Jumanji and Orange County star Jack Black has joined the cast of the Borderlands movie, The Hollywood Reporter reports.
Black, who will be playing Borderlands’ perennial robotic sidekick and ostensible comic relief Claptrap, is the latest actor to sign onto the project after Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, and Jamie Lee Curtis. Chernobyl creator Craig Mazin is penning the script.
“I am so excited to reunite with Jack, this time in the recording booth,” Borderlands director Eli Roth said. “Claptrap is the funniest character in the game, and Jack is perfect to bring him to the big screen.”
I have to say, grabbing Jack Black makes some sense, apart from the fact that he is very funny and cool and Claptrap is, well, not. I’m starting to fear that I might actually like this movie.
DISCUSSION
Nope, sorry, this is BAD casting.
I love Jack, no question about that, but this just smacks of the production not even remotely understanding the character they’re casting for.
Every ounce of Claptraps bravado is a front for a character that devastatingly sad and emotionally broken. People don’t love Claptrap because he’s a rapid-fire joke machine, people love him because of those moments where the façade breaks and we see what’s underneath all the bullshit bombast.
Literally everything about this movie makes it sound like Mazin/Roth spent 5 minutes on the Borderlands wikipedia and got only the most basic, surface level shit and constructed a movie around that.