Mexico City.- Filmmaker Eli Roth took Oscar-winner Cate Blanchett to the desolate and dangerous planet Pandora.
As Lilith, an infamous outlaw with a mysterious past, the Australian actress leads the film Borderlands, her first foray into video game film adaptations.
“Having Cate Blanchett was a dream come true. We had her stunt double, obviously, but she was the one who asked us to participate in those scenes, whether it was using the weapons, chases…
“That’s why we had like 10 people around her, but in general most of the action scenes are hers, she did them; even if you see the fight scenes, the camera is on her, there’s no face replacement,” said the director, writer and producer, admiringly.
In the film, which opens in theaters tomorrow, Lilith will return to Pandora with the mission of finding the missing daughter of the most powerful being in the universe, Atlas (Édgar Ramírez).
To accomplish her goal, the leader creates her own rescue squad: Roland (Kevin Hart), Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt), Krieg (Florian Munteanu), Tannis (Jamie Lee Curtis) and Claptrap (Jack Black).
It won’t be easy, as they will engage in battles against aliens and pirates to find and bring back the missing girl.
“I wanted to make a great movie, first and foremost, and it had to be an adaptation, not just a recreation. There were things in the game that wouldn’t work for the film.
“The game is the game and the movie is the movie, it had to work that way and (Randy Pitchford, the creator) said yes. I insisted, I don’t want to make an adapted movie and he understood perfectly,” Roth said in an interview.
Released in 2009, Borderlands is a first-person shooter video game that won over critics and audiences alike for its spectacular graphics and mind-blowing story.
Roth, best known in cinema for the horror genre, where he created sagas such as Hostel, adapted the audiovisual dynamics and the auditory experience of the title to the seventh art.
“It’s not a specifically violent story, there are elements of madness and chaos in my films that are part of my style, and I wanted to bring that to this story.
“It’s a story where the absurd, the disgusting, the crazy and the funny come together, and I think I have the best cast I could have had in a film of this nature,” said the director.
Borderlands, the filmmaker said, took as references for its film adaptation titles such as The Fifth Element, which showed Bruce Willis “as the tough, the tough guy.”
“It could also be the Barbarella of the sixties, with pretty girls and a unique spirit. I put the actors to fight, and I have references to everything: Star Wars, Escape from New York, Mad Max, a bit of everything.”
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