By now it’s safe to say that we all know the Borderlands movie is a pile of trash. While you lob plenty of valid criticisms at the film, I think the most damning critique is just how conventional it is. Even then, it screws that up.
While I didn’t grow up playing the Borderlands games, I was aware of a few things about it beyond just notable characters like Tiny Tina, Handsome Jack, and Claptrap. I knew that it was filled with a lot of criticism and parodies of corporations. I knew it had some incredibly stupid jokes that were so stupid they became funny. And I knew how it reveled in over-the-top violence. Even if you went into Borderlands knowing the bare minimum about the series, you would still probably find the film disappointing thanks to its tame script and action that feel like wasted potential.
I would never call any of the Borderlands games conventional by any stretch of the word. Sure, they may look conventional now thanks to the trends of the gaming industry having shifted in the last 15 years since the franchise’s inception. But for their time, the Borderlands games were anything but. And yet, Borderlands the movie tried to be as conventional as possible to appeal to a wide demographic, including throwing in some tired and worn-out story cliches to … I’m going to be honest, I don’t know why they were included. Why go for a basic story when the world of Borderlands is anything but basic? But even then, leave it to the Borderlands movie to somehow screw up a basic trope that’s been done to death a million times before it.
The Fake-Out Death: A Tired Trope That Borderlands Somehow Made Worse
We all know what a fake-out death is, right? It’s when a major character sacrifices themselves to save another character or to finish a certain job and the characters mourn their death, only for it to be dramatically revealed that they’re not dead! It’s a pretty well-used trope that has popped up in plenty of video games. Sometimes it’s handled well like in Xenoblade Chronicles and then you have the entire cast of Final Fantasy IV who all apparently have fake-out deaths to the point where it loses all meaning. Borderlands tries to use it to earn some cheap pathos but bungles it almost immediately.
So picture this: Our heroes, which includes Kevin Hart’s Roland, are stuck in an underground system of caves fighting hordes of Psychos. The fighting is intense and plenty of Psychos die, but despite our heroes’ best efforts, it looks like they can’t escape. The elevator that they’re on has no power, and the only power source is outside of the elevator. Roland, being the noble guy that he is, opts to leave the elevator to activate the power, swearing that he’ll catch up with the heroes. We then see him use one of Tiny Tina’s explosives to stall the Psychos chasing him as the film opts to show, in slow motion, Roland being overwhelmed by the Psychos and going down in a blaze of glory.
And that should have been the end of it. Doing that sets up two different paths for the story to take: We can either follow the plot of the game and keep Roland dead, which is laughable to assume that Borderlands would try to be game-accurate, or we can set up a fake-out death where Roland can save our heroes during the climax, which would have been cheap and telegraphed hamfistedly, but the Borderlands movie telegraphs virtually all of its major twists and turns miles ahead, so that’s just par for the course. But I was not expecting the movie to choose a third, all-around worse route.
After the characters reach the surface and Tina mourns Roland’s death, we then cut to Roland who is perfectly fine and just kind of shrugs off the dead Psychos that are surrounding him as he makes his way to the surface to reunite with everyone else.
Look, fake-out deaths aren’t exactly my favorite trope in fiction, but I admit that they serve a purpose. They can change a party’s dynamic and make an audience think fondly of the person who sacrificed themselves for the benefit of others. But you want to know what every fake-out death does at the very least? Wait more than a minute to reveal that the person isn’t dead. Revealing Roland’s survival undermines everything the film tried to do with its big escape sequence. If Roland was going to survive anyway, then why not just have him escape with the rest of the team? The only reason I can think of is so that the film can have a cheap emotional moment it doesn’t deserve.
Tropes are tools that are meant to be used by writers to generate new scenarios and ideas, but when they’re used this lazily, they don’t provide any emotional resonance. They just fill me with annoyance. Roland could have died, and I would have been satisfied. Roland could have appeared dramatically in the climax, and I would have been satisfied … Okay, satisfied may be a bit too strong of a word since it implies positive feelings, but I would have accepted it.
I didn’t expect the film to quickly reveal that Roland was okay, and it just caused me to become so over the concept of fake-out deaths. It’s a trope that’s used for cheap emotional thrills and instantly becomes worthless upon a second revisit since we know the character survives their supposed death. So why bother having a fake-out death unless it’s to generate false pathos? It’s cheap, and it says a lot that even when Borderlands tried to use it, it failed miserably. And if Borderlands is trying to use a trope like that to gain audience goodwill, then it’s a trope that should die until someone can use it better.
Borderlands is now playing in theaters.
Published: Aug 17, 2024 08:37 pm