Apologies that this is not a pure gaming question, but I’d really like to hear people’s opinion on the Borderlands movie trailer and especially from people who have played the games. That’s why I’m asking here, I hope that’s ok.
Tiny Tina falls completely flat. I’m convinced that only Ashley Burch could actually play the character.
Casting is dogshit, jokes aren’t funny, trying way too hard to be guardians of the galaxy 2, and where’s mordy/brick?
Shamelessly stolen from elsewhere, the best way to summarize my thoughts on the trailer is: “It looks like a Borderlands porn parody, but without the porn.”
This looks like a Netflix movie in a Cowboy Bebop live action way. Me no like.
The writing doesn’t seem great (forced and unfunny), but it’s just a trailer, so I don’t put a ton of stock in that. Besides, some of Borderlands’ best jokes are slow burns over the course of the game or even the franchise, so that might be why it feels a little off.
But the cast…they’re going to have to win me over.
Lilith as the lead, I’m fine with. But Cate Blanchett as Lilith I’m a little more concerned about. She’s definitely older than Lilith, yes, but that’s not the big problem; for me, I just don’t think that she has the vibe to pull off Lilith (and I don’t think she did even when she was 25). She’s got too much gravitas.
Including Tiny Tina in the main cast, I’m over the moon for. But casting Ariana Greenblatt, I just don’t see. In fairness, I don’t think I can see anybody in particular as that character; she’s so singular and wide-eyed, I don’t know if there’s a young teenager-passing actress who could pull it off. You need the 16-year-old equivalent of Helena Bonham Carter, and she’s a pretty singular person. Tina needs to be absoluely unhinged, but in a gleeful way; maybe this could be a Millie Bobby Brown role, or maybe it could be Jenna Ortega (though she might be a bit too sardonic; Emma Myers perhaps?), but I don’t know that we have any evidence of any actress in the right age range to pull off Tina.
Not including Brick or Mordecai is sad; I think Dwayne Johnson could pull off Brick decently well, and Michael Pena would’ve been a funny Mordecai, though it would be even better to bring people into those roles who we’ve never seen before.
Krieg was kind of a blank slate to begin with, so he’s no problem. Marcus, Hammerlock, Scooter, great. Jamie Lee Curtis as Tannis, fine. No major issues with any of that casting. Same with Jack Black as Claptrap; yeah, it would’ve been nicer to have the original voice actor, but I get that you want somebody with a name in that role and Black is as good as any. I would believe he’s played the game, so I trust that he understands the role.
But Kevin Hart…I mean, come on. Idris Elba was right there, and you went with Hart?
After watching the trailer, my opinions shifted slightly. Hart was actually the least of my concerns after watching the trailer; I liked his role in Jumanji, and it seems like he’s channeling that same vibe, so I think he’ll probably do fine here. And Blanchett’s performance as a more grizzled, almost Jane Lynch-ian Lilith kinda works for me.
But Tina still isn’t quite right.
All in all, if this had been the same cast in different roles (Blanchett as Captain Scarlett, retconned as a hero? Greenblatt as Gaige?) or the same roles with a different cast (Saoirse Ronan as Lilith? Kiernan Shipka as Tina?) I’d be totally down. The world feels right and the story sounds interesting, I’m mostly just worried about the dialogue and the cast.
Good grief. THAT WALL OF TEXT HAD TOO MANY SYLLABLES!! APOLOGIZE!!
AND NO F$@#ING EXPLOSIONS!?!?
Edit: those downvotes suggest some people didn’t get the reference
I think Ashly Burch would’ve been just fine as Tiny Tina, even though she’s a full grown adult. Because, you know, she’s the actual voice actor who can channel that energy. Just age the film character up.
My issue with Ashly Burch isn’t her age so much as…has she ever done any acting before, beyond voice acting? I don’t know if that’s even a skill she has.
I’ve never seen it before so I can’t personally say how competent she is in the role, but Ashly Burch is a cast member on Mythic Quest, a live action sitcom on Apple
She got started making her own shorts, which isn’t the same as getting cast in films but it’s not nothing either
They’ve got the look spot on, but everyone’s miscast and none of the jokes land.
It looks too be a lot of ‘meh’ to me. I honestly don’t think the game’s story will translate well into any other medium and certainly the humor that makes the original BL games isn’t what I would call mainstream so that will just get watered down to nothing. Plus the casting looks off.
Jack Black might be the only one who’s well cast for the flick, but everything else seems wrong.
Eh. Seems alright. Definitely not going to a cinema to see it. Gearbox milked the franchise to death, I really only liked Borderlands 2. Looks like Krieg is in this, which isn’t canonical. But fun. He also says nothing in the trailer?
My hate for what they did with tiny tina is unmeasurable. The character does not work when she is not a child. If they had put an actual child actor in their shoes and THEN made them blow up a lot of people, with gore, that would be the level tina is at. Like, if Borderlands had realistic graphics, it would be as PG 18 as Doom (2016) +. For understandable reasons. She is a traumatised child that got ate up by pandora and lived. On a revenge quest. All other characters +1 or +2 Tina gets a -20.
Not hating on the actor, lots of things can go wrong for the “magic” to not happen, most aren’t on them.
I actually don’t care for the prequel or BL1 backstory part. I’m not hooked by the premise.
Expectation is “mid”. If an opportunity to watch it falls right into my lap I might, but realistically I will probably forget it exists when the ad campaign is through.
Pandering bullshit.
Randy Pitchford is a piece of shit and forced out the original Claptrap VA. Jack Black is great and I really respect him because he likes games, seems to treat fans well, and seems to care about the communities he participates in. He should not be voicing Claptrap just like Chris Pratt shouldn’t have been the voice of Mario (aside from Chris Pratt also being a piece of shit which I don’t think Jack Black is).
It just felt weird and off the whole time. Maybe I’m conditioned to be sick of the quips we saw in the preview because of the flood of super hero movies we’ve had. Maybe if I went back and replayed Borderlands I’d respond the same way. It wasn’t violent enough, it didn’t have enough explosions and bullets, the characters weren’t the models and that was jarring. It’s not cell-shaded. I got so fucking annoyed at the trite “it’s in my mouth” scene that I just don’t have a good feeling.
I’m hoping it will be a fun, mindless action movie. I’m reserving judgement other than Randy Pitchford being a piece of shit until it actually comes out.
Randy is such a piece of shit it’s wild
His commentary about why they had to nuke all the fun shit in BL3 is equally piece of shit of material. I don’t want to dig through his Twitter to find stuff. Shit was wild. I dislike a bunch of folks in the gaming industry for poor decisions. Randy’s one of very few I will always go out of my way to highlight how much of a piece of shit he is.
Nuke all the fun shit? Tell me more
People weren’t playing the game Gearbox wanted them to play the game so there were constant nerfs that fucked up everything in the meta.
This looks like a decent video about it;
I have not watched it all the wayit’s really good and covers all the junk that drove me away from BL3 as well as stuff from Wonderlands I didn’t know about.
Looks pretty awful to me. Wild casting choices. I like Jack Black but he doesn’t read right as Claptrap to me at all. Roland is a gruff tough guy, not whatever Hart is going to do here. And Tina here comes off as a scared child instead of the absolute firebrand she ought to be.
They had some weird moments where Tina reverted back to a flanderized version of herself depicted from the POV of someone who doesn’t understand nuance in character, then she was just the typical pissed off modern Hollywood teen archetype.
Claptrap should just be the BL2 VA if possible, no need to keep casting screen actors in VA roles.
Eddings, I think was his name, had a falling out with Gearbox so there’s no way he would be cast as the voice. I missed him as claptrap in the games he’s not.
The specific casting bugs me:
- Budget Deadshot
- Old Nami
- Hit Bunny-Girl
- Box Wheatley
- Extra #1216 from the Mad Max set
It’s just… I dunno. Doesn’t quite fit the tone from the games. But hey maybe it comes out and is surprisingly funny in it’s braindeadness.
The casting is insane (and not the good kind).
Why, in the love of God, would you look at Roland, hulking, dour, tough as nails veteran soldier whose main character trait is being completely unflappable, and think “Kevin Hart”?
What were these people smoking?
Also the bits of writing we get in the trailer are just bad. Tina doesn’t even manage to feel like a poor imitation of herself. Even with better casting (seriously, you could literally just have Ashley Burch play Tina, you’re up-aging the character anyway, what’s the harm?), there would still be none of the vibrancy of the scripts from 2 and Pre-sequel. I’m not saying those games had flawless writing, but it was fun, funny, and generally managed to land on the right side of transgressive.
Honestly, the whole thing has this really awkward “We really wanted James Gunn but couldn’t afford him” feel to it.
Oh it’s easy, they just googled “Roland voice lines” and he sounds like a perfect role for Kevin heart.
Could he pull off the borderlands 2 Roland intro? I don’t think so, but I’ve been surprised before.
What really has me saddened is the whole pisswater gully bit. Tiny Tina is a native of pandora, Roland and Lilith are not (to my knowledge). So if anything, the roles should have been entirely reversed because:
-
It makes more sense.
-
It’s way funnier.
Which means they’re messing with backstory of the characters to match… nothing. Because it doesn’t seem to make the writing better, and it differs from the original. It would also match Tiny Tina’s character so much better and mitigate the annoying whiny child part of the character that is just SHINING through this trailer.
Yes, that whiny child part bugged me a lot. It doesn’t fit Tina at all.
Oh, yeah, they completely failed to get what makes Tina an interesting character. She’s constantly putting up this mask of being the toughest, meanest badass who’s seen it all and done it all (all of which is an attempt to hide the fact that she’s a scared, traumatized child).
-
I won’t be going to theaters to see this movie. It feels forced, and the cast doesn’t inspire confidence that it’s going to be good.
I’m surprised about the cast. I like most of them in other films, but in this trailer, I can’t really explain, but it feels off.
The actors don’t look like they’re having fun. I commented in another thread that they seem to be attempting to make a Guardians of the Galaxy style movie, but chemistry between the actors and director were critical for those movies.
This is what happens when you have some combination of bad casting, a bad script, and bad direction. Even good actors have a hard time producing good work in a bad environment.
(“bad casting” in this case meaning “casting an actor who isn’t well suited to the role”)
Of all people who they could have chosen to play Claptrap… they chose Jack black.
I generally like Jack Black, but he’s completely wrong for the role.
In fact, the only one I think is ok is Tiny Tina.
Interesting. In the trailer, I don’t mind Jack Black (not sure if he is a good pick though), but I sure miss the complete insanity from Tina. That’s what made her character so crazy and fun for me (yes, that sounds weird, even for myself).
Tina looks terrible, I don’t know what you’re talking about. This movie is going to be awful.
Well, I said “ok”, which isn’t great. And it’s compared to the rest of them which are THE WORST CASTING CHOICES in a while.
Honestly? I really don’t get the hate that all these comments are generating. I don’t think we’ve seen enough of the dialogue from the characters to know what the casted actors are going to do with them.
I personally think it might be a bit refreshing, like a reboot. All of us lost faith in the Borderlands story at the Presequel I think. I think this plays into the wacky and wild elements of BL2 (indisputably the favourite in the whole series, wouldn’t you agree?), rather than the unfunny stuff of 3, don’t you think?
I’m not saying that off the bat it’s going to be amazing. I’m saying that I think it’s worth a shot, it’s worth waiting until we see it before we shit on it- I don’t think this trailer makes it look like trash. It has potential. Don’t you think, guys?
It definitely has potential. People gotta remember that when they reach for castings like Kevin Hart as Roland; these are professional actors. If they want something a bit different from that person, they can probably achieve it.
I think we’ll be pleasantly surprised, so long as you keep an open mind that it’s not supposed to be a beat for beat recreation of the games.
