Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Borderlands Movie Review - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: August 12, 2024

Tim, Mike, and Nick give their thoughts on the 2024 Borderlands movie. Run of Show - - Start - Housekeeping - Spoiler-Free Borderlands Movie Review - Ads - Full Borderlands Spoilers Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Kind of Funny membership drive is happening. To celebrate, we put up to formerly exclusive Gregways over the weekend, and we're now letting everyone enjoy your membership exclusive call-ins for weekly happy hours. If you love what we do and haven't supported or haven't supported in a while, come on back for August and pitch in on patreon.com slash kind of funny or YouTube.com slash kind of funny games with your Kind of Funny membership. What's up and welcome back to the Kind of Funny Gamescast slash screencast. Monday, August 12, 2024.

It's both because we're talking about a video game movie here. We're giving our review of Borderlands, the movie. We're going to start off spoiler-free, but then pretty quickly, we're going to get spoiler-full. So if you don't want to be spoiled, once we make it very clear we're getting into that point, you might want to bounce off. But, you know, you just want to have fun and hear us talk about

whether we liked or didn't like this movie in a full spoiler form. You're going to want to hang out with us for the next, I don't know, 45 minutes or so, and it's going to be a good time. If you have super chats you want to get in, if you have questions about this movie, please, super chat away. And we'll get to them throughout the show.

Of course, I am your host, Tim Geddes. I am joined today by the Master of Hype Snowbike Mike. Ball hunter. Ball hunter, baby. As you know, Tim, the Olympics have now ended. And of course, I'm repping by Team USA Winbreaker from the Atlanta, 1996 Olympics. Of course. The perfect time to wrap him is after the Olympics.

Yes, decades after. But ladies and gentlemen, as you know, I am a vault hunter. at heart. And I'm the number one borderlands fan here in the office baby. And so I had to get excited for the movie with both of you. Producer slash producer Dick Scarpino. What do you think about

the shade of this shirt? First of them, I love it. And Mike's been rocking all pink ever since he got super into Chapel Rome. So I'm excited for him. I'm excited for him to express himself in this manner. Yeah, Kevin showed up with a box and he said would you like to wear this during your review? And I said, Kevin, I'll wear this. And then I

opened it up today and I said, groovy baby. That's definitely. That looks like an Etsy shirt. I just want you to know that. Like somebody made that shirt and now 2K is going to sue them. That shirt looks like when you take it off, it will have dyed your skin. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? It also does it help that you're hell of sunburned right now.

It's not helping you. Chris Sankham was like, oh no, Mike, you didn't get someone and I was like, my face feels sunburned Chris Sanker. Like we were out there and he's like, you had a cowboy hat on. You were fully clothed. Like, you're fine. My guy's like, no, no, I got sunburn for sure. You definitely. I was kissed by the sun. And I was kissed by Chapel Roan. goodness, man. It was a great time.

Can't wait to tell you about it. On this week's kind of funny podcast, this Thursday, I will share the shenanigans from outside lands that me and Chris Anka got into and trust me, you don't want to miss it. Don't want to miss it. It's a hard time holding it back from Nick right now. That's how good it is. Nick, I'm liking the volume of your hair

right now. Thank you. There's a height to this thing. Yeah, I had him go shorter with it so we kind of stick up a little bit. I'm digging it right now. You're giving me vibes of Logan. Not from Logan though, but from Deadpool, Wolverine stuff. Okay, I'll take that. I'll take that. I mean, any Hugh Jackman reference to me in a positive light is good. Yeah. As long as it's not, uh, comic accurate Wolverine. I'll take that.

You did that yourself. You did that yourself. But everybody, remember, we are kind of funny. We are a live talk show network that each and every weekday. We're hanging out all day on Twitch and YouTube. We do kind of funny games daily. We just did that breaking down all of the high fire rush news. Mike, hi-fi rush is saved. Chaparone saved high-fi rush. She did. But yeah, that's pretty special to see that. some great news. So make sure to check out games daily as the team discusses that awesome one and see what the future may hold. After this we have Mike and Andy doing a little

just chatting stream and then later this afternoon if you're a kind of funny member you get a Gregway and you also get to watch the live recording of Twisters in review. It's going to be a great time for everybody. Thank you to our Patreon producers Carl Jacobs and Delaney Twining. Today we are brought to you by Monster Hunter now but

we'll tell you about that later for now. We're getting in to so far our spoiler free review of Borderlands the movie. Tots, dots, dots, Tots, Tots, Tats. Thank you. Top of the show, everybody.

Let's see, where do I want to start with this one? I mean, I think we're all aligned on this. I know, but, like, I want to know how aligned we are. So let's, let's start with Nick Scarpino. Yeah. What did you think about Borderland? Spoiler free. And what would you give it on the kind of funny scale of one to 10?

One to 10 kind of funny scale of Borderlands. You know, watching the trailer for this movie going into it, I was not expecting much. And unfortunately, it actually didn't even live up to those expectations. This movie is barely a movie. It barely inks by with a plot that's somewhat coherent. And it has the cardinal sin of any pop kind of big budget action movie in that it is just boring. It was just not a fun time. And it pains me to say that because, as you know, I'm a big Kate Blanchett fan.

I love Jamie Lee Curtis. I'm a big Kevin Hart fan. You put all them in a movie together and you wrap that into the wackiness and the craziness and the hyperviolence that is borderlands. And I'm thinking to myself, this might be one of those movies

that I champion for the rest of my life and I stand by like the heat. True. Like all these other movies are like, no, you guys don't understand. It's just like I was hoping I'd go into this and watch it and there would be some kernel of awesomeness

that would make this eventually the cult classic that, you know, the big trouble and little china has become for me or these other movies that I love, that, you know, they're niche and they're, you know, they're cult classics. But unfortunately, this movie, I think it really, really struggled with whatever was happening in the development process.

And when it comes together on screen, it's just bad. So I would give this a three out of ten. Three out of ten, a bad on the kind of funny scale. Mike, what did you think of Borderlands? What would you give it on the scale? You know, I am the number one Borderlands fan in the office. I was coming in with high hopes for this one. And they completely missed the mark.

this movie is bad. This movie was an awful time at the theaters, and I did not have fun. I think the biggest critique walking out of it was Kevin Hart didn't make me laugh once. And I am a Kevin Hart mega fan. And anything he does usually makes me laugh. And somehow, for an hour and a half,

we had Kevin Hart on screen, and I didn't laugh a single time. And that pains me to say. He got me at the very beginning. And that was it, unfortunately. I want to give the props where they're due, because we've seen a lot in the review. but for real Cape Lanchette as Lilith and Jack Black as Claptrap were perfect. Like truly honestly, if it was just those two and we redid the script, that would be a Funns

Borderlands movie. She portrayed Lilith so well. She looked like Lilith. She acted like Lilith. I loved that. Jack Black, I know everybody's like, clap track sucks. He's too much. He was too much.

But that's exactly what the character is. He was really good. Those two together were a lot of fun. everything else about the movie. The plot, the non-licensed music. There was no music from Borderlands of the games in this movie. There was no bang. There was no fun when it came to the soundtrack.

And then on top of that, there was no gore, Tim. There was no wowing gore. This was definitely made to be like a lighthearted PG-13 movie. And it just missed all of the marks from Borderlands. So for me, this is a two out of ten awful movie. Whoa. This is awful. This was tough.

I'm very interested to come to talk to you guys about this because I've maybe played 15 minutes of Borderlands here and there just to grab assets for stuff. So you guys coming at this from the perspective of having played the game and taking, like wanting more of that vibe to this, I think it's going to be very fascinating for me to hear. Yeah. So from my perspective, I actually am not a Borderlands player. My experience of Borderlands is watching Alfredo play through the first two games. And like, so I have a lot of exposure to it. I get it, but it is definitely not something that I would say I am a fan of. Maybe back when it first came out, I appreciate it for what it was.

And it having the license music and those amazing openings, it was like, man, video games are changing. This is so crazy. Things they're saying and doing like, this feels edgy and different, right? Being removed from that over a decade later and this movie coming out, I got to say, this movie is a three out of ten. This is a bad, bad movie. I don't know that I would go as far as giving it a.

too awful? I don't really know why. I don't know what it is, like the difference. It was coherent enough to not be awful enough. Yeah. And I can understand that if you were watching this on a Sunday at 3 p.m. You're eating some Chipotle with your lovely wife and she gets up 20 minutes into this movie goes and I'm going to go read

in the bedroom and you're like, I'll keep rocking this and then you turn off 40 minutes in. It's not such a specific scenario there. I'm just saying, you're just building. People don't have this stuff. I mean, if you got this for free, it's watchable. It's in the background.

It is watchable, but it's not worth watching at all. And that's the thing. I think that it's definitively, this is a bad movie. Like, it is, it lacks the fun. It is boring. I feel like the biggest crime it commits is it feels like playing a video game, but like not any of the fun parts. It, the plot of the entire thing and the way that characters are introduced

feels like you're playing an open world game and there's the main storyline, but you never get to it. You're just doing a whole bunch of random side things. And then all of a sudden, and you accidentally fall into one of the main plots. And it's like, wait, we're doing this now? This doesn't even make sense. It feels just very, very un...

There's no, like, actual goal to it besides just kind of like going for action scenes and going for laughs. And when neither the action scenes nor laughs hit at all, by the time that the characters get together, they're like, now we got to go do this thing. I kept looking over at Nick and being like, why?

Why? There's another place we've got to go. There's a really interesting. Another area to get to? What are we doing here? Yeah, there's a really interesting moment that we'll get to when we go, spoiler, where, you know, Kate Blanchett's character sort of has to make a choice. And she makes a choice. And then she rationalized that choice and go, that doesn't, why?

That doesn't make any sense. You're just literally, it's as if they were to say, like, we, like a Deadpool, when T.J. Miller has that library is like, we have to do this thing because of the plot. Yeah. Because it'll further the plot. And that's pretty much it. Obviously, in Deadpool, that was a joke. That was a joke. That was funny.

Whatever. In this, though, like the excuse they come up to do the thing and what the thing is, none of it's fun. And like none of it. It's not like, oh, well, whatever. They just did that to get to this fun, cool thing. They just do it to get to another thing that is bewildering. Like some of the back and forth and like some of the lines of dialogue after some action scenes that we'll talk about spoilers where it's like, oh, I can do this thing now. And you're like, what the fuck?

Why would you say that? Why did you do it? Like, it just is so just thrown together in a way that like, it feels. feels borderlands. I guess some credit I can give it is Cape Lanchette was fun to watch. I can't even say something nice about it. I immediately have to be like, but Tiny Tina was one of the worst things I've ever seen on film.

Terrible. I love that actress. I'm I know. I've become a fan of her and this I think is a, it's a demonstrable step back. I'm a little concerned about her future. I mean, I was, I joked around, but I was like, you know, in the 90s, if this movie had come out, it would have been a career ending movie for a lot of these people. Like this would have been the you're never going to be in a AAA film ever again after this. And thankfully, I think it's flying under.

I mean, Kate Lanchett's an Academy Award winner for Christ's sake. She's going to be fine. Jack Black's going to be fine. Kevin Hart's going to be fine doing his B movies on Netflix. So all that stuff's going to be good. But for that, for the actress that played Tiny Tina, I'm like, I don't know, man. That was such a, like, everything that went into that performance was so ill-conceived that I just, I feel bad for her and for pretty much everyone that worked on that film.

Yeah, it was. It was upsetting for sure. But I think the other positive I'd give it is that it looked like Borderlands. Like there was never a moment I was watching the movie that I wasn't like, this is Borderlands, which there's been a lot of video game adaptations or comic book adaptations or things wrong. I'm like, why wouldn't they just wear the outfits or why wouldn't they just say the thing or do the whatever? This did it all. It just came together in a way of like, okay, but why?

Maybe we didn't need this. But they did it all. And this is what was crazy to me is they did it all. and they did it all on what felt like a $20 to $50 million budget. In that, you know, the first time we see, I'm going to the psycho character, right? One of the psychos with the masks. The mask looks like something you bought. You literally would buy like a Halloween spirit store or a Spirit Halloween store.

The look of the film, every time they go anywhere on Pandora, it feels like it's in the volume and it's the same set that they used every single place. So everything felt like it was such a low budget version. of this that I almost thought, oh, I wish they lead more into that and just kind of, you know, scaled it back a little bit more to make it kind of Deadpool 1ish, where, you know, it's a small little, sort of self-contained story because they obviously didn't have the budget tell this great and stream of a story. And then we walk out and then you told me the budget was $120 million. And I was like, somebody needs to check Eli Roth's bank account because there's $100 million

sitting there somewhere that they did not get put on this movie. I mean, look at the actors, right? Like, I feel like you can see where the budget went. And it was that. But I mean, Kevin Hart's not making. What's his question? quote for a movie like this. A mill. Jack Black's 95. No way. No way. Kevin Hart's not putting butts in seats. 15 million. I think it's over 10. I wouldn't be surprised if it was 15. I mean, I'm looking at like the big three here. Like you said, they're all getting 10 million plus to come and do this out of their schedules. Cape Lanchette, maybe. JLC? JLC? I don't know, man. I don't think JLC is getting that. Did you do this type of movie?

I think she's getting paid. Maybe. I think the three of them are getting a large chunk of this. just to waste their time making this movie. Man, I'll tell you what, though. And that's the saddest thing about this, is that they could have taken some relatively up-and-comer, no-name actors put them in this. And I think it would have been every bit as good of a movie, if not better.

There is that sort of like, there is that sort of two ways you can go with movies like this, right? Where it's either you go Matrix 1 or Matrix 3. And unfortunately, if they tried to go Matrix 3 with this, and it just did not work out. They needed constraints. They needed someone to come in creatively and say, hey, what can we do with the smaller budget?

And they needed to really go back to some other films of this ilk and study why those films work. One of the things that I wanted this to be so badly was I wanted this to be the fifth element. I wanted it to be a movie that was just really fun and really creative and really wacky and really weird. And it just did not hit on that level. Unfortunately, it hits closer to like a Pluto Nash, which is a movie. Oh my God. Which is a movie that I kept coming back to. I was like.

I was like, I want this movie to be like, I want this movie to be a combination of the fifth element and, and a total recall where it's like crazy and weird, wacky and violent and all sorts of things, but creative. I want it to be creative. And unfortunately, I just kept coming back to him like, this is Pluto and a hash all over again. This is just a massive, massive, massive failure. And, you know, what's interesting is the Guardians of the Galaxy of it all, right? Like, when we see the trailers for this, it's like, clearly they're going for a Guardian's vibe.

Clearly they're missing it. Like the Guardian's vibe seems like something that's easy to imitate, but the reality is it's the jokes and the characters all come from a place of heart. They all come from James Gunn curating this group perfectly to be more than just the slapstick jokes and whatever. It's like it's the perfectly used F word. You know what I mean? Things like that. Whereas this is just kind of like, oh, it kind of looks like it.

Like it feels like a cosplay of it, like a really bad cosplay. It felt like a bad YouTube video. It really, really did. It did. And like in some of those ways, like I'll give it as a positive and I'm being very, very like trying to look for the good here.

This did feel like a 2009 Borderlands fan film just with a big ass budget. Yeah. But and it was like kind of crazy to see Cape Lanchett in it. It's like, well that's weird. But like that's at the end of the day, it's like you need to be more than just a fan film

if you're going to be a major motion picture. Like there has to be something real there, something worth showing. And I feel like, even just the cinematography of this movie is ass it's it's garbage like it's not good and i and i again i keep coming back to i bet they filmed it in the volume because i'm pretty sure they did i haven't looked it up but all of that just has that vapid sort of like samey samey feeling of it and then the interiors were just tiny and they just didn't do anything with this film that was anywhere close to

remotely interesting at all yeah and uh there was a ton of obviously behind the scenes like issues with all of this turmoil but like craig mazen was originally writing the script. Let's talk about that for a second, right? Because, you know, the sad thing is every time a adaptation comes to screen and feels like this, it just, it fuels the fire of like, hey, you can't make a good, you can't do this, right? Like, the Halo series was very lackluster. This movie is obviously not pushing us forward at all with, you know, having video games transition into films. But then you look at the last of us. And you go, well, that's an example of like, you know, or fallout. Those are examples of like done well. How did we miss them? How did we set ourselves back 20 years,

with this film. Sorry, I interrupted you. No, I mean, Craig Mason, who wrote The Last of Us, or at least a lot of it, also Chernobyl, wrote the original script for this, and then his script had been rewritten multiple times and eventually by Roth towards the end of it.

And Tim Miller, who... I was going to say, he... Eli Roth was brought in as a second director, right? Tim Miller, who was... Deadpool 1? Tim Miller was Deadpool 2. Deadpool 1. Deadpool 1. He ended up coming in for some

reshoots for some of the action scenes, but it was just too late. So was Eli Roth the original director on this? Was he always the person that was supposed to be on this? The show was there was an original plan for the movie and then it kind of fell through, but then when it came back, Eli Roth was attached to direct. He was an interesting choice for this. I don't know. It's so weird to me when people go, hey, let's grab a director who is largely known for

like ensemble, low budget horror movies. Let's bring him into direct this $120 million. like, summer blockbuster action film. I don't know that he was the right choice for this. The writing was, I think the writing is the biggest problem with this film in that all the dialogue feels just like,

hey, let's make this up as we go along. And obviously when you're talking about a movie where you, you know, hit the nail right of the head, you could tell they really were like, we want this to be the Guardians of the Galaxy, like a spiritual successor to that.

But the writing is where you got to start. You got to flesh these characters out. You got to give me a reason to care about each. and every one of the characters that's in this ensemble, and you put them together, and they have to clash a little bit and then form together. But man, they were just,

you want to talk about generic AI written dialogue. This feels like an AI film. And they gave all the characters a moment and not a single one hit. Like when they, like, oh, this guy's doing this thing. It's like,

oh, God, do I don't want to see this. Can we just move on to the next thing? Oh, at one point I legitimately, like, I spaced out for a bit because this movie's so boring that Mike

sort of fell asleep a little bit. I had to nudge him to wake him up. But I literally reached, from my Apple TV emot, try to fast forward it. And I was like, oh, wait, we're in the movie theater. I can't do this. It was just us three. There was like two people behind this.

And a family behind us, and they were getting restless. I wanted so badly just to talk to them the entire time. How are you enjoying this film? Because they were not enjoying that film. Yeah, by that 45-minute market, we all in the theater were doing this, looking for any way to get out of that. It really did just keep going. The first 15 minutes, I was like, you got it.

Like, let's do this. And then the next 15 minutes, I was like, what are we doing? Then the next 15 minutes, I was like, man, man, what are we doing? doing y'all and then it became the second half and it's like this has to end now we have to get out of this movie yeah by the time we get to the climax which is just all boring and and terrible i and then the the sort of reveal of the climax which i'm like okay what are we talking about so uh what we'll get into spoilers in just a second i just want to see this movie was an hour and 42 minutes i know we talk a lot on kind of funny it felt like it was three hours it felt like a

An hour 42 minutes is nothing. It should have been, it should have gone by like that, and it should have left me wanting more. It should have been an hour 30. You cut out a little bit of it, and it's Kate Blanchette chewing up scenery, having fun with that bad wig. And then we're in and we're out. Oh, man, that wig was sweet. I will say, to say one nice thing about it, I would watch Kate Blanchett fucking stare at a wall for two hours. She's so good and so fun.

And she does the best she possibly can with the material given to her in this, which is not much. But she did something. Like I said, it should have just been her and Jack Black. Should have just been a Lilith movie and just let those two go. Well, there was one other element, though, that this movie needed, that I'm happy that it had. But we'll talk about that in a full spoiler breakdown now. We're about to get into full spoilers right after a word from our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Monster Hunter Now.

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And we're back. People in the chat are questioning like how, like what spoilers could even be in this movie. And I'm going to let you know there's not anything really. But there is one thing that we need to talk about in as much depth as we possibly can. Let's get deep. Let's talk about it. Because the one thing that brought me. me such great joy. Any time it happened was Bobby Lee. Bobby Lee in this movie, first off,

did not belong in the movie just at all. He does not belong in the movie. Why is he here? And second off, did he have a script? Or was it just somebody saying something to him and him just laughing at them? Like, all he does is just laugh and it made me laugh every fucking time. But like, for the wrong reasons, man. It was, it just felt he knew how stupid it was. And he's just there like doing the Bobby Lee laugh. And I'm like, all right, great. This is how that script, you ready, you're Bobby Lee. Yeah. I'm Kevin Hart.

Yeah. You're my guy. I know you won't rat on us. Oh, Bobby, you're the best, man. Don't worry about it. We're going to sneak out the back door. Bobby, Bobby Lee is a guy that you just bring in because you're bored day of on set. And you're like, can we just get Bobby here to hang out with us for a little bit?

Crazy. I think obviously they brought him in that character into Adelaide a levity to a movie that didn't, like, the desperately needed moments of silliness. And Bobby Lee did what Bobby Lee does, which is come in and be Bobby Lee for 30 seconds on script on film. Bobby Lee he was. Like there's a lot of times especially for like, it wasn't a cameo but like a smaller role where it's like

oh, they're just playing themselves. This felt like I honestly, I can't even put words to it. Like it was just almost too authentically just him. It was like hey Bobby Lee's been hanging out with me this week. Can he show up to the set? And they were like, oh my God, Bobby Lee, of course. They're like Bobby, why don't you go stand out there for a couple minutes? And they just

I mean, the first scene of him was just looking at the camera awkwardly like, for real. And you're like, I guess Bobby Lee's here. Let's do this. Did you see, did you follow anything that he did with, I think it's Ben from IGN. Would you watch those? Oh, yeah. Or he just called him a loser.

And then at the perimeter, he was like, oh, you remember Bob? You call me a loser. Oh, God. He's so funny. But yeah, I mean, Bobby Lee being in this. I mean, Janini Gavakar being in this, all of these people that you have that you're like, this is, the movie had a lot of talent in it. Oh, yeah.

So the fact that it was, it sort of starts. I don't know if you want to go beat for beat for beat or not. No, we don't know. No, we definitely don't need. Talk about anything you want to talk about. I want to talk about the beginning of this, right? We start in this prison of some sort where Kevin Hart is trying to break out Tiny Tina. And this scene, I'm like, we get a moment of laughter here where it's, first off, the hallways and all the sets and this don't look good.

They look like a B movie or even, dare I say, like a Netflix original sci-fi movie. But that's okay, because in my brain still I'm thinking, oh, they only had $20 million for this movie or whatever. I'm still thinking like they only had, they didn't have enough money. So that's totally fine. It opens up and she goes, oh, he goes, your father sent me to rescue you. And she goes, my father sent his shortest soldier. And that's fucking funny.

And then Kevin Hart has a mom. That's fucking funny, everybody. Kevin Hart has a moment where he kind of gives her shit. And I was like, oh, okay, we're going to get some, at the very least some fun back and forth. Then we go into the hallway. And we get a kind of fun hallway fight scene where I'm like, okay, Kevin Hart can move. He's moving around.

He's like, they got the world's shortest stunt double to double Kevin Hart. and he's moving around. And then we get to the psycho breaking out in the bad spirit Halloween costume and he's terrible. Do you know who he is? No, who is he? He's a boxer of some sort.

Forgetting his name, from Shang Chi, Razor Fist. Oh, Razor Fist. Okay, cool. So that guy was okay in Shang Chi. And in this, they gave him. No, but also he wasn't. He was okay.

In this, he starts talking and I was like, oh God, please don't let this guy be like a long for the ride the entire time because they gave him absolutely nothing to do absolutely nothing to say except for occasionally quote what I have to imagine was lines from

borderlands that you would hear as you're murking these these fucking NPCs as they're running by you time to go inside or whatever it is just god awful and then we go over to Kate Blanchett and I was like okay okay we see Kate Blanchette

and she's moving with this dude like she's got it and we're in like a cyberpunk ass world I'm like oh this is pretty cool and then we get the bar scene I'm like, we're kind of almost there, but not really. And then from that point on, from the second she lands on Pandora, where they give you, she lands, and in a traditional movie, what you do is you'd land the character right, she'd lose all her shit or something like that, right? And then she comes up immediately against opposition, which she comes up against a bunch of psychos. And then she has to beat them.

So we see how badass she is, but then it sets her back, right? And she's screwed and she has to figure out how to dig her way out of this. No, no, no, no, no. She gets on the bus and gives us a flashback of when she fought those guys. and I'm like, you didn't even want to shoot that scene? There hasn't been a major action scene in this movie in the last like 10 minutes, and this is an action. She should have landed and immediately got assaulted by these guys.

So I'm like, okay, we're up against it right now. And then we get a 20 minute long scene, not 20 minutes, but in my brain it was, with her and the bus driver. Marcus, he was pretty good. He was straight out of the video game. Like he sounded great. Of course he was. Of course he was straight out of a video game. But it's boring as fuck.

It's so boring. It's so bad. And then she goes from that point on, then she's, She's there for two weeks. I've been on this planet for two weeks. Why? And then she meets Claptrap. And Claptrap played by the venerable Jack Black, who I think would have been a good choice

for a Claptrap if they had written his dialogue, not the same fucking joke over and over again, which he wants her to die. That's clapped. I mean, that's the thing is, I'm with Mike that, like, they nailed it. It's just some things, even when nailed aren't good. But if you have a sidekick that's a droid next to a character, and this is a tried and true trope. This is a tried and true, like, mechanic from a lot of Star Wars movies, right? Obviously, we got Luke and you got R2D2. You got them.

R2D2's fucking Razz and I'm a little bit. No, I know R2. Fuck you. You know what I mean? Like, they've got that back and forth. But in this, it's so one note the entire time that after a while, I'm like, you got to say another joke. Or you have to make him not one dimensional and have him come around and want to be a part

of the team. But as, as he gets shot a bazillion times towards the end. And it's, well, it's. and he shits out the bullets shit out the bullets. But it's another one of those things It went out long enough That it made me laugh

Yeah It was pretty funny It was probably I was probably I was pretty funny I was said the one thing That I do appreciate with it Is whoever animated a clap trap

And like did the actual CG for him That was spot on I thought it looked great It was like him moving around And doing all that stuff I was like oh you actually spent the money there As opposed to the rest of the scenery But every time she goes anywhere in Pandora

It's just the same Boring ass You know Unreal Engine Render belt that way. Shit. Yeah.

And even the scenery, you know what it reminded me of. It reminded me of that first shot and when they go to the void in, uh, the void, what is it called? In, uh, Deadpool.

What's that, what's the land where they throw the, the void? And you're like, okay, but this is supposed to be sparse and kind of shitty. And that's just kind of what it looked like. It was so boring visually the entire time that I just couldn't.

And then she goes to the container thing to find tiny Tina. And this is where that poor actress who they must have just said, make up your own lines. Just starts to be, go from, hey, this is the main character of the story and obviously going to have a mother-daughter relationship with, with Lilith,

she goes from that to, I want this character to die. I am actively asking characters to kill this tiny Tina character because she's so fucking annoying the entire time and never at any point in this movie. Does she not, that she stopped being annoying and start being like endearing to me? Not a single. I feel like endearing's a good word to talk about because he had nothing about this movie

was endearing. Like there was no heart, no emotional stakes. We had Kevin. Still no heart. It was bad. Kevin Hart didn't need to be in this movie. The Psycho didn't need to be in this movie. Poor Janina Galankar, who they threw on this like Masters of the Universe style sled.

The worst CG I've ever seen in a movie. It felt like it was just the sick. She was in the movie like what, six times? And I felt like it was the same scene every single time. It was bad. Every single time. I will say shout out to her haircut in this though. The sick, like hard cut in.

into the cyber rooms look dope. There are moments of this movie. I was like there were some good choices made. And I just wanted them to give her more. And they just gave her nothing. And then the Atlas guy, the guy at the end, and we get the bar scene.

We get all this stuff. But ultimately, like the movie just leaves you with nothing, man. And I saw someone in the live chat saying I walked out at 45 minutes in this movie. I fully, this was definitely one of those films. One of the rare moments where I would have,

if we weren't reviewing this, I would have walked out of the film. Yeah, mellow fellow Super Chad, I love that movie 45 minutes in. Yeah, I'm with you. It's like it, it like not only didn't keep my attention. It, I started getting angry at it when they were like, oh, now we're going to go to this place that they hadn't even mentioned before up until that moment right then where they decided, I guess now we got to go here. And by the time we get to the end and she has fucking like fire wings or whatever, I'm just like, yeah.

There's, there's two, there's three things that in this movie that just were just didn't make any sense, right? At one point, uh, she comes up against, she's obviously hired by the dad to, go find Tiny Tina, right? Atlas, this character. Edgar Ramirez, I want to say, was in the point break remake and that alone should have killed his career. Should have just stopped right there. Actually, he's a really good actor, so I'm joking. But she's hired by him. She lands on the planet. She does nothing on this planet for two weeks. It's annoying. Finally finds Tiny Tina, whatever.

They fight. And then she escapes with the team of people that she's finding with. And then they pull over and she goes, well, you know, if Atlas finds out about this, I'm screwed, so I guess I'll just join you. To which I turned over to Tim and I go, what? What? Yeah. Yeah. Why would he care?

It was so weird. Why would he care? It's the dumbest, like, poorest written turn that you could ever have in a movie. I mean, it's just lazy writing. They just couldn't figure out a way to get her to align with these people. And she's just ride her with them for the most time. That's one. Two, in the third act of the movie, we introduced the-teleportation.

teleportation. Somebody has the ability to teleport. Now, I would be okay with this, boys and girls out there, riding 101. If you had set up in this universe that people can do shit like this in the borderlands universe, that's totally fine. We have people who can do telepath, move shit, this, I can read your brain. All of these wacky things that are happening, I don't know, because of like genetic mutation or because on Pandora, they fucking poison the planet with toxic waste and everyone that's been born there has these crazy powers, right? We had stuff like that. Again, I harken back to Total Recall, where because of, of all the pollution, people that were on Mars,

that were like, they had mutated, but some of them had like, cool, like, I can start the reactor, he could talk to you in your fucking brain, right? All that shit, quato, not quaid. But in this movie, it comes out of nowhere. And it becomes what I like to call affectionately double mumbo jumbo.

Yep. Where you're like, wait a minute, they can do that too. And then we get triple mumbo jumbo, where she gets fire wings at the end. And she is the fire hawk. And I'm like, okay, maybe that was in the game. I don't know.

But as, again, a person who never played the game, I'm lost. It was an awkward build of Lilith. We knew there was a child of Pandora and we were kind of building that. And like, if you've played the games, you know Lilith is going to have the firepowers.

But it did very much come out of like, out of nowhere. She's just like, oh, I can teleport now. She says that. Like they tell them, oh, I can teleport now. I can teleport now. And you go, what? What?

And that was at the 55 minute mark. It was insane. And I go to myself, why? She hasn't unlocked this power of going through this vault yet. I get it. She's like the, whatever. It's such, we build to such a unfulfilling

climax in this film that you can't help but laugh. And you can't help but laugh because they're trying to set up that these corpos, these corporations are like ruining the universe or the galaxy or whatever. And the only way they can think of to show this guy's power is he shows up with like five

dudes. Yeah, the helicopter that had the super laser. He's there. He's like, oh, okay, that's his super power, okay. It's weird. You want to, you want to contrast that to a movie that did it right? You want to talk about Blade Runner 2049, where you've got Jared Lettow's character. Don't even. No, no, here's what.

That is, that is a movie that you do where you talk about the guy that runs the universe and at the end, they don't beat him because he's too powerful. He's a gazillionaire. He owns planets for Christ's sake. That's terrifying. You don't beat him. You beat

the smaller characters. And in this, this guy's like, showed up myself. That's how powerful I am. I only have five guys with me. I showed up myself and I got my only defense is this personal thing that you could easily take off me, this personal shield. Man, everything's so ill-conceived. So half a draft, let's go into the into production. And you can just tell that no one had a good time making this film. I mean, I got to be honest. I've watched hundreds of movies with you like legitimately. I've never experienced a moment like us, the three of us when this, when credits hit, like it was more. anger than anything.

Yeah, we had to get it out. I've never, we didn't stand up and walk out and talk. We just sat there, we looked at each other and it was like, that was painful. And then we had to get it out. By the way, it wasn't a helicopter. It was a spaceship. That looks like the stealth fighter. That looked like the small

stealth fighter that came in to deliver his message, which was comically hilarious, but I don't think they meant it to be. No. No. Anyway, just FYI. Yeah, no, it was just, it was nuts. Like, to Mike's point, normally we stand up, like maybe check if there's a post credits or whatever. Stand up, walk out, maybe we'll talk as we're like walking out of the theater.

This, we just sat there, the three of us like, gobsmacked. Oh, shit. Man, that was as bad as it, as I thought it was, right? And all three of us were just like, holy hell. And again, again, the Cardinal sin of making a movie like this. They can be bad. You know, my, my, I'm a simpleton, ladies and gentlemen. I'm dumb.

I don't play games, you know, I don't, I don't really critique things that are longer than an hour and a half because I don't have the attention span. I'm a child. Okay. So when we start talking about the 10-point scale, I go, that's already too complicated for me. I gave it a three because Tim showed it to me beforehand, but I'm going to forget what that scale is. I rank things on my three-fingered scale.

Is it a good movie? A good-good movie, a bad-good movie, or a bad-bad movie. And there are so few movies to me that are actually bad-bad-bad. Because for the most part, I enjoy every movie. Even the really shitty ones, as long as you give me something to hold on to. something that's fun. It's got to just be fun.

It can be terrible. It can be garbage. It can be trash. But if it makes me laugh and it brings me along for the ride with characters that I kind of dig, then I will champion it for the rest of my life. But the cardinal sin of any movie is making me check my watch. And I checked my watch so many times in this because it is just flat out boring. And that makes me, unfortunately, sad.

Yeah, I want to talk about the games really quick because I think, you know, And it brings up Pandora just looking the same and being so dull. And that is what Pandora is. But the way that Borderlands makes it fun in the games is there's a lot of pop and color when enemies come on screen. They all have their own special unique titles with crazy nicknames. Not a single one in this, which is insane. How did we not get any of that? How did we not get Tiny Tina with a bunch of pink and purple and yellow all over the screen?

How did we, have we not played the video games team? So there's missing in color in that. We're missing just insane gore, which no gore in this movie. at all. No blood, no 3D blood popping out of people, barely any gunshots of people. We talk about a game with over a gazillion guns that we promoted. We have saw the

same four guns. No one looked at their gun, no one threw a gun down and did something cool with the gun. The guns look so bad. They were all just basic guns. It was so weird, right? And then on top of that, right, Borderlands is known for just having that music that makes you rage

and stand up and go, yeah, that's a catchy tune, right? You think of Borderlands one and ain't no rest for the wicked plays and you go yeah I'm in you got me this lady lands on the ship in the first 15 minutes to silence you have to play the song you have to pay the money and play the song so you set the stage for this is a borderlands movie and it's just she comes down for seven seconds in silence and you're like boring no you can't be doing this you can't set up and she lands and you're like cool we're going to see pandora for the first time and she steps out there's like three set pieces I was like really this is what this is this planet and It's just a barren wasteland. But again, there's ways that do barren wastelands and make them interesting. Watch any Mad Max movie. And you have definitive places that you can go that are that, yeah, maybe the exterior looks the same, but like, Gastown looks different than the other places because the production

designer comes in and says we have to make these visually different because people get fucking bored if they see the same thing for an hour and 41 minutes. On the good side, right, you've seen these characters and these, you know, also animals and beasts that you've seen before, right? you see the crazy dogs out there. They have the flying monsters, which is cool. You get to see the big four-wheeled car. I forget the name of it, but they had the car in it.

You're like, okay, that's really cool. You see the psychos. But like, there's just nothing that pops of like, oh, this is a borderlands fun boss. Until the very end where someone is in the background, as the coolest looking cycle we've seen the whole entire hour and 45 minute long movie. Doesn't say anything, doesn't even introduce himself, just has a lame fight scene and then kick down a hole.

at the end. And you're like, that was Borderlands the movie right there. Just all missed opportunities. We had Moxie in there. She was good. Didn't love her. Didn't love Moxie. But she was all right. She was fine. I mean, first of all, shout out to Gina Gershon, who I always love. She's been in a bunch of movies

from the 90s and early 2000s that you got to give her shout out for. And shout out to Jamie Lee Curtis, but they just give neither of those actors. Oh my, we didn't even talk about Jamie Lee. She was bad. She gave neither of these actors anything to do. And the way this film is shot

when you get to Gina Gershawn, what's the character's name again? Moxie. Moxie. Who is the I mean, one of the random characters that I recognize, right? It's just shot so poorly that it really, really looks like an episode of a CW show, or not even that.

I mean, that's actually being bad. That's actually an insult at CW shows. It just looks terrible. She gets no grand intro. It's not fun at all. And she's just kind of in and out. And that, my big problem with it is we've been talking about Ready Player 1 a lot on kind of funny games daily but Ready Player 1

I think the biggest issue that that movie has is even in the big final fight when it's like all the different IP thing are all together and we're seeing Iron Giant and Gundams and like just it's literally everything's here and sure it's not it does they don't have the

characteristics or features or like character of those elements because it just kind of just feels like toys just thrown into a thing as opposed to like, oh, this is, these are the Ninja Turtles. They just look like the Ninja Turtles. It's empty. It's vapid.

And I feel like this movie, it has all of the characters. Like, it's all the borderlands. Here's Moxie, but it's like, it just looks like her. And it's just like all these characters are together just to be on screen for a second to then move on to another screen with other characters standing next to each other. And it just really feels like, all right, now we got to give her the firewings because she had them in the game. Oh, yeah. Exactly.

She was the firehawk. We got to give it to her. Yeah. And then the final, the final scene where. turn Tina up on the thing. You're like, oh, we're going to have a nice heartwarming moment. They're going to look at the fireworks together. And Tina's like, go up there and get them. And she just flies off. It's like, okay, well, that sucked. That was an awful final scene right there. Yeah. It was just, oh, Jamie Lee Curtis looked like she didn't even know what the movie was.

No. We were talking at the end of like, she showed up and she was talking. And it's like, oh, Jamie Lee Curtis has no idea what's happening. She has no idea about the world of borderlands. She's just kind of there. It was almost like Bobby Lee, where it's like, my friend's got Jamie Lee Curtis on the phone. She could show up and they're like, put her in the suit. She'll walk around. I think they cast her and I think they were like, you have a specific character type. I think she was supposed to be sort of like the neuro atypical scientist character that has a hard time understanding what everyone's doing. But I just think that she's on screen for so little time that it comes off, it comes off like she didn't know what she was doing. But I think that was actually legitimately like the direction of the character of like this is what you're supposed to be. Because we have that moment where she's just obviously not empathetic. to Cape Planchett's like, hey, you left me as a kid, and I grew up with killers, and she's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, again, that's just emblematic of,

or symptomatic, I should say, of just the script in general of not giving these characters anything fun to do or say. I mean, dude, this is a getting the team together movie, and I wanted them to stop getting team members. I wanted the team members to die. And they didn't. I legit just wanted it to be Kate Blanchett in that badass wig, which is, you know,

her just rocking it, just walking around. Just walking around doing fun stuff in this, in this environment. But man, it just didn't work out. We got a super chat from Justin Tripp saying, A Boylands movie with no blood and gore made all the action scenes feel flat and dumb. It's Beverly Hills Cop 3, right? Where you come out, again, I hate to keep bringing this up. Do you come off Beverly Hills Cop 1 and 2 where it's a R-rated movie and Eddie Murphy's

allowed to say and do whatever, and it's edgy and it's fun? And then they go, we're going to make this more for kids. And it just puts a bullet in what the film is supposed to be. and you can't, you know, you've got to go one way or the other with this. You got to either write this movie to be a real movie or it has to be so close to the source material that it's got a lot. It's got all the Easter eggs that people who have played the game are going to champion. And unfortunately, they just don't have either. It just falls so flat because they just didn't commit to either vision of that.

Yeah, definitely unfortunate. I feel like this is a very blemish on video game adaptations. I definitely think that this is one of the worst we've ever gotten, honestly. Like I feel like even just talking about movies this year Like earlier Bless was asking me like Is it as bad as Madam Webb? And I'm like this is so much worse than Madam Webb Like I feel like Madam Webb was

At least the acting was funny Like at least there were parts about it That were like fun to laugh at This anything it was going for didn't work And it wasn't awkward enough to be like Oh man that this is gonna get meme to hell or whatever It's just not this movie's not gonna get meemed There's nothing to meme

People are gonna forget about this And they will occasionally reference it in other reviews for like movies of the same ilk and they're like this is on this is borderlands level bad is the only time that that's going to get we haven't got a movie like this and i think a long time like this to me like actual like an adaptation of something that like tried as hard as it did and just failed as hard as it did it's very upsetting i don't think this is going to get in the way of other things happening or not happening no because ultimately and i hate to say this i don't think borderlands is that big of a property that people were staking a lot of like hopes and dreams on

this being the thing that would help you know, further more big budget video games and movie franchises. I don't think it, I think it was a, when I saw the trailer for it, I was like, I don't care about that. Maybe I'll play a Borderlands game one of these days, but the movie doesn't do anything for me. And unfortunately, I think that's exactly what happened. See, it's one of the fun video game franchises that could be a movie, though, right?

When we bring up all the list, it's like, oh, that could make for a fun, awesome movie, and they absolutely miss the mark. That's the issue as well. It's like, this should have and could have, by all rights, been that. and it just went the opposite direction for some reason. I agree. It should have been good. Because it feels like a universe just anecdotally that, from what little I know and from what

little they set up where I was like, if this had a different team behind it, this could have been a real, this could have been Guardians of the Galaxy told with different stories, different characters and they could have fleshed out all of these characters in this universe for the next five or six movies until they drove it into the ground. For sure they could have done that. But man, this is the rest of development right there, man. Yeah, we're not getting to mortal life out. No, I don't think we are.

I do not think so. And if we do, it's going to be the equivalent to Joe Dirt, too, or it's like shot on a handy cam with a $10,000 budget. Oh, the classic, the classic, everybody. Let us know in the comments below. If you saw Borderlands, I'm sorry. Let us know what you thought. If you didn't see it, are you planning on seeing it?

Did you enjoy hearing us talk about it if you're not planning on seeing it, but just wanted to just have some fun here as we gave our thoughts on this whole thing. And the biggest thing about this is I assure you, We are not going out of our way to be mean about this. And like, we are, this is like, Mike would want to love this. I wanted this. I wanted to have a good time. I was all in.

Kevin Hart, you had me. I was ready to rock. I would have been the first person to annoy the shit out of everyone and tell them that this movie was fun. They should go watch it if I could honestly get behind that. But I can't even make a joke about it. Yeah. I do not recommend you watch this movie, everybody.

Thank you, though, for hanging out with us for this episode of the kind of funny games cast slash screencast. If you are hanging out watching live on Twitch, just stay where you are. We're going to have a little bit of fun with Mike and Andy. Just chatting with y'all. And if you're watching on YouTube, you have to make the jump to a different YouTube link. Until next time, I love you all. Bye.

Rorvoir.