Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Who among us has never slummed it? So it is that Cate Blanchett, double Oscar winner and perhaps the most brilliant actor of her generation, strides on screen in Borderlands, a strenuously trashy video-game adaptation. The film is directed by Eli Roth, the mind behind, among other things, the grim and bloody Hostel films. It demands that Blanchett appear in endless green-screen sequences, firing outsize space guns while announcing that her character is “too old for this shit”.We can only guess why. Is this the professional curiosity of a Michelin-starred chef, intrigued by the thought of a shift in KFC? Or could a clue lie in the scene where her interplanetary bounty hunter Lilith is persuaded to take on an undesirable job? The fee pops up on her device: “OK!” she says brightly. Of course, Blanchett being Blanchett, the whole thing could be performance art.Anyway, here she is, hired to return to her dust-bowl dump of a home planet. (Her Hi-Vis hair suggests Camden Market.) The subject of the hunt is a smart-mouthed tween with the secret to a vault of alien technology. The supporting cast includes Jamie Lee Curtis and Kevin Hart; the humour is snarky; many bad guys receive dings to the crotch. It is only a matter of time before “Ace of Spades” appears on the soundtrack.The game the film is based on may be old news but the video game spin-off is at an all-time high. The Super Mario Bros Movie was a recent box-office smash; streaming hit The Last of Us much critically praised. Traces of gaming now pop up in the action. There are tunnels of corrosive liquid to pass through, a plot arranged around locating an all-important key. Rumours that Craig Mazin, writer of The Last of Us, worked on the project then removed his credit have been denied. The script still seems engaged in guerrilla warfare against the rest of the film. “Is there any way out of this that doesn’t involve garbage?” Blanchett asks.Elsewhere, Roth seems less to be trolling his own movie than his core audience — fans of the original game. Borderlands was known for its violence and profanity. Here, all that has been sweetened into the mildest scatology and a 10-year-old’s idea of bad language.Much like Blanchett’s involvement, questions abound. Has Roth botched an attempt to make a multiplex hit from an edgy nugget of intellectual property? Almost certainly yes. But there are faint, stubborn signs of something more interesting: Blanchett’s charisma unkillable, an occasional lairy oomph.Ironically, the film I was most reminded of was 1993’s original Super Mario Bros, another misfire with a celebrated headliner — back then, Bob Hoskins. That film was a commercial disaster, but is now remembered as a landmark of sorts. The same might be Roth’s best bet. His movie is not very good, and surely doomed at the box office. History, though, can be more forgiving. Let’s talk again in 30 years. Maybe.★★☆☆☆In UK and US cinemas from August 9
