Awards Columnist/Chief Film Critic

I had my doubts going into Borderlands, the latest over-the-top video game adaptation made specifically to appeal to PG-13 moviegoers.

First, the series has a nearly decade-long history of failed attempts to crack the code, including Craig Mazin, who now shares co-authorship with "Joe Crombie" (who has only this one listed credit on IMDb and, according to IMDb, is Mazin's pseudonym).

If that’s the case, after the wild success on the small screen with Chernobyl and The Last of Us , you can understand why he doesn’t want to be associated with the finished product. At the time, original director and credited co-writer and story creator Eli Roth shot the film during the 2021 pandemic. But when it needed two weeks of reshoots, he had to hand it off to someone else due to his commitment to finishing last year’s smash-hit horror film Thanksgiving. So Tim Miller (2016’s Deadpool) stepped in and earned an executive producer credit.