Or in other words: welcome to the critique of Borderlands movie.
Borderlands (movie) a piece of art, where scene of Claptrap pooping is about as long as the scenes of Lilith’s character development, where she is learning her history and who she is. And I consider this to be the best tl;dr of this critique piece.
THE SIRENS
Let’s start with the most disturbing part of the movie (and I do not mean the family friendly lack of humor!) - the Sirens.
As we read on Borderlands’ Fandom “Sirens are individuals who have acquired incredible, mysterious powers […] when a Siren dies, their powers pass on to another individual.” and in Borderlands universe we have seen this to be true - such as Maya’s powers transfering to Ava upon Troy’s death in Borderlands 3.
When it comes to the movie, it decides to reinvent who Lilith is. She is a Siren, that still stands true. Where the fun comes is when we hear the movie’s story about who a Siren is. At first we don’t even hear the name “Siren” - we are sticking to “Eridian daughter”. Out of nowhere, we learn, that Lilith actually is not that, but instead… she is an Eridian goddess. But through the whole movie we don’t learn what either of these really mean. We hear “Siren” once, at the very end.
Now to clash these two with each other. Being a Siren is to possess powers, which origins are unknown and mysterious. Upon death of a Siren, the powers are transferred to a new human. They do not affect personality, there is no reincarnation involved - you can imagine it as mysterious energy finding new home.
The way Siren powers work is defeating the concept of a Siren being either a pure Eridian or Eridian goddess. Simply because one needs to be born Eridian or born (reincarnation?) a goddess for this concept to make sense. Plus if we assume that is some kind of possession, we’d expect a change in personality, which doesn’t de facto happen.
To finish: Siren is a person, who received powers of mysterious origin. Movie attempts to explain that Sirens are actually something else instead of explaining where the powers come from. And the movie makes a really bad job doing that.
THE ERIDIANS
The title says “The Eridians”, but whom we are going to be talking about is… Tiny Tina! Who per the movie is apparently an Eridian - that looks like human, behaves like human and basically is a human, but actually Eridian.
The story becomes even more ridiculous when we learn her past. As we know, Eridians were an ancient race, that existed long before humans. Tiny Tina was not lucky enough to surirve till this day. She was also not frozen in a scifi capsule to survive till this day. No.
ATLAS corporation was simply lucky enough to find the last drop of Eridian blood and clone that Eridian back into life. And that clone is noone else but Tiny Tina!
Which, as we know from the established Borderlands universe, makes no sense. Tiny Tina is a human, not an Eridian. She was not created in a laboratory - she had actual, living, human parents. And her story is related to Jack / Hyperion, not ATLAS.
Other than the fact, that Eridians left one drop of blood, we learn nothing about them, their culture, their history, their appearance or even their Vaults.
THE SIREN - LILITH
I’ll repeat myself - scene of Claptrap pooping is longer than essential scenes about Lilith’s character development.
For most of the movie, Lilith is just a head hunter, who only thinks about herself. Even tho she joins the Tiny Tina’s team it’s only because of fear, not any moral code. We don’t really happen to see any character development, discovering or learning the powers or even bonding with Roland.
Last time we see “old Lilith” is when Claptrap is playing random hologram of Lilith’s mother, where we finally get the goosebumps - because we are about to see how Lilith discovers all she is. And we don’t see it on screen. In the next scenes we see ATLAS’ trap and Lilith appearing out of nowhere - knowing who she is with her powers fully mastered. Which, again even tho we didn’t see it and lasted few minutes in the universe. Kinda she got her first bike and became International Downhill Champion the same day.
THE SIREN POWERS
And now we dive into another attempt to change what being a Siren is. The idea of Sirens being Eridian goddesses is stretched even further - Lilith becomes unbeatably powerful and immortal. But it doesn’t end here. She can now cast spells to make her friends immune to any sort of attack - white weapons, ranged weapons, pretty much anything that can hurt. (Oh and #offtopic - Claptrap is immune to any damage too, not because of Siren powers, but because he was apparently made this way).
In the battle scenes, we happen to see the full power of weapons within ATLAS’ ship. They can, in just miliseconds, convert a living being into ash. But not Lilith. She is struck with the weapon a few times and each time she needs just a few seconds on screen to get back to full power. At one point, she battles the laser - even tho yet seconds ago she was almost dead, being at her full power again, she protects herself from the laser and even manages to revert its power to destroy the ship. Well. Real powers of a goddess!
THE ACTORS AND VIBE
Let’s start with age. It seems that Borderlands’ cast was recruited from your local Bingo elderly community - and I am not even joking.
When we first meet Lilith, she looks like she is in either her late teens or early twenties. In the movie, she looks 40 maybe 50.
Tannis. She is a bit older than Lilith, based on looks. You could say she is in either later twenties or early thirties. This idea is followed up in the movie. She looks over 60 and doesn’t even have all black hair.
And now let’s remember, that the movie happens before we even meet Lilith and Tannis in games. Which means they should be even younger, but on the contrary, they are even older than the last time we see them.
BONUS: MOXXI
I’ll keep this short. There is nothing Moxxi about Moxxi.
THE ENDING
Now, even all the lore and universe aside. Borderlands movie is a family friendly pseudocomedy stripped off of everything that makes Borderlands what it is. A teaspoon of weird sense of humor. A bucket of insanity. Rivers of blood. All painted by the comic style. We see none of it vibe-wise. And if it comes to scenography and costumes - cosplayers did better job, than the movie.