Borderlands Director Eli Roth Wants to Prove Doubters Wrong With New Game Adaptation

This article appears in the new issue of DEN OF GEEK magazine. You can read all of our magazine stories here.

When Hostel director Eli Roth was cast as the Bear Jew in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds (2009), fans were skeptical that he would be up to the task, considering his relative inexperience in front of the camera. 

“At the time, people were saying, ‘Why is Tarantino casting Eli? He’s not an actor,’” Roth tells Den of Geek magazine. “And Tarantino is going, ‘Yes, he is. Wait until the movie comes out.’ Fifteen years later, the Bear Jew is a classic character. The way to prove people wrong is with your work.”

For Borderlands, Roth’s forthcoming film adaptation of the long-running Gearbox Software video game series, he assembled an ensemble cast that includes Cate Blanchett and Kevin Hart, cast boldly against type. Blanchett, mostly known for dramatic roles in classy Best Picture nominees, plays Lilith, a grumpy bounty hunter, while Hart leans away from his signature frenzied comedy to play deadly mercenary Roland.

“You think you know them for one thing, and what they do in this film is completely unlike what they’ve ever done before,” says Roth. While the decision to cast Blanchett and Hart as stone-cold ass-kickers in a weirdo sci-fi action flick may seem like a risky move, Roth never doubted their range. “One of the reasons they liked working with me was that I, of all people, know what it’s like to be underestimated as an actor.”

Joining Blanchett and Hart in the ensemble are Jack Black as mouthy robot Claptrap, Jamie Lee Curtis as mad scientist Tannis, Ariana Greenblatt as pre-teen explosives expert Tiny Tina, and Romanian boxer Florian Munteanu as Tina’s burly bodyguard, Krieg. The crew of outcasts helps Lilith on her mission to return to her murderous home planet of Pandora to locate the missing daughter of powerful businessman Atlas (Edgar Ramírez). While fans will recognize the characters from the games by name, Roth stresses that the movie is an adaptation of the story from the games, not a one-to-one remake. 

“I’d had meetings for video game movies before, and it’s always like, ‘Well, you can’t change things without approval of this company and this company.’ That’s not for me. You have to adapt to a different medium.”

Roth was familiar with and played the Borderlands games before signing on to the picture, though he admits he’s not a gamer and came into the project with a more personal vision in mind. Though Roth had worked in genre for years, he’d never had the opportunity to make a gigantic sci-fi movie. It’ll come as no surprise to his fans that Roth’s inspirations for Borderlands came from the more bizarre regions of the sci-fi sphere.

“I’d always wanted to do a big, fun sci-fi movie, something that was a mix of Star Wars, Escape from New York, Mad Max, and even batshit crazy sci-fi movies like The Fifth Element and Starship Troopers,” Roth explains. “I didn’t want to change it to the point that it’s not Borderlands, but I wanted to take it from being a video game to being a great sci-fi film. My loyalty is to the movie.”

While fans of the games may squirm at the thought of the games’ world and lore potentially being over-manipulated past the point of recognition, the reality is that Gearbox was deeply involved with the film’s production, with the entirety of the games’ digital assets being made available to Roth and his team to reference. On top of all that, Gearbox president Randy Pitchford was on set every day of production.

“[Pitchford] was excited about what we were doing,” Roth recalls. “I’d change some things [from the games], and he’d say, ‘That’s really cool. We should try that in the games!’ It was a good creative connection between the two of us.”

The art style of the Borderlands games is iconic, and it would take a lot of work to translate the cel-shaded dustland of Pandora to the big screen. There was an emphasis on practical builds and effects wherever possible on set, and while the live-action film doesn’t look identical to the games, Roth’s off-kilter sci-fi influences clearly shine through.

“I looked at The Fifth Element and even movies like Barbarella,” Roth says. “There was a whole vehicle team building these badass Atlas vehicles, and we had a working outrunner, so when Cate Blanchett steps off of it, she’s really stepping off of it. It was really fun to watch Randy excited like a kid, geeking out holding all of the Atlas weapons, the Vladof weapons, the Dahl weapons.”

Vehicles, weapons, and loot are major components of the games, but what really made them special were the over-the-top characters. In the film, the original characters are used more as a foundation for the actors to build and expand upon. The cast may seem like an odd mish-mash on paper… and in some ways, they are. But Roth was actually quite deliberate in assembling what is, in his words, “one of the greatest casts in the world.”

Prior to reading the script for Borderlands, Roth had just completed The House with a Clock in Its Walls with Blanchett, and he thought she’d be perfect for the role of Lilith because he knew something about her that most people don’t. “She loves crazy horror movies like Evil Dead,” Roth explains. “When I called her about doing Borderlands, I said, ‘This could be an amazing character for you, like Snake Plissken from Escape from New York!’ and she said, ‘Escape from New York is my favorite movie!’” 

Once Blanchett was on board, Roth immediately knew he wanted to cast Black as Claptrap. “They were so good together in The House with a Clock in Its Walls, and I thought, what would be better than a follow-up film where Cate’s a pissed-off bounty hunter and Jack’s an annoying robot?” Hart had expressed he wanted to show he had a serious action movie role in him, which Roth was happy to spotlight, and Curtis and Gina Gershon (who plays fan favorite Mad Moxxi in the film) were natural additions due to their respective resumes.

But one cast member, Greenblatt, who was just 13 at the time of production, was the surprise standout of the group. “I fought for her,” Roth says of casting the young actor. “This was two years before she did Barbie, and I just knew she was going to be a major star. She blew everyone away.”

While all of the actors had stunt people, Roth says that they all wanted to do as many of their own stunts as possible in the film’s extremely chaotic action scenes. Blanchett got hooked up to a ratchet in a stunt rig and learned how to twirl guns, and Greenblatt shot guns and threw grenades while running up a wall.

Hart had perhaps the biggest point to prove of all, as he hoped Roland would help him transition into a new avenue for his acting career, one which would involve hard-core action.

“Everybody knows him for his comedy and being the funny sidekick, but think about Will Smith going from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air to Bad Boys,” Roth says. “I told him, ‘I’m going to have a scene where you kill hundreds of bandits in an unbroken take, and we’re going to see that it’s you.’ Kevin is an amazing athlete, and he really knows how to fight.”

As Roth beams about the experience of making the movie, there’s a sense that he and the cast had chips on their shoulders, just like he did back in the Inglourious Basterds days. Skepticism is commonplace for screen adaptations of popular franchises, but Roth remains laser-focused on the job at hand:

“With Borderlands, the games are the games, and the movie is the movie,” Roth explains. “We made a PG-13, big, fun, summer popcorn movie. If you love the games, you’ll have a great time with the film. And if you’ve never played the games, [the movie] will make you want to play the games.” 

Borderlands opens in theaters on Aug. 9.