If there’s one thing we know about two-time Oscar winner Cate Blanchett (other than the fact that she’s won two Oscars), it’s that she’s a big fan of raiding with her squad, min-maxing her main, and grabbing tons and tons of that sweet epic loot. Golds only. No blues, no purps. It makes perfect sense, then, that she’d want to star in Eli Roth’s adaptation of the Borderlands video games, which we heard was in the works back in February. Blanchett’s potential involvement isn’t a sure-thing yet, but Deadline says that she’s currently “in talks” to star as Lilith, one of the four playable characters from the original Borderlands game and one of the more memorable characters of the whole series—which is mostly because she’s actually kind of cool and interesting and doesn’t constantly screech out bad jokes and meme references. Blanchett previously appeared in Roth’s The House With A Clock In Its Walls.
The Borderlands games are all loot-based shooters, which means you use guns to kill monsters and bad guys and then their lifeless corpses spit out new guns that are (hopefully) better than the ones you currently have. The story, which involves treasure hunters trying to beat an evil corporation and bandits to a mythical Vault, is there to explain what you’re doing with these increasingly more powerful guns, but it’s not typically the main draw. That makes the idea of a Borderlands movie somewhat surprising, especially one directed by Eli Roth with a freakin’ Oscar winner as one of the main stars, but maybe that means Lionsgate (the studio behind this project) is taking it more seriously than we’d expect for a video game adaptation. And hey, if we’re going for epic loot, let’s go for epic loot and get four Oscar winners in this thing. Or even five. Daniel Day-Lewis can come out of retirement to play Claptrap.
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This sounds incredibly stupid and brainless as a movie. But I am loyal to Cate Blanchett like Gimli is to Galadriel, so I guess I’m in
As am I. I’ll gladly call her the best actor or actress from Australia and probably the most talented actress alive. So I know she won’t disappoint.
As long as Blanchett’s happy, I’m happy.
Girl I lived my gay fantasy as a teenager dominating as The Siren in Borderland, matched with Cate I’m all here for this.
Sure, she’ll be great, but with all the rooting around in the inventory system, the movie will be six hours long.
More like Crate Blanchett….
The only Borderlands I ever played was the Telltale one. It’s excellent. I could see it being a good movie.
Tales from the Borderland was the best game in the series. Change my mind.
Cate Blanchett should play loader bot!
I unironically would love that.
As much as I love Borderlands and it’s universe, making a decent movie out of it seems to me about as futile an effort as finding a movie that Cate has starred in that was unwatchable. So, maybe it will just cancel itself out and end up being an OK movie? Which, in itself, is kind of miraculous for a video game film. Also, how awesome would it be to farm a boss in Borderlands or run a raid in WoW with Cate fucking Blanchett.
In other videogame movie news, I would still watch Nathan Fillion as Nathan Drake. Old schmold. Just set it after Uncharted 4. Tom Holland will most likely be a fun Young!Nate, but I’m not sure how much of that I want to see. Clearly he’s not going to be going on the same kinds of adventures (and killing as many people) as a twenty-something as he would be as an adult. How many movies of him climbing around his old prep school or whatever are we going to have to watch before it gets to the good stuff (killing tons of people)?Mark Wahlberg as Sully might be the worst bit of casting I’ve ever seen. Ever. You thought Judy Dench in Cats was bad? Mark Wahlberg as Sully buries that turd in a box without even trying.
Fillion IS Drake. It’s ridiculous.
I originally read your comment as “Nathan Lane as Nathan Drake” which I didn’t know I wanted until now.
Goddamnit, now I want that. I’m imagining the ‘I pierced the toast!’ scene from ‘The Birdcage’ as done by Drake.
Random as hell, but she’ll do a good job. I can’t think of one time she phoned it in. Reminds me of Peter Cushings, always putting in effort even when it’s shit.
Aussie actors tend to be serious about giving a solid performance, no matter the quality of the project.
I, too, prefer to ignore the existence of Rebel Wilson.
I see she’s following in the footsteps of Michael Cain and Ben Kingsley to the “just show me the paycheck” part of her career.
Michael Cain has been making shitty movies in between good ones from day one. He’s always been very open and unapologetic about it. He comes from a working class background and believes an actor should take any job he can regardless of the quality of the material because its a job and you should be working. He’s also keenly aware of the old adage that every acting job could be your last. He did that horrible “Jaws” movie solely to use the money to buy his mom a really, really nice house. Both his autobiography and his book on acting, by the way, are wonderful reads. As for Ben Kingsley, after “Sexy Beast” he can phone it in for the rest of his life as far as I’m concerned.
You mistake my observation for criticism. All three actors mentioned (all actors, to be fair) are entitled to do as they please with their careers without shame or apology.
I maintain, however, that the juxtaposition of “Sexy Beast” and, say, “BloodRayne” is innately hilarious.
He also “starred” in the movie slipstream. According to the box at least. He’s in the background of like two scenes and has one line of dialog
I think Gene Hackman also famously was of that mindset, the “I’m an actor, I’ll take whatever damn job I want.” I honestly love good actors with that mindset because they can really elevate roles/films they’re in.
After her turn in ‘Ragnarok, I think she’s solidly on the prowl for films that give her a ridiculous costume and let her have fun.
She did Lord of the Rings just so she could wear the ears.
Blanchett is way too good for a Borderlands movie directed by Eli Roth. She’s probably also a bit too old for the part but if she’s allowed to chew the scenery enough, it won’t matter much.
On the one hand, Cate Blanchett.On the other, Randy Pitchford is going to make money off of this and he suuuuuuuucks
Nice joke about Daniel Day Lewis but the most likely choice for Claptrap is Ben Schwartz, right?
To be fair, none of the characters in the first two Borderlands yelled out memes all the time. Except for memes that were started because of the funny things they said. It wasn’t until the presequel and then even worse in 3 where they started really trying to hard to be like the hip cool tik tok kids.
It’s partly why I love Tales from the Borderlands, because that game was consistently hysterical, but in a clever way. (It helped a little bit that they got Anthony Burch in to help write Handsome Jack after he invented the character in the first place, because as brilliant as the telltale writers were, no one wrote Jack as well as Burch).I don’t remember anything overtly horrible with the writing for the prequel, but everything I seen about 3 seems utterly awful from a writing level.
So will The Rock play Rowan or Brick?