The “B-grade” movie Cate Blanchett made for a laugh: “Strange, weird thing”
There comes a time in most actors’ careers when they take on a role in a film that, quite frankly, is nothing short of embarrassing. Sure, they’ll probably receive a bigger pay cheque than we could ever dream of for it, but is the cost of tarnishing your reputation and your integrity really worth it? For a bit of fun, maybe it is.
That’s the attitude Oscar-winning actor Cate Blanchett took when she recently accepted a role in a movie so awful that it earned five Razzie nominations and flopped at the box office, and you’d think she’d be smarter than to take on a movie so clearly doomed from the start, but Blanchett wanted to do something different for a change.
In fact, when Blanchett accepted the role of Lilith in Eli Roth’s video-game adaptation Borderlands, she knew it wasn’t going to be a work of art. That wasn’t going to stop her, though. I guess when your credits also include the likes of I’m Not There, Carol, The Lord of the Rings, and Blue Jasmine, it’s OK to indulge in a project for the sake of some fun every once in a while.
So, Blanchett agreed to play the main character in the sci-fi comedy, which also saw the likes of Jamie Lee Curtis, Gina Gershon, Jack Black, and Kevin Hart star, following Lilith, who, alongside a group of outsiders, assembles to rescue a young missing woman, played by Barbie star Ariana Greenblatt.
“I thought, ‘This could be really interesting.’ In the game, there was always a nod and a wink; a deliberate B-grade mash-up of chunky sci-fi and spaghetti western,” she told USA Today, admitting that she found the game “quite addictive”.
Video game adaptations are rarely good, although, as the likes of Resident Evil suggest, they can become incredibly popular, regardless. Perhaps Roth thought that this would become a hit, but Borderlands only grossed $33million against a budget of over $100m.
I don’t think Blanchett was all that bothered about Borderlands’ reception, though, because she knew she’d have a good time filming it. “Jamie’s just exceptional. And when Gina walked on set, it was like va-va-voom, as it always is with her. I mean, it’s not The Grapes of Wrath. It’s not Blade Runner. It’s its own strange, weird thing, and when you look at the casting, there’s a motley quality to it,” she said.
“We’re a very motley crew, in life and in art. I don’t think anyone would call Borderlands art, but it’s fun,” the actor continued. Indeed, Roth’s film is far from art, and practically every review that emerged upon its release was profoundly negative.
Unoriginal, ugly, disjointed, and infantile, there was little to redeem Borderlands, even if it featured some great actors, like Blanchett. Hopefully, the star has learned her lesson; a movie like this might look like an enjoyable time, but does she really want this hanging over her filmography? I certainly wouldn’t.
Luckily, Blanchett followed the disaster with two much more acclaimed films, Jim Jarmusch’s Father Mother Sister Brother and Steven Soderbergh’s Black Bag. Clearly, she knows how to get herself back on Hollywood’s more impressive side, Borderlands was just an experiment in letting go of expectation and indulging in pure pleasure.
