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After several delays, the live-action Borderlands movie is right around the corner. While you might be curious about the Eli Roth-directed sci-fi romp, it’s easy to feel confused by the trailers if you don’t know anything about the universe nor the games serving as source material. With this primer, we hope to illuminate why we hope this flick is at least somewhat decent at bringing the Borderlands universe to life.
The Borderlands video game franchise transports players to Pandora, an unruly, barely colonized planet at the edge of the known universe. With its inhospitable weather conditions, dangerous flora, and hostile fauna, it’s a hard planet to ‘tame.’ Despite these harsh conditions, the lure of Pandora’s mineral wealth and ancient secrets attracts many fortune seekers and megacorporations.
Now, it’s important to note the movie doesn’t happen within the ‘video game canon’ and is actually remixing elements from all the games. This is why the main group of adventurers doesn’t resemble any specific roster from the series.
The Borderlands games themselves are first-person shooters (FPS) with role-playing game (RPG) elements in the same vein of Diablo and other action RPGs that pay special attention to loot and cool weapons. Back in 2009, developers Gearbox introduced a daring mix of genres that was extremely refreshing. Nowadays, the series is trying to reinvent itself to continue to be relevant amidst all the furious competition. Word on the street is that a Borderlands 4 might be coming sooner rather than later.
If you’re looking to jump into more legendary sci-fi FPS video game franchises, you shouldn’t skip our ranked lists of the Halo and Half-Life games. We’ve also put together a list of the best space settlement games available today in case you just want to relax with something far more peaceful (but still set in outer space).
Interstellar megacorporations are at the top of the food chain
Humanity has settled the Six Galaxies, a galaxy cluster, by the time the events in the games happen. The years aren’t openly stated, yet some Easter eggs suggest it’s the 29th century and that Earth is barely remembered anymore, though references to old traditions and nationalities are present throughout the games. Chances are humanity left its planet of origin to die after exhausting all its resources and instead began to explore the stars roughly three centuries before the events of the first Borderlands.
During the latter stage of this new colonial era, megacorporations began to revolt against humanity’s central government. This led to their eventual victory, which also allowed them to become the ‘new rulers’ of humanity across the stars. Less than four months after signing a trade and defense agreement, however, war broke out between these corporations. The Corporate Wars ended with weapons manufacturers rising over the others and later absorbing them. This group included Atlas, Dahl, Hyperion, Jakobs, Maliwan, S&S Munitions, Tediore, Torgue, and Vladof.
After discovering ancient Eridian ruins (more on that later) on Pandora, the Atlas corporation occupied the planet in search of a second Vault after acquiring another Eridian location on the planet Promethea. The corporation managed to reverse-engineer the Eridian tech, which advanced their weapon designs and put them ahead of the competition. Atlas’ search on Pandora is, however, fruitless, and Dahl arrives afterwards hoping to mine Eridium (a universal power source) and looking to discreetly find the legendary Vault.
Ancient aliens called Eridians are vital to the main plot
Long before humans started exploring the Six Galaxies, Eridians, a presumably extinct ancient alien race, had extremely advanced technology that allowed them to manipulate entire worlds and even toy with space itself. Most of what is known about them by the time the games take place comes from stone slabs written by Nyriad, a Siren that lived among them – Sirens are individuals with incredible powers that are inherited and have a mysterious connection to Pandora.
The general assumption is that Eridians came from somewhere unknown and far away from the Six Galaxies, maybe running away from a cosmic threat to their existence. The Vaults that megacorporations have started to uncover contained not just relics, but also giant eldritch beings like ‘the Destroyer’ that was found inside Pandora’s Great Vault. It’s also implied the Eridians had to sacrifice entire populations to seal these Vaults, which may explain their collapse as a direct result of trapping those beings.
Pandora is a savage world meant to mirror the Old West
Pandora, the main setting of the Borderlands games, is a largely barren world filled to the brim with dangerous creatures and even more vicious humans. It has a lone moon named Elpis, which was heavily exploited by corporations like Dahl and Hyperion.
The big twist about Pandora is that, thanks to the aforementioned world-manipulating technology, it was ‘built’ by the Eridians as an eternal prison for the Destroyer that is found by the end of the first game. This explains its very unusual features, unpredictable climate, and highly aggressive fauna and flora. Moreover, the presence of eridium and deadly mutations that affect many living beings on the planet come directly from the work Eridians did long ago on the planet. That said, Pandora’s human-breathable air hasn’t been fully explained yet (no, it’s not the result of terraforming).
When we combine Pandora’s murderous ecosystems and harsh climate conditions, it’s hard not to think of the Old West, especially given all the visual callbacks to cinema’s representation of the Wild West. Past the first game, as more parts of Pandora are unveiled, we learn that the planet isn’t entirely desert-like. It still remains a pretty tough world to live in, yet the Gold Rush-like call to adventure has attracted many colonists and fortune-hunters with its lure of riches and new opportunities. It all sounds familiar, but the Borderlands universe’s sci-fi twist, absolutely loaded with dark comedy and colorful characters, is a very attractive makeover.
Not everyone on Pandora is a murderous psycho
Human presence on Pandora is larger than you’d expect, although the planet remains mostly ‘unconquered’ due to the aforementioned hostile conditions. It’s believed that the Eridians made sure almost everything on the planet was designed to challenge and repel conquerors and researchers of other races that came along after they were gone.
By the time the first game begins, the presence of corporations on Pandora is very limited despite its Atlas and Dahl-led colonial past. However, large structures and military encampments have been left behind, and the last search for the Great Vault reactivates corporate interest on the planet. For the most part, the planet is inhabited by civilians living in small towns and establishments that are poorly assembled using scraps, garbage, wood, or bricks. In these places, most people are trying to get by by running traditional businesses that serve adventurers, miners, and anyone else trying to grab a piece of Pandora.
But, of course, there are large groups of really bad people as well. Whether left behind by expeditions, born into poverty, or attracted by a life of evildoing, bandits are far too abundant on Pandora. They’ll use anything left behind by the corporations, have created their own self-sufficient societies, and are constantly at war with each other and threaten the ‘more decent’ towns and villages trying to preserve human civilization. Think Mad Max but science fiction and often touched by rare Pandoran mutations. Scary!
“Borderlands” arrives in theaters from Lionsgate on Aug. 9, 2024.
