Kevin Hart to star in Borderlands movie, which… yeah, that actually makes sense
Back in May, when we first heard that Cate Blanchett was attached to star in Eli Roth’s adaptation of the Borderlands video game, we were a bit confused. Blanchett has done some dumb bullshit, sure, but the Borderlands games are on a totally different level of dumb bullshit that fully embraces how dumb the bullshit is in a way that doesn’t really match Blanchett’s usual energy. By contrast, the latest addition to the Borderlands cast makes total sense: According to Variety, Kevin Hart is joining Blanchett in Borderlands as Roland, the somewhat boring soldier archetype you could play as in the first game. He could drop a little turret and you could direct your stat points to improve the turret’s damage or reduce its cooldown time… but those are video game things that might not be relevant in a movie.
Now, Roland isn’t the most fun character in Borderlands, personality-wise, but Hart is the kind of guy who should be in this movie no matter what. He could play any of this characters, scream some jokes about shooting robots or whatever, and it would’ve felt perfectly appropriate for the general vibe of Borderlands. With Roland and Lilith (Blanchett’s character) now cast, that leaves a big dude named Brick and a sniper named Mordecai as the only remaining members of the original game’s core team, though there is the matter of a certain little robot named Claptrap that needs to be addressed.
Claptrap is sort of the mascot of the series, but he’s also very annoying, and his original voice actor didn’t return for the most recent game in the series for reasons that are far, far, far too messy to get into now that we’re three paragraphs into this news story. It’ll be interesting to see if Roth gets a famous person to come in and do the voice.