Even Eli Roth can’t believe that two-time Oscar winner Cate Blanchett was willing to learn to twirl guns and shoot baddies in “Borderlands,” the director’s gonzo adaptation of the popular video game.
Roth noted that since people loved seeing Blanchett wield a baton in “Tár,” where she portrayed a fictional world-famous conductor embroiled in controversy, the filmmaker said he might as well “put a flamethrower in her hand.”
In “Borderlands,” in which Blanchett sports a fiery red bob, she’s surrounded by the starry ensemble of Kevin Hart, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jack Black and “Barbie” breakout Ariana Greenblatt. The story follows Blanchett as Lilith, an infamous outlaw with a mysterious past. She reluctantly returns to her home planet of Pandora and forms an unexpected alliance to find the missing daughter of Atlas.
Roth shared a trailer for the film during Lionsgate’s presentation at CinemaCon, the annual convention for movie theater owners that’s currently taking place in Las Vegas. The extended look at “Borderlands,” which drops in theaters on Aug. 9, was anarchic, filled with day-glo imagery and offered up a very different side of Blanchett, as a punk-ish post-apocalyptic warrior. There’s also plenty of bickering and crass jokes among the assembled band of outcasts. During the explosive and potentially deafening footage, the rag-tag grouptraverses the dangerous planet, at one point leading them through the throat of an otherworldly beast while in a jeep. Roth revealed that Blanchett wanted to do the movie because she loved the classic B-movie “Escape From New York.”
Roth had his own reasons for taking on the challenge of making a good movie out of an awesome video game (just ask the makers of “Warcraft” how hard that is to pull off).
“I loved the game,” Roth said. “I love big popcorn sci-fi movies.” He told the crowd of movie theater owners that he was inspired to make “Borderlands” because he wanted to make a movie that “had the fun and magic” of “Star Wars” and “Indiana Jones.” The filmmaker, whose credits include ““Hostel,” “Cabin Fever” and “Thanksgiving,” called moviemaking a “faith-based system.”
“You have a vision in your head; you just hope to God it all works out,” he said. “Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t.Thankfully, this one did.”
Greenblatt, the only “Borderlands” star on hand at Caesars Palace, referred to the rest of the cast as her “fun uncles, aunts, grandmas.” Despite her time on set with A-listers like Blanchett, Curtis and Hart, Greenblatt told the room that she’s still grappling with her newfound celebrity.
“This is so many people. It’s so horrible,” she cracked to the packed house in the Colosseum. “I didn’t wear my glasses so I couldn’t see you guys.
