film, which initially went into production in 2021, later carried out reshoots in early 2023 overseen by Deadpool director Tim Miller. Craig Mazin – the showrunner of Chernobyl and co-showrunner of The Last of Us – later had his name removed from the project. One look at Mazin’s resume and he seems like the perfect writer to help adapt a video game franchise from the console to the screen. Yet he didn’t want his name anywhere near it. Go figure.

With a lazy and mind-numbingly boring script and painfully obvious green screen, things do not get much better when it comes to the performances. Even with ridiculously talented actors, the dialogue delivery is monotone, bland and tedious to sit through, with attempts at humour extremely juvenile and unfunny. Blanchett tries her best, but not even she can elevate this insipid material and neither can her fellow Oscar winner Jamie Lee Curtis. Kevin Hart as Roland the mercenary is completely ineffective and Florian Munteau’s Krieg comes across as an inferior, considerably less amusing version, of a certain Drax the Destroyer. Ariana Greenblatt can be thankful she has her great performances in projects like Barbie and Ahsoka to fall back on because, like just about everything else in the film, she comes across as obnoxious and annoying. Though, nothing is as nearly as annoying as Claptrap the robot, voiced by Jack Black. Clearly intended to be the comedic sidekick, he is excruciatingly unfunny and makes you wish someone would deactivate him and then blow him to smithereens several times over.

One can only speculate, but given Roth is known for his work in horror films, it could be reasonably assumed the film initally tried to go for a more R-rated tone in keeping with the source material only for the studio to stipulate that they stick to a PG-13 rating, hence the reshoots. An R-rating may have marginally improved matters, but when a film is this lazily written, shoddily edited and put together, it is beyond redeemable. With more than 77 million games sold (as of November 2022), the Borderlands games franchise is clearly doing something right. Fans of the games would be wise to stick to the world that exists on their consoles because this dull and uninspired mess deserves to be banished to the apocalyptic wasteland it came from and never heard from ever again.

Despite its talented cast, this substandard adaptation of the popular game franchise is devoid of a shred of personality and thoroughly deserves its place on the scrapheap of worst video game adaptations. A complete and total misfire.

2020-2029, Film Review

The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023)

Posted on April 25, 2023November 15, 2025 by Martin: Through the Silver Screen

The Super Mario Bros. Movie – Film Review

Cast: Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Day, Jack Black, Keegan-Michael Key, Seth Rogen, Fred Armisen

Directors: Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic

Synopsis: After being transported to the Mushroom Kingdom, Mario must join forces with Princess Peach to stop Bowser from conquering the world…

Review: With his signature red cap, overalls and signature moustache, it is not an exaggeration to say that ever since he made his first appearance in a Donkey Kong arcade video game in 1981, the character of Mario has become one of, if not the, most famous video game character of all time. Given his enormous influence in video games, it is perhaps somewhat surprising that the legendary Italian plumber has crossed over to the cinematic realm only once. Then again, given how poorly received both critically and commercially the 1993 film was, it is little wonder Nintendo exhibited uncertainty before giving another cinematic adventure with Mario the green ~~pipe,~~ sorry, green light. Now, 30 years after that unmitigated disaster, Nintendo has teamed up with Illumination to bring us a new cinematic incarnation which certainly captures the essence of the games, but sadly falls short of landing the gold star it would have hoped for.

Mario (Pratt) and Luigi (Day) are brothers who have started a plumbing business in New York City. While out on a job, the duo stumble across a pipe which transports Mario to the Mushroom Kingdom and Luigi to a realm controlled by the evil Bowser (Black). Determined to rescue his brother, Mario must team up with Princess Peach (Taylor-Joy) to save him and stop Bowser’s plans from taking over the Mushroom Kingdom. Such a plot feels ripped straight from a Mario game, and the film endeavours to feel as authentic to the games as possible, which will undoubtedly please long-time fans of the franchise. Yet, while striving for authenticity is to be commended, it also comes at a cost. Matthew Fogel’s screenplay opts for a simplistic approach of throwing as many recognisable elements from iconic Mario games of the past into the film, such as the racing, or Luigi’s Mansion, with seemingly little thought of a plot or a fully developed story. The use of these Easter Eggs will please long-time fans, but the world of Mario is so vast and rich, the opportunity was there to come up with a story which is not severely lacking and could not even be fixed with the help of a magic mushroom.

The subject of the voice casting was, to put it mildly, the topic of much discussion, with Chris Pratt’s casting as the voice of Mario being the decision which was by far and away the most debated. Pratt is an actor who has proven he has the potential to be a voice actor in comedies (The Lego Movie) and in more heartfelt emotional roles (Onward). The decision to have Mario and Luigi as brothers who hail from Brooklyn is a smart one and it makes for an easy adjustment for fans who might have been worried about Pratt attempting the familiar exaggerated Italian accent, though there is a fun little nod to that at the beginning of the film. The voice work across the board is functional towards the film’s paper-thin plot. Furthermore, since there’s barely a scintilla of character development in the majority of the characters, with the exceptions of Princess Peach and Bowser, it results in no emotional stakes in the ensuing adventure at all. Peach’s character is often reduced to the role of a damsel-in-distress in the games, yet she is thankfully proactive and asserts her leadership over the Mushroom Kingdom, while Jack Black’s portrayal of the King of the Koopas injects some much-needed personality and humour into the film, but it all counts for very little.

The animation is impressive in its detail as it perfectly captures the look and feel of a typical Mario game. However, the bar for animated films continues to be raised by studios across the board in recent years, and consequently, in spite of its phenomenal success at the box office with its Despicable Me franchise, Illumination’s efforts still pale in comparison to the efforts of its rival studios. Given the immense popularity of these characters, which have stood the test of time over multiple decades, there was so much potential for a proper big-screen adaptation which would successfully introduce him to a new generation and satisfy the audience members who grew up with the video games. It certainly accomplishes the former, but really misses the mark with the latter. Mamma Mia, what a missed opportunity!

Impressively animated, but a paper-thin story and severely undeveloped characters ensure this latest adaptation of the Nintendo franchise is devoid of any emotional stakes which made the games so iconic.

2000-2009, Film Review

King Kong (2005)

Posted on March 12, 2017 by Martin: Through the Silver Screen

Image is property of WingNut Films and Universal Pictures

King Kong – Film Review

Cast: Naomi Watts, Jack Black, Adrien Brody, Andy Serkis, Thomas Kretschmann, Evan Parke, Colin Hanks, Jamie Bell, Kyle Chandler

Director: Peter Jackson

Synopsis: A venture to make a film, led by an eccentric film-maker in the hope of capturing an uncharted piece of land on film leads to the discovery of a truly terrifying place, home to among other things, a giant ape…

Review: Of all the monsters to have featured in monster movies that have been released down the decades, there are perhaps only two monsters that have a claim to being the most iconic monsters to have ever graced the silver screen. One of these is of course Godzilla, and the other is of course Kong. Both have featured in many films in the past and have been pitted against each other once before (and will do so again in 2020!) For Kong however, his first foray on the big screen came in 1933, at a time when the World was in the midst of the Great Depression, and so for director Peter Jackson, having just come off his phenomenal success with the Lord of the Rings trilogy, decided to tackle this story about a gargantuan Ape.

Interestingly, the 1933 film was Jackson’s inspiration for wanting to become a filmmaker and it’s clear in each frame that Jackson creates that he has an immense passion for this story, and as such wanted to do his utmost to pay tribute to the original. Indeed, Great Depression USA is where he sets the scene where Ann Darrow (Watts) who’s been made redundant is seeking work and she comes across Carl Denham (Black) an eccentric filmmaker seeking a female lead on an adventure to film the mysterious Skull Island, which Kong calls home. When they foray to said island and Ann is taken prisoner by Kong, a rescue mission is launched, and some monkey mayhem ensues.

The story of this giant ape is mainly told through Ann’s eyes, and Naomi Watts is superb in this role. It might seem impossible that a woman and an ape could become so close, but her performance makes it so believable. As Ann’s human love interest, Adrien Brody also gives a stellar turn as Jack Driscoll, a famous playwright whom Ann is an enormous fan of, and there’s Jack Black’s Carl, who despite his ambition, is ultimately not a really nice fellow. The focus is primarily on these three, although there is perhaps a bit too much focus on some other characters who you don’t care about enough. As such, a considerable chunk could have been taken off its 3 hour running time.

Jackson, with the Lord of the Rings trilogy showed off his ability to make some jaw dropping compelling action scenes. Though there are some that feel a bit scrappy and in some ways incomplete, there are more than a few others that are just brilliant to watch, with more than a few iconic shots thrown in there for good measure. The special effects are truly phenomenal, all of the Skull Island residents are tremendously well realised, and if you have a fear of insects, one scene in particular might chill you to your core. Jackson again uses the New Zealand scenery as Skull Island, and there are more than a few spectacular shots. It’s so well realised it doesn’t feel like a movie set. The motion capture work that brings Kong to life is utterly tremendous and yet again Andy Serkis deserves enormous plaudits for his work with the technology in bringing characters such as these to life. That Oscar will surely come eventually. Although the film did manage to scoop three well deserved gongs, including one for visual effects.

When you think about a story about a 25 foot gorilla and a human female meeting and almost falling in love seems like a concept so ridiculous it should have been laughed out of production. Yet in 1933 it worked, and in 2005 it worked again, to great effect. It’s so effective that you might find yourself fighting back the tears once the dramatic final showdown on the top of the Empire State building has come to a close. And after this adventure has reached its conclusion, there might perhaps be just one question on your mind, does Beauty truly kill the Beast?