Posted in: Lionsgate, Movies | Tagged: Borderlands

Borderlands: Florian Munteanu On Unique Interpretations Of Dialogue

Borderlands star Florian Munteanu talks about communicating when you're playing a character wearing a mask and not talking in coherent sentences.

After many months of sitting on the shelf and waiting for reshoots, Borderlands has finally made it to the big screen, and it looks like things could be off to a rough start both critically and commercially. That is always a shame because seeing any project fail is never fun, but in this case, it might be even more tragic because it does appear that some of the cast put real thought and nuance into their characters. We got the chance to speak to Florian Munteanu, who plays Krieg, earlier this summer. For a movie that is being touted as mindless, we got into a discussion about the nuance of communication when the character you're playing is not only masked but also doesn't speak in complete sentences. The rest of the interview is above.

Bleeding Cool: And I imagine [communication] was even more challenging with the fact that Krieg doesn't exactly speak in complete sentences at all. What was it like trying to communicate when you're not really able to? And did the script say what Krieg was trying to communicate, like in parentheses? And did your fellow cast members know what Krieg was trying to communicate to them? 

Florian Munteanu: I feel like he thinks he's a poet. The way he speaks, you know, is just the way he expresses himself. But no, in the script, there was not; let's call it a translation. But of course, Eli and I talked about it because I had the mask on, but that doesn't mean that you can hide behind the mask and you don't have any facial expressions. The acting continues, even behind the mask, if that makes sense. So I had to know what I was transmitting there, right? You want to transmit the emotions. And I had to know what he was saying, right? I had to become Krieg. Not only physically and body-wise but also by adapting to his mentality and thinking.

Sometimes Eli and I looked at those sentences, and we were like, 'I have no idea what that means.' So we just played around with it. We just had fun with it because the character is crazy. The character is insane. So why not go with our own insane interpretation of those kinds of things? I think that was the most fun about this character. I was able to let loose. There was not too much thinking about it. Just do it and have fun. 

BC: That sounds really fun, actually. So your fellow cast members didn't know what you were trying to say either, and they still had to react to it.

Munteanu: That was exactly the case. And they were supposed to give their own interpretation of what I was trying to say. Sometimes, their thinking was matching what I was trying to transmit in my message. Sometimes, we had different interpretations, which was totally fine as well. Because, again, this movie is about having fun. Sometimes, you misinterpret things, but that can also be fun.

Borderlands: Summary, Cast List, Release Date

Summary: In the movie, Lilith (Blanchett), an infamous outlaw with a mysterious past, reluctantly returns to her home planet of Pandora to find the missing daughter of the universe's most powerful S.O.B., Atlas (Ramirez). Lilith forms an alliance with an unexpected team – Roland (Hart), a former elite mercenary, now desperate for redemption; Tiny Tina (Greenblatt), a feral pre-teen demolitionist; Krieg (Munteanu), Tina's musclebound, rhetorically challenged protector; Tannis (Curtis), the scientist with a tenuous grip on sanity; and Claptrap (Black), a persistently wiseass robot. These unlikely heroes must battle alien monsters and dangerous bandits to find and protect the missing girl, who may hold the key to unimaginable power. The fate of the universe could be in their hands – but they'll be fighting for something more: each other.

Borderlands is directed by Eli Roth, and the cast includes Lilith, played by Cate Blanchett, Roland (Kevin Hart), Dr. Patricia Tannis (Jamie Lee Curtis), Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt), Krieg (Florian Munteanu), and Claptrap (Jack Black). The film also stars Edgar Martinez, Gina Gershon, Janina Gavankar, Cheyenne Jackson, Charles Babalola, Benjamin Byron Davis, Steven Boyer, Ryann Redmond, and Haley Bennett. It will be released on August 9, 2024.

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