Shortening it to “G.” on the off-chance she googles herself and finds this website. Hey, I’ve been there before, and in doing so, I also find this website. So, this is a story that sort of isn’t a story. It’s just something that’s been bothering me for, like, seven years now, and it isn’t even a particularly uncommon non-story.
But it’s very delicate, to want more for an artist you appreciate, because that assumes a certain failure on the part of the artist. That’s not at all the case here. However, the reviews are in for the Borderlands movie, and I’ve read but one of the many scathing reviews out there and it made me laugh. Alyssa Mercante in Kotaku writes, “I saw Borderlands at an early screening at Alamo Drafthouse, during which cosplay was encouraged. No one wore costumes, and the theater was solemnly silent, as if we were about to watch archival video of the deadliest WWII battle or found footage from 9/11.” She hadn’t even gotten to the movie yet and it’s already brutal.
People saw this one coming, although I’d argue that the Borderlands video game isn’t the strongest foundation on which to stage a film production anyway. But one of its stars, Janina Gavankar, seemed to be pretty excited about the project, and I glimpsed some of that excitement on her Instagram. As I braced for the inevitable car crash currently throwing shards of glass and metal across the Interstate, I felt with some dread that I’d been here before.
In 2017, EA started rolling out the marketing for the newest game in the venerated Star Wars: Battlefront series. Oh, how we’d played Star Wars: Battlefront and its sequel to death on the Xbox and PS2. Oh, how “droids have the flag” and “watch those wrist rockets.” I was never much of a Star Wars fan myself, but in the interWar period between The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, that tide threatened to turn. The key was the forehead-slapping addition of, you know, women characters. Rey Skywalker was really exciting because she was a female Jedi. Suddenly, the world of Star Wars didn’t feel as imbalanced toward these, like, ultra-powerful dudes.
The new game, simply entitled Star Wars: Battlefront II, absolutely pushed me over the edge. I hadn’t yet upgraded to next-gen, so I downloaded the 2015 Battlefront onto my non-gaming PC and bought an Xbox One controller. I even watched YouTube videos about tips and tricks because I decided I was gonna be good at Battlefront II. (The tip: aim). I was all in. And the reason? This picture:
That’s Iden Versio, with the likeness and performance of Janina Gavankar. I saw that image and just about died. I wrote an extremely embarrassing post on The Battle Beyond Planet X (in the year after the podcast ended) which I won’t link to here because I just skimmed it and it’s really bad, but to at least scoop a sound bite out of the time capsule: “So what of a character like Iden, whose coolness is unfairly furthered by the actress Janina Gavankar’s charisma, who wears a cool uniform, has a cool helmet, and is a special forces commander for an elite unit on a mission of vengeance. And she’s on the Empire’s side, which would potentially see her doing things with greater ruthlessness than the usual plucky hero.” Ugh, shut up. Young man.
I like how I say “charisma” because I didn’t want to reduce my immediate reaction to “she’s hot.” But as part of the marketing for Battlefront II, Gavankar stepped out in a cool Iden-style outfit for a stage presentation and won over the crowd. I’d find out she’s half in the geek world and half in the Hollywood world, theoretically bringing a down-to-earth humanity to the usually astronautic actor persona. And by pure chance, I ended up seeing her part in the show Sleepy Hollow and thought she was pretty good!
I’d also find out she effectively replaced the main character of Sleepy Hollow for its final season, which was not well-received by fans. And then, you know, Star Wars: Battlefront II released.
Holy shit, man.
If you were to ask people “What’s the most controversial video game ever?” they’d run down the list of GTA, Mortal Kombat, Doom, but everyone knows it’s anything to do with Electronic Arts, like Mass Effect 3. I’m just gonna copy/paste straight from the Wikipedia article:
On November 12, 2017, a Reddit user complained that although they spent US$80 to purchase the Deluxe Edition of the game, Darth Vader remained inaccessible for play and the use of this character required 60,000 credits. Players estimated that it would take 40 hours of “grinding” to accumulate enough credits to unlock a single hero. In response to the community’s backlash, EA’s Community Team defended the controversial changes by saying their intent to make users earn credits to unlock heroes was to give users “a sense of pride and accomplishment” after unlocking a hero. This response frustrated many Reddit users, resulting in hundreds of negative replies and a comment score of negative 667,821, making it the most downvoted comment in the site’s history. In 2019, the comment was inducted into the Guinness World Records.
On the day before release, EA disabled microtransactions entirely, citing players’ concerns that they gave buyers unfair advantages. They stated their intent to reintroduce them at a later date after unspecified changes had been made. The uproar from social media and poor press reception on its microtransactions had a negative impact on EA’s share price which dropped by 2.5% on the launch day of the game. By the end of November 2017, EA had lost $3 billion in stock value since the launch of the game.
Reacting to the conclusion of the Belgian gambling regulator’s investigation, the head of the Dutch Gambling commission announced the start of their own investigation of Battlefront II and the issue in general, and asked parents “to keep an eye at the games their children play”. Chris Lee, a member of the Hawaii House of Representatives, called Star Wars: Battlefront II “an online casino designed to trap little kids” and announced his intention to ban such practices in the state of Hawaii. Another representative compared playing Battlefront II to smoking cigarettes, saying: “We didn’t allow Joe Camel to encourage your kids to smoke cigarettes, and we shouldn’t allow Star Wars to encourage your kids to gamble.”
And who was the face of this casino-cigarette Reddit kid-trap, the worst thing to happen to Hawai’i since Lorrin A. Thurston? Yeah. As I watched this scandal-as-game-release unfold in real time, I thought only of Janina Gavankar. Sure, I could’ve spared a thought for the developers, too, and the head writer, who actually used to frequent one of the online communities I liked back in the day, but all I could think about was the woman who should’ve skyrocketed through this new era of Star Wars media and become one of its many lasting icons.
Fast-forward seven years and it’s fucking… the Borderlands… movie? This time, she isn’t the face of it – looks like Cate Blanchett and Kevin Hart are eating this one – but it’s got to be disappointing. This is something she cared about and was excited for, and here it is, splat on the cement as one of the big turkeys of 2024. So, I don’t really know what to do or say at a moment like this. I’m sorry? I do feel bad, but I’ve also hardened in the time since. I mean, my flirtation with Star Wars was short-lived anyway, and even Battlefront II didn’t honestly make room for a character like Iden Versio.
My heart
So I guess the familiar feeling isn’t a disappointment that Janina Gavankar had the rug pulled once again, but that we’re still failing to properly service a talent like Janina Gavankar. Our productions collapse, our imaginations flatten. I like to think she’s perfectly content with her career, that every day is a blessing and what have you, so I have to make this about me instead of trying to speak for her: the alchemical transmogrification of Iden Versio from “promising character” into “Star Wars: Battlefront II is such a bad game it was investigated by several governments,” it’s an old heartache, and this recent episode brought it back with clanging alacrity.
Next time, “The Universe and Ella B.” In the meantime, you can watch Gavankar’s instant chemistry with Jon Lovett:
With Eyes East 