Speaker 1: Hello, ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to another episode of geek
Verse podcast. I am your host, Taylor Field, and today
I am here for a late night review of b
Borderlands movie. This is a highly anticipated requested review. Some
might say, but I'm alone. No one else wanted to
take the time of day to see this movie, and
I will elaborate as to why maybe I should have
joined them in their footsteps.
Speaker 2: Maybe not.
Speaker 1: Am I glad I saw this movie. We're gonna find
out when we get into spoilers, but until then, you
can find us with your Internet connection in the search bar.
Geekverse dot Ca is our home base. Key vers Cast
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to shout out and thank everyone that joined us for
our nine year anniversary stream event. It was great. We
did a trivia, we did geek verses, we did a
whole bunch of things.
Speaker 2: It was a good time.
Speaker 1: All that content will be available in podcast form and
it is available on our YouTube currently. Also the wrestling
match so lots of fun stuff to check out. And
if you are a patron producer, then I'm gonna shout
you out here. Aaron Braden, April of Darkness, Jack Grant,
MUDs Sam and God Loves Me sixty nine. You guys
are fantastic. You guys are just absolutely amazing people. So
thank you very much. Now, I think as far as
content that is coming up, I'm gonna show the Alien
Romulus review that's coming.
Speaker 2: What else do we got?
Speaker 1: The newscasts, lots of stuff. We got D twenty three
dropping this weekend. We'll be covering that a lot of
cool things are gonna be populating from there. But other
than that, I think, yeah, it's gonna be a good time.
So I'm going to get into the non spoilers first,
and then I'm gonna branch off into the spoilers portion.
Speaker 2: Of this movie review. To start it off.
Speaker 1: Oh, I don't want to say that my excitement was
kind of sellied a little bit. I feel like, seeing
all the negativity around it and the zeros and whatnot,
it definitely made me apprehensive going into this theater.
Speaker 2: Now, it was a very nice theater.
Speaker 1: They're climbing seats and everything like that, so that was great,
But I was trying to be very unbiased, very neutral
going into this. There are a few things with the
music that just didn't necessarily stand out. There are a
couple songs that I really really like and it felt borderlandsy,
so I liked that they picked those songs and.
Speaker 2: Threw them in. That was really cool.
Speaker 1: But my experience personally with when it comes to Borderlands
is I play a little bit of one, didn't play
any three, didn't play any presequel, No Tina's Wonderland and
Borderlandes too. I played the living daylights out of that game.
Oh my gosh, me and my friends will be playing
it non stop. I can't remember how many times I
beat in that campaign. It was just the bees knees.
I love that game so much. It was so much fun.
That's kind of what really introduced me to the characters,
because I know, the first one you're obviously playing is
Roland and Lilith and these other characters, and you get
to know clap Trap and so forth. But when you
go into Borderlands two, those characters become and PCs that
you're interacting with, and I think that's just a great
way to kind of keep them incorporated into the story,
and Claptrap is just he's always a good time being
one of the main characters in those games narratives. So
that's kind of where my knowledge is limited, and I
think that helps because going into this movie, I don't.
Speaker 2: Have that pre existing.
Speaker 1: Kind of stance on perspective of what to expect and
what my expectations are and what to look for.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of Easter eggs that.
Speaker 1: Kind of go over my head, and that is unfortunate
because maybe I don't get to appreciate it as much,
so that can be a con but I see it
as more of a positive, and I think that it
makes me able to enjoy this a little bit more
than the majority of people will. There were people that
were laughing in my theater, and I'm happy to see
that they're mostly laughing at clap Trap jokes, which is great.
I think Jack Black did a good job voice in
clap Trap actually really really sounded pretty spot on, actually
like his character from the game, so I.
Speaker 2: Can definitely appreciate that.
Speaker 1: But there's a lot of things. While I said that
I'm not familiar with the backstory of a lot of
these characters, there are things that I think, okay, maybe
they changed.
Speaker 2: Okay, they're adding a little bit more in.
Speaker 1: Here in regards to backstory and just kind of character
arcs that I think people may not like, they may
be upset about. And I get that it's a video
game movie, and video game movies have that trouble of
changing the narrative, changing the lore or the history, all
that kind of stuff, So I can understand people's frustration
when it comes to these characters.
Speaker 2: And these characters are.
Speaker 1: Very much, really loved by the community and the fandom,
so I don't blame them.
Speaker 2: If I had to again, maybe.
Speaker 1: At some point rank all these video game movies, I
think I know where I would put this on that list.
Speaker 2: I have some that are really really high and then
others that are low.
Speaker 1: But I think I could place this probably somewhere in
the middle to lower, because it definitely is not devoid
of its problems. One thing in particular that bothers me
when you see this in movies is when you have
a character talking and they're trying to build up the
stakes here in this brief scene and something really happens.
It's tense, but oh, within literally within four seconds, you
have the scene set up a major like oh my
god moment and then it's resolved and then it cuts
to the next scene within a four to five seconds,
And I don't like when movies do that. It really
really pulls you out of it, and it just to me,
it feels like, Okay, that's the kind of movie we have,
that's the kind of movie.
Speaker 2: That they were trying to do.
Speaker 1: It feels rushed, and you're just gonna get consistent more
scenes like that through throughout the whole film, and I
don't like that. It's very unfortunate, But I digress. I'm
trying to think what else I can kind of cover
here without spoiling it. It was cool to see familiar
faces again. Like I said, there's lots of stuff in
here that a fan is going to be able to
latch onto, and there's gonna be a lot of things
that they're gonna not be able to appreciate because it's
just changing the story a little bit. And I don't
have any grievances with that because Assassin's Creed is a
similar kind of position where they changed a lot of
stuff with that movie and kind of drifted from the
idea of the games and what the characters are you
try to create your own thing. Big positive though, is
this movie had great set pieces.
Speaker 2: Holy smokes.
Speaker 1: I thought that everything looked really really fun, looked really
really in touch with that world of being on Pandora.
I really really appreciate the attention to detail that they
incorporated the character costumes, though some of it just felt
like it was a little overly cosplay little bit, not
that there's anything wrong with that, and maybe it's just
the aesthetic of this world. It just kind of feels
that way because I obviously it's the way the tone
and the saturation is in the games. It has that vibe,
and so when you're creating that in real life, it
definitely comes off as being.
Speaker 2: Cosplay.
Speaker 1: Like I guess, so I can't really dock at points
for that, but it is just the way that I
kind of interpreted. Again, though, the whole scenery of everything,
the action was really really fun. Really enjoyed that, and
I think that they had the actors and actresses had
a lot of fun. At least that's the energy that
I could pick up from this. There are some moments,
obviously where it feel like, Okay, they're just trying to
get through this scene and just.
Speaker 2: Move on with their life.
Speaker 1: But there was a lot of other sequences that I'm
not saying like they're given it. They're all like they're
getting like this is the billion dollar role here or
anything like that. But I could feel like it wasn't
totally devoid of effort. There wasn't a lot of passion,
but it was not devoid of effort. They were trying
to really like get into that role. And I think
that all the characters definitely jive well with each other
on screen. I think Kevin Hart was fun and Jamie
Lee Curtis was interesting in Kate's character as well. She
I think she did a really good job as Litith.
I actually really liked her.
Speaker 2: So would I see it again? I don't know. That
would be a tough one for me to say right now.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to get into the spoilers and then
come to a decision at the end of this review
on whether or not I would see it again. So
I'm gonna jump to a quick ad break right now,
and here's the Bee's Knees. If you are on Patreon,
well you get to skip this, so we'll be right back.
And we are back. So the story here, and this
is the story that again I'm thinking Hunter Iggy in
the chat, just me representing geek verse, So shout outs
to you, my friend. Let's see now, the narrative is
very different from what I.
Speaker 2: Am familiar with with Borderlands.
Speaker 1: Borlands is just filled with vault hunters, and obviously there's
a little bit more in depth narratives here. And while
I'm familiar with Borlands too, is handsome Jack and you're
just trying to deal with the Hyperium Corporation or Hyperion
Corporation and just got a bazillion guns. The guns factor
was not really represented much in this movie, and I
feel kind of bummed out about that. We have Roland
who's got his signature gun, and then we got Lilith
who's got her two.
Speaker 2: Guns, and that was pretty much it. I would have
loved to have seen a whole array, give me the
bazillion guns, or they're pulling.
Speaker 1: Guns out of everything and everywhere and just using them
and just having fun.
Speaker 2: That would have been great. Characters were using.
Speaker 1: Guns, but it didn't feel unique. It didn't feel like
it had that Borderlins vibe of bazilion guns. I mean,
you have all these weapons manufacturers like Atlas and Hyperion
and so forth, and so it's just I feel like
that was something that was lacking.
Speaker 2: But again, the attention to detail was really really fun.
Speaker 1: It was really really cool, So I can appreciate it,
but also I can be upset about it at the
same time. But the story here goes that we have
Pandora being a great, luscious planet, and then we have
basically iridium technology that is left behind by that ancient
alien race that humanity has been trying to acquire more of.
And Pandora has these vaults that well, specifically one vault
on this planet that is highly sought after. All the
vault hunters are here to get it. So they're on
the planet trying to get their way, and it's just
turned into.
Speaker 2: Chaos and destruction. The planet has just.
Speaker 1: Been obliterated, essentially turned into a wasteland. And so you
have Lilith, who is a bounty hunter. And this is
where I don't know much about her history. I just
know from border Lands, Okay, there's usually six sirens and
existence at any given time. Usually they're all drawn to
do and from my knowledge, I've seen maybe three, but
I know for sure too. Obviously there's Attle less, and
there's the one you play as in Borderlands two. So
those are the only ones I'm familiar with, and excuse
my lack there of Bordlands lore knowledge. So Lilith gets
basically a whole backstory arc in this movie.
Speaker 2: It's basically her like.
Speaker 1: They call it Borderlands, but they should just call it
Lilith the Borderlands Saga or something like that, because this
is essentially her movie. Well, it starts off with Tina
and Roland Roland breaking Tina out.
Speaker 2: I didn't know.
Speaker 1: A lot about Tina's history, so I can't speak to
this being accurate. But we learn, okay that this character
who like Atlas, is a real corporation of the game.
But the character that leads Atlas here, I'm not sure
if he is actually a real Borlands character or not,
but he's claiming to be Tina's father. But really, Tina
was created in a lab with the DNA from the
species of the iridium species, and so she was to
open up a vault because there's this whole concept that
they come with. Okay, there's the one vault with all
the iridium technology on Pandora, and it's going to be
a daughter of a Ridium that's going to open it up,
and so they were trying to create a descend into
a female or Ridium child, and they did that, but
we learned, Okay, she's not actually the one to do it,
and all in all, after everything's said and done, you
learn that Lilith is the one that's going to actually
open this vault and send this on our way through
this narrative. And that's that's something I kind of expected,
I guess, because I didn't know or think that there
was anything super special with Tina. Based on my experience
with the character, I know Lilith was a siren going
into this, and maybe that's what they were banking on
because most of the audience who hasn't played the game
is going to go see this and not pick up
on that. So they're going to think, oh, well, Lilith
is just a regular person. But no, Lilith has these
powers and it's able to teleport and fly and do
all these things because she's a Sien, and so she's
able to tap it into the superpower and that's exactly
what happens. I for a second thought that maybe they
were just going to scrap all that and they weren't
going to incorporate it because ninety percent of the movie
is her without her powers, and you get the last
ten percent, which is the final fight where she's just
going to town and she's insta powerful. She's Captain marvel
Tier within seconds, where she's just using everything, which is
kind of funny. But you get scenes with her mother,
which I don't know if it's her biological mother. You
get scenes with her. And now Tannas is a borderlines character,
but we learned that Jamie Lee Curtis, who plays her,
is kind of the character who took in Lilith and
was to raise her but just kind of discarded her.
Speaker 2: And so Lilis was raised by other.
Speaker 1: Bandits, pirates and whatnot and became a bounty hunter in
the wake of that. So there's a lot of things
here that again I'm not sure if that is the
official lore, but to me, it feels like they're kind
of creating their own thing. I'm pretty sure Tennis is
a lot younger in the games, and so this Tennis
is an older interpretation, and she's obsessed with this one
vault that you're trying to get into on Pandora.
Speaker 2: What else do.
Speaker 1: We have here, we talked about Atlas, Yeah, Patricia Tennis
and I guess she's in yeah, all of the Yeah
for Lance three as well, Children of the Vault, the
New Vault Hunters, so she's appeared quite a bit actually,
so that's kind of interesting. And then we had Moxie
up here as well, so that was pretty cool to
see her.
Speaker 2: I wasn't expecting that, but.
Speaker 1: I was definitely super super stoked to see that, being
an iconic character return with her bar and everything. That
was a lot of fun and talking to the Atlas
Lance of Atlas or Crimson Lance, I think what they're called,
the Atlas Soldiers, just dealing with them. So there were
some other fun characters are actors that popped in here
that I wasn't expecting. And so we also got Kreeg.
Kreeg is someone that came along. He was DLC and
Borlanz too, I believe, yeah, because remember playing is Sims
and he was a lot of fun, just a psycho
that you get to indulge in and play with. And
so I think they did Creeg really really well. His
dialogue was really really funny. It's always funny in the games.
Speaker 2: And whatnot, but.
Speaker 1: This is where they've rushed some things, because at the
very start, when you have Roland breaking Tina out of
her vault, all of a sudden, the cycle door bursts
off the vault and Kreeg walks out and just talking
not mumbo jumbo and attacks a few Crimson Lance agents
and then just agrees to help Roland and Tina.
Speaker 2: That's that, and we continued.
Speaker 1: On, and that's how it kind of feels throughout this
film because we get obviously Lilith, who's trying to capture
Tina bring Tina back to Atlas before she turns over
to the good side. Roland shows up points the gun
at Lilith after they had just fought off a bunch
of Crimson Lance soldiers, and it's just weird because Lilith
has says a few pieces of dialogue like, hey, what
happened back there? I'm on the WANTA posters now too.
I'm paraphrasing, of course, and so Roland just drops his
gun and says, Okay, we're all on the same team now.
It's like, what, really, this woman is a bounty hunter.
She was just here to take away your Uh You're like,
I don't want to call her an asset, but like
you're like Tina, the girl you're protecting, and you're just
willing to just turn your back towards her now and
trust her like I don't know.
Speaker 2: It was just very forgiving.
Speaker 1: And that's just one of the things that really progressed
this forward. Lilith also being a siren and having the
ability to detect all of a sudden, where one of
the key pieces to open the vault is is they
were they got past all of these psychos and then
they were in this huge storage warehouse and there's a
key that they're looking for in thousands of boxes Indiana
Jones warehouse style, and Lilith just all of a sudden
senses it.
Speaker 2: It's like, hey, guys, I found it again.
Speaker 1: It's just another one of those things that I feel
like that they just rushed and they just want to
to get through it and throw this in here a
plot device, and here we go continuing on our merry way.
Speaker 2: It was unfortunate that they did that.
Speaker 1: I just I wish that they took their time, because
I don't want to say that it's not got any soul,
it doesn't have any passion, but it feels like they
did things just because they knew they needed to tie
it into what the fandom likes and what the fandom
is familiar with. So just because you incorporate these characters
and you can make a familiar setting.
Speaker 2: And set the stage and the.
Speaker 1: Whole sequence, the whole movie basically being Borderlands like, it
doesn't mean that it's going to capture the support of
that fandom when you start speeding along, because you got
to have a good a good story. You got to
have good writing for these characters. And so just because
you have these cosmetic, cosmetically looking characters from the in there,
it's not going to do you justice. It's not good enough.
You have to make sure that you're writing them well.
You have to make sure that they're delivering on all
fronts as well. So that's something that really does pull
me out a little bit, and I wish that some
of these characters were written a little bit better. I
don't need them to be like top tier or anything
like that.
Speaker 2: I just it's a Borderlines movie.
Speaker 1: I understand it's gonna be a little wonky, and maybe
at the end of the day, coming off of Deadpool
and Wolverine, that's got its hand at play here because
there's a lot of jokes in here that just don't
work for me. They're trying to make you laugh, and
I'm really not laughing. And it's not that it's trying
to break the fourth wall, but they're definitely doing certain
things that are in the same limelight as Deadpool and
Wolverine in terms of humor, where they're trying to be funny,
but it's just not working. It just doesn't crack it
for me. That makes that people were laughing in my theater,
so I can respect that, and I'm glad that some
people enjoyed.
Speaker 2: It, but overly it was not like for the whole movie.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of jokes and the laughing was
not consistent, so that is unfortunate.
Speaker 2: But like I said, the effects were great.
Speaker 1: There was some stuff that it was a little bit questionable,
but most of the cgi I was pretty good. Practical
effects were nice, and so I can really really appreciate
what they were trying to do in certain fronts. So
the action and the choreography really really enjoyed that. But
at its core, I just I don't feel like we're
gonna be running to rewatch this movie. I might make
the geeks watch it. I might make that my Golden
Geeks pick for maybe worse movie, depending on what other
ones we got out to check my movie list on
letter box and see. But maybe I can force the
other geeks to watch this just so.
Speaker 2: They can get it out of their system.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I don't really have much else to add
to this review. It's a very very basic storyline where
they need to get to their destination, get to the
vault before the bad guys do and oh you know,
we're gonna randomly come together our ragtag team and now
we're a family and now we're a group. Oh amazing,
and that's that. And yeah, just that narrative, but rushed
and expedited a little bit faster. So I'm not super
happy with it. I wish that this was a little
bit better. And like I said, I was going in unbiased.
I was trying not to let the zeros hit me hard.
But I think that I can understand why this movie
has some zeros. I'm not gonna give it a zero today,
but I don't think I'm gonna pass it. I feel
like if it had just a little bit more mph
and a little bit more passion involved, then maybe I
could give it something, But I think I'm gonna go
a four out of ten on this. I enjoyed it
enough to give it that high of a rating, So
there's that. But whether it's my lack there of knowledge
and lore on the games that prevents me from appreciating
a lot of the extra detail that they put into this,
or the fact that it's my lack there of knowledge
that that really allows me to appreciate it to that point,
I mean, it's hard to say, but yeah, four out
of ten is where I'm gonna where I'm gonna stand
with it shows to.
Speaker 2: Sam and the chat, well, tune out when spoilers start.
Speaker 1: Well, lucky for you, spoilers did start, but I'm basically
at the end of my review, so you can tune
into the beginning. I think it's the first eight minutes
I get into the non spoilers. Worth spending the money
in cinema? Oh I no, No, it wasn't worth spending
the money in cinema, unfortunately, and I wish it was
the only Like I said before, like they do a
great job at the set pieces, and they really really
did add a lot of detail to the visuals, but
it's not enough to you really pull me in, and
again I saw on theaters because I wanted to review it.
But yeah, if I had to recommend it that you're
gonna drop like you're fifteen or thirteen hard earned dollars
on a movie like this, I don't think. So I
would honestly say, go see Deadpool and Wolverine again. If
you've already seen that, spend the fifteen bucks to go
see that movie again, because you'll walk out feeling super
satisfied and enjoy it even more than you would going
into seeing this. So maybe that's a very a bold statement,
but that's how I feel. I'm glad I did see
it though, so I could review it. But I could
have easily seen myself saying, hey, you know what, let's
just skip over or to the Wolverine and Deadpool showing
or Deadpool Wolverine showing playing in the.
Speaker 2: Theater next door. So that's that.
Speaker 1: But if you're a huge Borderlines fan and you, I
mean you love the franchise, then yeah, I go see it.
Like I'm a huge Assassine Creed fan, so I of
course I had to go see that movie in theaters
because you're getting your favorite franchise blasted on the big screens,
so I'm not going to argue with you on that.
But if you are, you know, you played a couple
of the games, you're sort of an average fan. Or
if you have not played any of the games, I
think you can put your money elsewhere and benefit more
greatly from that decision.
Speaker 2: But I digress. That's it. That's all I'm gonna speak
to tonight. So I hope you enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: I hope that my review helps you formulate a decision
to whether you want to see it or not, or
you're just gonna let it blow away in the wind
and be forgotten.
Speaker 2: It's up to you.
Speaker 1: But until then, I will see you in the search bar,
and thanks for tuning in.
Speaker 2: Have a good one.