Thanks to the game series’ variety of stories, Eli Roth’s Borderlands movie has the potential to birth a great sci-fi action franchise.
What’s the biggest obstacle to video game adaptations? The casting? Staying faithful without being redundant? Having someone who understands the intricate details of the series’ lore? All can prove tricky hurdles to get over. But most, especially older games, often suffer from a lack of stories to be told on the big screen. Given the ever-growing size and cost of major video games, that leaves a lot of waiting about or simply winging it when it comes to adaptation.
Ideally, you’d like a game series with a bountiful opportunity for stories without getting bogged down by one set of characters or situations. Something you can be fast and loose with on plot details and chronology, but still appeal to fans with the places and people of the franchise. The Borderlands series is one such example. Over its 15-year existence, it has rarely stuck to a singular protagonist or story beyond the overarching battle for power and vaults, and has enough flexibility to chop and change smaller aspects for adaptation.
Eli Roth’s Borderlands movie is clearly already taking advantage of that. It draws from aspects of the first three games, rewiring the story to include some popular characters from earlier in the chronology. So, we get fan favorites such as Tiny Tina and Krieg now instead of waiting.
Borderlands has a rich history to adapt
But doing that doesn’t stifle the chance to tell more stories. Pandora is a big place, and over the course of the series, we’ve met and played a huge amount of oddballs, psychopaths, sarcastic robots, and monstrous beasts, all teeming with potential for fresh adventures.
A successful Borderlands movie opens up the chance to keep some, if not all, of the main cast for further adventures, but they can be swapped in and out with those not used for the first film. That’s how the games handle things, after all.
Growing that potential more is the spinoffs. Tales from the Borderlands showed we could have enjoyable side-stories in this world. It doesn’t always have to be about Vault Hunters; it can tell stories about regular (well, what amounts to regular in the Borderlands universe) people in extraordinary situations. Then we have Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands. It refreshed the formula by infusing the sci-fi action with fantasy and a different flavor of fourth-wall-breaking fun.
It’s not just the stories and characters that could help birth a big franchise here. Borderlands’ Pandora is rife with cool and varied locations. From desert wastelands so synonymous with the franchise to wintry wilds and tropical islands, Pandora is a vividly colorful planet full of mad things to see and avoid being eaten by. The Pre-Sequel even visited Pandora’s moon. So, if the movie largely stays within the vast arid desert, there are plenty of fresh places to go for any sequels.
In Eli Roth, the film has a director well-versed in malevolent fun for all age ranges. From the nasty schlock of Cabin Fever and Thanksgiving to the family-friendly hi-jinks of The House with a Clock in its Wall. The latter is also where Roth previously worked with Borderlands cast members Jack Black and Cate Blanchett. So we know he’s got prominent actors on board who understand his vision.
So it’s fair to say Eli Roth’s Borderlands movie has all the ingredients to kickstart a fun, vibrant sci-fi action franchise. There could be a bright future for Borderlands on the big screen.
Borderlands is in theaters on August 9, 2024.
