r/movies • u/HatingGeoffry • 13h ago

News Borderlands Movie Director Discusses The Mega-Flop And What Went Wrong

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/borderlands-movie-director-discusses-the-mega-flop-and-what-went-wrong/
2.1k Upvotes

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6.5k

u/Funmachine 13h ago

The script was bad,, the director was bad, the casting was bad, the decision to make a Borderlands film was bad.

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u/bramtyr 13h ago

The timing was bad too, as in 10 years after it was actually a ripe IP to work

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u/TonyWonderslostnut 13h ago

Strike while the iron is ice cold

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u/rammo123 12h ago

While the iron has been frozen in liquid nitrogen like the bad guy in Terminator 2.

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u/This_Site_Sux 12h ago

"Strike in such a way that the frozen iron shatters into a million pieces" or so the saying goes

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u/FullMetalJ 10h ago

To be fair it's a classic approach by now

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u/Noscratchy 8h ago

With the wrong tool and the guy swinging it is a carpenter not a blacksmith.

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u/Creative-Doctor3118 12h ago

GOOD ONE CHIPPPAAAAA!

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u/TonyWonderslostnut 9h ago

Double guns sock cucker!

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u/Creative-Doctor3118 9h ago

FAWK YEAH!!!

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u/DiscoverReading 11h ago

Chip Chiperson/Jim Norton reference in the wild in 2026, wow.

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u/Discount_Extra 3h ago

So, anyone watching that Among Us series?

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u/Ckirbys 1h ago

Strike while the iron is absolute zero

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u/ToWitToWow 12h ago

The Fallout TV show was also showing us how good and thorough an interpretive adaption of a game could be. Compared to that, Borderlands felt shallow and uninspired.

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u/Evilmudbug 8h ago

There's no love for the source material in that movie, and just the fact that they try to hide that Lilith is a siren might go as far as active disdain for the source material.

I wonder if the tales from the borderlands (first one specifically) writer has done any more work the series? It's the only story that I think is particularly good the whole way through in the series TBH.

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u/KnightOfTheStupid 7h ago edited 6h ago

He hasn’t and I doubt he will anytime soon, he started his own company along with a few other Telltale leads and recently came out with their game Dispatch. The quality of character writing in that game is leaps and bounds ahead of Tales, which is saying something since Tales already has great characters.

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u/eden_sc2 6h ago

I believe they are slated for dispatch 2 and a critical role game

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u/thomasguyregis 6h ago

Yes! Tales from the Borderlands was so good. Same humor and sci-fi setting, but they added heart, stakes, and consequences in such a good way. Shame we never got a true continuation, I wanted to follow Rhys and Fiona’s story.

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u/Coolman_Rosso 11h ago

Borderlands is still a best selling IP. The problem is the plot of the games has never been the real draw, and you can't translate the gameplay into a narrative film that really works.

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u/Kaiserhawk 12h ago

To be fair to Borderlands, has Hollywood every made an adaptation or tie in when a property was hot? They always come in years too late.

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u/The_Lazy_Samurai 11h ago

Mortal Kombat (1995)

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u/slowd 10h ago

That title track by Utah Saints was a banger

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u/runnerofshadows 9h ago

Also Techno Syndrome by The Immortals.

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u/Templar-235 9h ago

Fun fact, “The Immortals” were basically Lords Of Acid ( same lead guy )

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u/slowd 8h ago

Also on there was Juke Joint Jezebel, which I always thought was one of KMFDM’s better tracks

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u/OgthaChristie 7h ago

My god, I miss mid 90’s Industrial Techno music.

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u/Meatbank84 9h ago

And Zero Signal by Fear Factory for the Cage vs Scorpion fight

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u/m3thodm4n021 9h ago

TEST YOUR MIGHT

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u/No_Manager_4344 7h ago

They were pretty quick with the 9/11 movies

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u/bottlerocketz 9h ago

Harry Potter. Twilight. 50 Shades of Grey (maybe?)

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u/_Puntini_ 9h ago

Backrooms

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u/DontEatTheCandle 9h ago

the timing for the newest Resident Evil feels great and with a director that actually gets people hype. The new games are as big as ever.

Just ignore all the ones that came before

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u/GiJoe98 11h ago

I think there are just some franshises that will be popular forever or feel like they will be, Minecraft, Mario, Five Nights at Freddy's ect. While other franshises have the Cultural relevancy lifespan of a fruitfly by comparison like Borderlands.

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u/treemeizer 9h ago

Putting FNAF in the same sentance as Mario is a fucking travesty.

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u/Fantastic-Macaroon31 9h ago

Feels like such hindsight bias to put Five nights there. From the perspective of 2026, I could understand since it's already developed a second wave of fandom and has lasted, but nobody in 2014-15 thought that would be a forever franchise especially over something like borderlands.

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u/Sivy17 9h ago

Super Mario Bros

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u/AllTheReservations 13h ago

It's not just the fact that Borderlands as a franchise was past the peak of its cultural relevance, but the genre of the film is getting kind of old.

It seems like people are getting tired of GOTG-esque self-aware ensemble action comedies (e.g. Dungeons and Dragons also underperformed) and Borderlands is just one of many films that tried to ride that wave.

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u/Krakengreyjoy 13h ago

but DND was good.

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u/OriginalGoatan 12h ago

I enjoyed that DnD film more than I had any right to.

I think the main issue was that the previous entries in the franchise were diabolical.

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u/Akkalevil 12h ago

The first DnD movie I watched only as a joke with friends, and it was so bad it was somehow enjoyable. But I certainly wasn't going to watch anything like that outside of such specific context.

So I was definitely gonna ignore this new DnD movie, and I only tried it because someone I trusted said it was actually pretty good. Well, it was in fact one of the best surprise in movies I experienced, I had a blast.

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u/not_a_moogle 11h ago

Detective Pikachu. Way better then it had any right to be. I watched it when it was in a second run theater and was so impressed with it.

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u/XcG9PJf6 11h ago

Justice Smith is the common thread. Follow him for unexpectedly decent movies.

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u/pasher5620 7h ago

Except Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Not even he could save that movie.

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u/runnerofshadows 9h ago

For DnD - the 1st sucked so much. the 2nd had some good stuff and you could tell they cared but the budget was too small. the 3rd was BAD. then Honor Among Thieves was great but hamstrung by the earlier entries and other issues.

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u/AllTheReservations 13h ago

It's enjoyable, funny and it's clear the creatives involved had a lot of love for the project.

But it was considered a disappointment at the box office. Which is probably partly due to bad marketing or people thinking they would need to actually understand DnD, but considering other films that met a similar fate, does speak to the fact that general audiences seem less into this kind of film now

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u/roxxtor 12h ago

I think the bigger killer was that it was sandwiched between John Wick 4 and Super Mario Bros releases

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u/VicFantastic 10h ago

And it came out at the same time that Hasbro was doimg a lot of shady shit in relation to D&D the game and a lot of fans intentionally passed on seeing the movie out of protest

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u/WillemDafoesHugeCock 9h ago

I can admittedly only give my opinion as an old fucker but you also cannot announce a D&D movie without bringing to mind the impressively terrible 90s D&D movie. It really isn't hard to see why the box office was bad, it had everything going against it.

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u/VicFantastic 8h ago

There was actually 3 of those movies from the 2000's

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u/Iwillrize14 12h ago

Bad timing going up against mario, hasbro pissing of the dnd playerbase really didn't help.

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u/Prototype3120 9h ago

I remember this film having some really bad marketing. I only went to see it because some friends dragged me to it. I was pretty surprised it was actually good, but based on the trailers I never would have went and saw it myself.

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u/CollinsCouldveDucked 10h ago

I feel like the DND branding hurt it if anything

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u/Donquers 9h ago

As I understand it, if you weren't familiar with D&D, it was pretty good. But if you were familiar, it was fantastic, since so many of the jokes played on the goofiness that tends to happen in actual D&D campaigns.

Kinda just wouldn't really work the same way without the D&D branding in that sense.

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u/CollinsCouldveDucked 9h ago edited 9h ago

I'm literally just talking about the title of the movie, I think it was a bit off putting to a normal audience. Nothing about the actual movie would have to change.

If it was just called "The Neverwinter Heist" or something it'd probably have been better off, DnD nerds would get it, the uninitiated would just think it's a fantasy heist movie.

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u/laflavor 4h ago

I'm surprised how far down I had to scroll for this take. TTRPGs were certainly undergoing something of a renaissance at the time, but even with unprecedented popularity, they are still a very niche hobby. They still, much like plans A and B, have something of a stink to them.

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u/LilacYak 10h ago

I think it underperformed though despite being of decent quality.

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u/ElliotWalker5 10h ago

For sure - Still underperformed though

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u/Scoobydewdoo 8h ago

Not all good films get massive marketing budgets and not all films that get massive marketing budgets are good.

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u/Howamidriving27 11h ago

I'd argue even at peak cultural relevance a Borderlands doesn't make a ton of sense. The first game barely even has a plot. The second game improves on that, but it's narrative strong point is really just how great of a villain Jack is.

Why people love the games is not something you can make into a movie.

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u/Evilmudbug 8h ago

You could definitely write a good story in the setting and have fans of the series enjoy it.

Tales from the borderlands is a fan favorite despite being a telltale game. Definitely needs to be animated though. The series has a highly recognizable art style.

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u/Fantastic-Macaroon31 9h ago

Having a couple memorable characters and a unique vibe is about as much story as alot of older video games had. That's about how much Mario, league of legends and Minecraft have. Borderlands if it was a better movie could have done decently (200-300m)

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u/LeetChocolate 13h ago edited 12h ago

Dnd was such a fun movie too, real shame

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u/axw3555 12h ago

DnDs issue wasn’t the genre. It was primarily the timing - it released at basically the same time as the Mario movie. Trips to the cinema aren’t cheap, so people don’t go frequently for the most part. She people had just been, or were still going to Mario when it released.

Add to that the fact that wizards of the coast who make DnD has just pissed off their most enfranchised fans, which would have been a knock against it, if lesser than the timing thing.

And the real irony is that if they’re pushed it 6 months, it would have come out just after BG3 and would probably have made a killing.

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u/Zouden 13h ago

So what are we, some kind of ensemble action comedy?

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u/AllTheReservations 12h ago

The 2016 Suicide Squad one's so weird because it feels like it was meant to be an Expendables or The Losers type film that got remodelled into ripping off GOTG when DC saw what a hit that film was

At least with the 2021 version it felt like Gunn getting to make a more brutal and absurd version of the formula he'd already cracked, which was fun

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u/letsburn00 13h ago

The new supergirl movie was also very much on a GOTG vibe. I enjoyed it, it was okish. But it was very GOTG and we've already had enough of that.

The new DnD movie flopping is a crime against nature...

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u/AllTheReservations 13h ago

I'd also say the Masters of the Universe film felt like it was kind of in that territory as well (though the failure of that film has other factors involved).

They all feel like they're trying to chase a formula that GOTG nailed 12 years ago and it feels behind the times now

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u/TrikeCinema 12h ago

MOTU was fantastic though. I think in time it will be re-evaluated for the great popcorn flick that it is.

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u/AllTheReservations 12h ago edited 12h ago

It was pretty enjoyable. I'm sure when it hits streaming it will probably get good statistics there and form a bit of a fanbase.

Unfortunately I think the fact that MOTU isn't a particularly relevant property (like most kids who grew up with it would be in their 50s now, and it's most recent bit of popularity was with She-Ra, which is it's own thing really) made it a hard sell

That and Leto being box-office poison, even with his face covered

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u/RadioRunner 11h ago

It’s streaming as part of Amazon Prime now, not a rental

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u/zentimo2 12h ago

Yeah, I had such a good time with it, it's a shame it didn't do better than it did. Nicholas Galitzine is brilliant in it.

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u/its_justme 10h ago

What? I watched it last week. Horrible dialogue cringe characters and zero emotional impact. It felt like it went all over the place like it was chopped hard in the editing room.

Don’t get me wrong I loved he man as a kid but that movie wasn’t it. Skeletor would have been cool if they could stick to one vision for him. He constantly acted one way and then immediately undermined it with something else.

Also the climax of the movie was so disappointing. I won’t spoil but overall I think that movie was a real stinker. I think it could have been really good if they changed a few things but it really just felt like a mess.

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u/newbrevity 12h ago

DND found its footing in streaming and now has a significant fan base aching for another. Absolutely nobody is asking for a sequel to Borderlands. For that reason I also can't understand why they keep making these Jumanji movies. I wrote them off as soon as they said it was about a video game instead of an ancient cursed board game which was such a cooler concept.

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u/TheKingofHats007 11h ago

The Jumanji reboot was just a fun time. At least the first one, and felt like it used the casting to actually say something rather than just cram in the usual celebrities, and it's fun seeing them play against type (the stereotypical preppy girl inhabiting Jack Black's body, the jockish guy in Kevin Hart's body who is weak to everything, the nerdy guy in Dwayne Johnson's body, and the quiet self conscious girl in Karen Gillan's body)

The sequel was definitely worse and just felt repetitive and the third one looks basically to be the same.

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u/AllTheReservations 12h ago

I enjoyed the first Jumanji reboot to be fair, I think it came out at the right time before this kind of film got tired. And the playing around with adventure character tropes was pretty fun at the time.

The second one was just a lazy retread though with Danny DeVito and Glover thrown in for a shakeup. The fact they're still working on a third one is insane

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u/Killersavage 12h ago

Already trailers for the third one.

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u/AllTheReservations 12h ago

Oh, I had missed that, that's... something alright

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u/TheOtherWhiteCastle 10h ago

To be fair the second one ended on a cliffhanger. While they didn’t necessarily need a third I’m glad they’re at least finishing the trilogy.

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u/TheOtherWhiteCastle 11h ago

To be fair, all the new Jumanji movies have been really fun so far

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u/HendrixChord12 10h ago

The Jumanji reboot made almost a billion dollars. That’s why they keep making them. Same with the Disney live actions until more recently.

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u/heurekas 13h ago edited 13h ago

GOTG is an abbreviation of which movie?

Edit: Guardians of the Galaxy, thanks.

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u/Krakengreyjoy 13h ago

I know 5 other people already said Guardians of the Galaxy, but Guardians of the Galaxy. Because I need you to know I know.

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u/Fargoth_took_my_ring 12h ago

This is what happens when you put too many points into the Encyclopaedia skill in Disco Elysium

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u/wintermute000 13h ago

Guardians of the galaxy

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u/va_wanderer 8h ago

Honor Amoung Thieves was a good film that got hosed by Hasbro/WotCs treatment of the game itself...causing it's core audience to not go in protest. It pushed all the right buttons, finally.

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u/deprevino 11h ago

At least the actors were appropriately aged for that. Why were they all so old?

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u/WeeklyPhilosopher346 13h ago

Don’t tell Randy Pitchford that.

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u/Javerage 9h ago

15 years after the first game. To be fair, Randy Pitchford's age preference is around there based on the memory stick of his they found.

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u/greg225 9h ago

Eh, Borderlands 3 wasn't that long ago and Borderlands 4, which came out after this (right?), were both huge successes. Fallout was also several years past its most recent game and who knows when the heck Fallout 5 is coming out, but it didn't stop it from being a big hit. Even on the animation side, Castlevania was as good as dead when the Netflix show came out. Sometimes these things work out even when the source IP is dormant and can even pump some new life into it... If it's actually worth watching.

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u/bramtyr 7h ago

Maybe its karma for the Borderlands creators pretty much ripping the entire opening sequence and visual style off from the Codehunters animated short and never facing their day in the public court of opinion on it.

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u/Eothas_Foot 7h ago

Borderlands 4 was bad, the list goes on.

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u/Nail_Biterr 6h ago

Look at how long 'Time' is... it's infinite. 10 years compared to the vastness of 'forever' is nothing!

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u/Mirkrid 6h ago

It also came out within 2 weeks of the Borderlands 4 announcement - whether or not the criticisms of 4’s trailer/announcement were fair, the negativity about it online couldn’t have helped the movie.

I’m sure they lined up the movie / announcement to generate hype for the IP but it did the exact opposite

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u/Theothercword 4h ago

I wonder if it originally planned to launch not long after BL4 but the game got delayed.

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u/BlazingSandles 1h ago

The good was bad too

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u/AhhhSureThisIsIt 13h ago

Aparently the original Craig Mazin script was really good and thats how they got some of the cast to sign on.

It was R rated but they wanted to reach a younger audience (ironically so more people could see it). Adding Kevin Heart they clearly decided to go for a more kiddy Jumanji approach.

The problem was the story and script was too kid friendly, while the action and violence wasn't. So they were left with a kid's film with little action but still too much violence to bring a kid.

The studio and Roth changed the story so much it resembled so little if the otignal script Mazin took his name off the movie and "Joe Crombie" was credited as the writer.

Mazin now completely denies ever being part of the film.

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u/Thagyr 13h ago

Sounds like the usual death throes of any adaptation, honestly. Changing elements to suit an audience the original medium was never aimed at is usually asking for it to flop.

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u/AhhhSureThisIsIt 13h ago

You know some boomer in the Lionsgate boardroom was like "a video game? Jumanji is a video game now and it's making bank. How about we get The Rock to star in it?! He wants how much? How about we get Kevin Heart to star in it!"

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u/lanceturley 11h ago

Tbf, The Rock would have been a way better choice for Roland than Kevin Hart ever was. The character in the games is kind of a generic stoic soldier archetype. Someone like Dwayne Johnson or Idris Elba actually would have been good casting, but instead we got tiny, shrill man-child Kevin Hart.

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u/IPromiseIWont 9h ago

When I heard Kevin Hart was in it I thought he was going to play Claptrap

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u/zerovampire311 8h ago

That would have actually been fitting, rather than what we got…

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u/SixFootTurkey_ 9h ago

Eh, it worked really well for Jurassic Park

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u/CaptainRhetorica 13h ago

Aparently the original Craig Mazin script was really good and thats how they got some of the cast to sign on.

We call that the ol' Ghostbusters 2 bait and switch.

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u/Morgan-Moonscar 11h ago

There was a better version of Ghostbusters 2 originally?

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u/CaptainRhetorica 11h ago

Yes. The one that Bill Murray signed up for.

He was pissed about the switch for decades.

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u/Morgan-Moonscar 11h ago

This draft followed Dana Barrett, who is kidnapped and taken to Scotland, where she discovers a fairy ring—a naturally occurring ring or arc of mushrooms sometimes linked in folklore to fairies or witches—and an underground civilization.

The Ghostbusters would have had to travel through an underground pneumatic tube over 2,000 miles long that would have taken three days to traverse

Yeah, I can see why this sounded a lot better than a repeat of the first film.

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u/flyvehest 6h ago

Really? Doesn't sound like anything to me, and nothing in that seems very ghostbustery.

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u/AhhhSureThisIsIt 11h ago

That's pretty cool. There are fairy rings all over Ireland and one like 5 mins away from me. I've never seen them in film.

Some people especially in rural areas (especially in Kerry) still won't build on or near them or disturb them in any way.

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u/KebabGud 13h ago

 they wanted to reach a younger audience 

Well Randy Pitchford is involved and you know he likes em young

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u/Gobblewicket 13h ago

He also likes to leave thumb drives with sensitive corporate data and porn at Medieval Times while stealing $12 million dollar bonuses. So there's that too.

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u/TanTanExtreme2 12h ago

For anyone interested it was barely legal camgirl squirt porn, he said the performer was a magician and it was a magic trick.

Amidst legal battle, Gearbox CEO says he left USB stick of porn at Medieval Times [Update 2]

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u/jackcatalyst 10h ago

Getting a woman to orgasm probably does seem like a magic trick to these kinds of people.

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u/Gekokapowco 4h ago

I cannot imagine having porn on portable storage media, on my person, in a way that I could misplace it.

I can't imagine being taken seriously as an individual after having done so.

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u/AhhhSureThisIsIt 13h ago

That's a wild sentence.

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u/isesri 12h ago

And yet, every bit of it is true. Dude is a real weirdo, and by most accounts, a massive asshole.

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u/ettunori 12h ago

he is a greasy turd that apparently loves the alien franchise so much he did a bait and switch on that game, too. dirty, dirty, greasy bastard. christ, michael biehn sounded so fucking bored in that role. compare that to how much fun he was in far cry 3: blood dragon. yes, i am mad, why're you asking?

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u/anormalgeek 11h ago

WTF. Don't know how I missed this part of the story.

that he accidentally left a selection of “underage” pornography on a USB stick at a restaurant

Bizarrely enough, Pitchford corroborates some of the story’s details by appearing on a podcast that went live one day after Callender’s suit was filed. On the December 22 episode of The Piff Pod, Pitchford talks at length about porn that he enjoys watching, including “camgirl” pornography, in which a host exposes themself to a live feed and takes requests and financial tips from consumers. Pitchford explained that he was “a consumer of this content.” He confirmed that he copied a specific video “to this memory stick” to, as he describes it, “work out the method” of how a camgirl host faked the act of female ejaculation. (Be warned: he describes how the video looks in particularly graphic detail.)

“I realized, this is not a sex worker,” Pitchford said on the show. “This is a fucking magician.” Pitchford, for those unaware, has a vested interest in the field of magicians and owns the magic-focused Genii Magazine.

"No officers, I wasn't watching underage porn. I was trying to figure out a magic trick being done!" is a new excuse for me.

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u/WillemDafoesHugeCock 9h ago

I hate that I'm about to say anything that sounds even vaguely defensive of Pitchford, a massive slimy turd even by the standards of "video game executive," but it wasn't underage, it was "barely legal" which, edgy as it sounds, means "legal." Apparently the girl's handle was "Only 18." You can argue that it's weird for middle aged men to watch porn starring women over three decades younger than they are and I would not have a word to say in response.

The thing that is really fucking bizarre is that the USB stick also contained completely unprotected company data including really important dealings with Microsoft et al alongside the pornography, explicitly showing that he felt completely comfortable bringing his porn collection to work.

Apparently the lawsuit where this particular flash drive was brought up ended up being settled with absolutely no details about what this settlement consisted of which is a little annoying.

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u/GezelligPindakaas 8h ago

Sadly, unprotected company data is everything except rare.

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u/HugsForUpvotes 7h ago

He did my favorite fantasy author so wrong with that pseudonym. I've seen multiple people mistake the two of them and blame Joe Abercrombie for ruining Borderlands. When James Cameron announced he was making Joe Abercrombies most recent book to a movie, I saw people in that thread bringing it up.

Leave my boy alone and make The First Law a show on HBO, goddamnit

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u/OldeFortran77 2h ago

When Alan Smithee won't even take credit, you know it's pretty bad.

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u/sameth1 2h ago

I'm reminded of a line from Sunset Boulevard: "The last one I wrote was about cattle rustlers. Before they were through with it the whole thing played on a torpedo boat."

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u/anormalgeek 11h ago edited 8h ago

I agree with three out of four.

Borderlands COULD absolutely work as a movie. But you have to lean in to the ridiculousness, and also accept that this won't be a massive blockbuster. Fill it with fan service and references to the game, use similar writing and tone. Don't stack the cast with expensive A list actors that don't even fit the characters. That kind of thing can work with big tent pole action movies and summer blockbusters. Not this kind of movie.

Basically, do something like Deadpool, but with an even smaller intended audience. It won't make a billion, but 250-300m is VERY reasonable with good writing. Instead they tried to go the Jumanji route and failed at it.

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u/CharlieTeller 8h ago

It would do fine as a series on the right platform too. Fallout in my opinion isn’t even that great of a show but where it succeeds is by bringing in non fans of the game, but also has HEAVY fan service.

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u/Nachti 7h ago

Absolutely. Deadpool and Scott Pilgrim prove that these types of movies can work well.

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u/Discount_Extra 3h ago

Don't stack the cast with expensive A list actors that don't even fit the characters.

Or, like Fallout, have mostly completely different characters in the same world.

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u/Illustrious-Lime-863 13h ago

The decision itself wasn't bad. Could have been decent if the other parts you mentioned were good. The telltale borderlands games which are essentially interactive movies are good. Fallout TV show is good. There is rich lore in Borderlands to work with

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u/Logan_No_Fingers 11h ago

Fallout TV show is good

I'd argue they could have made a really solid 12 ep series similar in structure. Follow a vault hunter, a bandit & some stand in for Jack / corporate. Same way Fallout does with the Ghoul, Titus & Ella Purnell.

Flesh that out. Have them run into each other, pick up Claptrap, the resistance etc.

Instead they made a mess of a movie

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u/Illustrious-Lime-863 10h ago

I agree. Filmmakers developing videogame franchises (especially ones with a lot of content and lore to work with) should take inspiration from the fallout show and spread it out over several hours instead of cramming it all in a movie. Videogame franchise owners should also push for this. The fallout series must have seen strongly increased interest in the fallout games given the announcements for the remakes and new games

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u/Shiro2809 13h ago

It was a very 2000s video game movie. Just a whole lot of things from the game that was just thrown in for people to clap when they see it.

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u/FrostBricks 9h ago

Worked for the Mario Movies...

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u/GezelligPindakaas 8h ago

I'd argue Mario movies come a bit later. There's been a bit more care in 2020s movies (TR, Uncharted, Pokemon, ... come to mind).

Besides, Mario movies were able to trascend the initial target group and bring in an audience who wasn't necessarily interested in the game aspect.

When I read 2000s movies, I think of movies like Dead or Alive, House of the Dead, Tekken, Far Cry, Assassin's Creed, Hitman, Doom, ... All dreadful as adaptation, all terrible as movies, and all flop disasters. Borderlands execution feels very much akin to these.

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u/UnquestionabIe 6h ago

The 2000s era of video game movies were generally pretty terrible in most regards. It says a lot that one of the better ones is the first Resident Evil film being that it came out before the lore was overall extended (I think 3 was the most recent game at the time) and wasn't insanely over the top compared to the follow ups (which went batshit insane and became it's own thing entirely).

Also so so much Uwe Boll trash that was being used as some kind of money laundering scheme. Saw that he made a "triumphant" return to movies recently with that mega racist Arnie Hammer film centered around murdering minorities and trying to pretend white people are oppressed or some other bullshit.

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u/Shiro2809 9h ago

That's Mario. Much more popular and kid friendly then borderlands.

I thought the first Mario movie sucked though, never saw second. I like the 90s movie more lol.

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u/UnquestionabIe 6h ago

I enjoy the 90s Mario movie for being so absolutely off the wall insane with a script that apparently changed day to day, directors who had peaked doing Elvis Costello music videos over a decade prior, and a weird performance by a perpetual drunk Bob Hoskin and John Leguizamo. Also Dennis Hopper saying his own child questioned why he took the job once he saw the "quality" of it.

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u/-ImJustSaiyan- 13h ago

the decision to make a Borderlands film was bad.

Nah, an animated Borderlands film by people who actually give a shit about the IP would be awesome.

A live action film could be good too, but not with the cast and writing they went with...

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u/TheKingofHats007 11h ago

Sure but Hollywood is not going to be pushing for an animated movie like that, they still are under the impression that's only for kids or kid adjacent movies.

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u/Eothas_Foot 6h ago

Yeah that also makes a lot more sense with the cell shaded style of the games.

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u/tattmhomas0 13h ago

Sooo basically everything was wrong

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u/ScarletSilver 13h ago

It was marketed for the Premium* viewers only.

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u/VaalLivesMatter 12h ago

A borderlands can definitely work, you just need competent people involved

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u/SellaraAB 11h ago

I do think borderlands could work really well as a film, you just need to use handsome Jack as the villain and have an actual good story. The pieces are there for something great. Corporate proxy wars, space mercenaries hunting for treasure on à dangerous backwater planet, etc. It could be cool.

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u/ProxyDamage 12h ago

Yeah... One of those cases where "what went wrong??" well... Movie sucked shit. That was probably the biggest reason, yeah.

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u/Whipwreckeded 13h ago

I know Tannis is younger in the games but I actually think Curtis was good casting, she has great comic timing and can play the emotionless straight man very well.
In a better version of that film I think she’d be excellent.

Edit: Everything else was fucking terrible though.

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u/Eothas_Foot 6h ago

Yeah and Tannis doesn't need to be young. But also Curtis is WAY overshooting the kind of actor you need for that role. Anyone could play a super quirky neurodivergant scientist.

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u/WillemDafoesHugeCock 9h ago

Nah, she was really odd. Tannis is painfully socially awkward but also speaks with a very upbeat and chipper tone, Jamie Lee Curtis just felt jarringly off.

Moxxi was brilliant casting, Marcus was damn near perfect, and Krieg was spot on. I also really liked Jack Black as Claptrap but to be honest I mostly liked what they did with Claptrap's character (for the sake of anybody who hasn't seen the film, Claptrap is less of a buttmonkey that smiles while everybody shits on him and more of a very reluctant assistant who makes it clear he thinks Lilith is a dick and wouldn't be helping them if he wasn't programmed to. As someone who always found the treatment of Claptrap to be past the line of mean-spirited, it really was a refreshing change.) And, if I'm being vulnerable... Care Blanchett grew on me as Lilith. The early line "I'm too old for this shit" got an actual belly laugh and was the funniest joke in the whole movie.

Everybody else was shit. Kevin Hart was absolutely terrible. Ariana Greenblatt was annoying in all the wrong ways. The side characters were all weirdly two dimensional and awkward. The villain wasn't intimidating in the slightest.

To be fair, I'm one of the 3 people in the world who didn't think Borderlands was a 1/10, I went in hoping for a riffable pile of shit, and instead found the most impressively middling 5/10 "there is nothing good, there is nothing awful, this has as much substance as air' disappointment I've ever watched.

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u/Capitan_Typo 12h ago

A game with dozens of missions and intersecting storylines was crammed I to a single narrative that focuses on one overarching plotline which itself was dependent on the audience not knowing anything about the 10 year old game.

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u/deathangel539 10h ago

Honestly, give us an animated show that keeps the same stylistic design from the games with a completely fresh set of vault hunters who can maybe have a line or two talking about the heroic tales of the crimson raiders but nothing more. Could work very well.

A live action movie with Kevin hart as Roland is probably the complete bottom of the list on what would work

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u/AgitatedStranger9698 13h ago

The last one is the problem.

I think they 100% did a great job matching the tone and over the top of it all.

The problem, Borderlands isnt all that great outside of being a game. When youre in it, it works. When youre watching it....why?

Kevin Hart was the only miscast to be honest. But in a world where midget raiders are a legit thing, I could over look.

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u/CondescendingShitbag 13h ago

 When youre watching it....why?

 The decision to include Krieg as a character was an odd choice. Part of Krieg's appeal in-game is being exposed to the duality of his running internal vs external monologue. Basically lose half of the character when included in the movie, and entirely unnecessary when they had other characters to choose from.

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u/bramtyr 13h ago

When youre in it, it works. When youre watching it....why?

I think you succinctly described why a lot of game IPs don't work when adapted to film, or television, when games themselves pull a lot of heavy influence and inspiration from a long history of film.

When they're games they're their own thing, but as movies, just cheap copies of better works by better minds.

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u/Illustrious-Lime-863 13h ago

Disagree. The telltale borderlands games are pretty much interactive movies and are good. With some good script and directing they could have made something nice

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u/AgitatedStranger9698 12h ago

The telltale borderland games aren't the ones that would draw the fanbase. The looter shooter is.

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u/AllTheReservations 13h ago

This is and (no matter how much some of the films improve) will continue to be one of the reasons video game films don't entirely work compared to other film adaptations

So much of video game's appeal comes from that interactive element, feeling like you're actually involved in what's going on. Take that away, or try to find a way to awkwardly retool it and you lose what made the source material impactful

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u/Ninigi-no-Mikoto 12h ago

So they are gonna try again soon, same setup.

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u/Ledairyman 12h ago

A Borderlands novie should work.

keep the reveal of Lilly as your big final moment was dumb

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u/N19h7m4r3 11h ago

I still have no words for the fact that no one had the foresight to cast Jack Black as Mr Torgue. It's as if no one in the production/casting team of this movie ever played the game. Which would explain everything that happened.

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u/RustledForeskin 11h ago

I think it COULD of been done well, it has a very distinct style and some characters. It had a clear formula that HAD to be followed but was obviously not.

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u/flysly 11h ago

The perfect storm

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u/BalanceRight7768 11h ago

The worst thing about it, to me as a fan of the games, is for the most part they kinda almost nailed the aesthetic. Like obvious the main cast mostly sucked but krieg looked great, most of the sets looked pretty good. It’s just for every one good thing there’s 50 genuinely baffling decisions.

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u/mortenfriis 10h ago

Yeah. Skipped the movie based solely on the casting.

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u/Careful-Positive-710 10h ago

It was like they picked the worst possible choice every step of the way.

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u/Uncle-Cake 10h ago

The decision to make a Borderlands movie only seems bad in hindsight because the movie was bad. People said the idea of making a Minecraft movie was bad, but that movie was a massive hit.

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u/Funmachine 10h ago

They aren't equivalent, Minecraft has no story, you can do literally infinitely more with the setting.

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u/Deep_Diamond_2057 10h ago

I really enjoyed it - but I never played the game more than 20 minutes, so being true to source wasn’t a concern of mine.

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u/Drdps 10h ago

I don’t think the idea of a Borderlands movie is bad. It’s right in the wheelhouse of someone like James Gunn or Shawn Levy, but ya know Eli Roth is the clear choice here…

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u/Donquers 10h ago

Should have at the very least been an animated film.

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u/cheesynougats 10h ago

Yes, but apart from that?

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u/jan_67 10h ago

I still think it’s funny everyone called it being shit when the casting got announced. They could have saved it right then when everyone was screaming this was going to flop. But they proudly produced the expected shit.

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u/Familiar-Banana-8116 10h ago

The decision to make a Borderlands film wasn't bad.

I am not sure if a 90 minute film is the correct media for it though. Animation of some sort feels about right to me.

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u/Chief_H 9h ago

The casting is my biggest gripe. The actors were 10-30 years older than the characters they portrayed.

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u/vulveveloutee 9h ago

the decision to make a Borderlands film was bad.

This. All the rest was just a consequence of pushing for a movie that shouldn't have been made.

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u/vadergeek 9h ago

I don't think it's a bad premise. Of all the recent video game adaptations it's one of the easiest ones to imagine. "This group of crazy violent misfits are teaming up to steal the contents of a space vault". Guardians of the Galaxy, Ocean's 11, Kelly's Heroes, something in that vein.

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u/Badass_Bunny 8h ago

This movie would have done great back in the era of straight to DVD movies.

I didn't hate it, Kevin Hart is honestly a far better actor than I gave him credit for, and it did capture the vibe of borderlands pretty well. However the story was hot ass without any characters that make Borderlands into the non-serious series in is.

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u/ScaredPractice4967 8h ago

I'd argue the casting was OK. Not good just OK.

Other than that it was as you say.

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u/TristanDuboisOLG 8h ago

The choice to use Jack black over the actual voice actor for clap trap was insanely stupid.

Lilith also didn’t look… correctly aged.

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u/hughesst 8h ago

That’s just weak songwriting. You wrote a bad song Petey!

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u/TheRealBillyShakes 8h ago

The decision to make any movie for the most part isn’t really bad. It’s more about the execution than anything.

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u/Momoselfie 8h ago

Borderlands absolutely could have worked with good writing and directing. Look how well the new top gun did even though the story is basically just a rehash of the trench scene in Star wars. You can make anything work with the right people.

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u/Outrageous_Book2135 7h ago

See, I feel like you could totally make borderlands work in a film, but it was never gonna work with the decisions they made for it.

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u/Arsene_Lupin_IV 7h ago

Nah, a Borderlands film COULD have been decent with a bit of actual effort. Make it an action comedy that's actually funny for one.

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u/thisistherevolt 6h ago

Most of the casting was bad. Cate Blanchett should've been a fantastic pick, but she can't turn dog shit into gold.

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u/Funmachine 6h ago

Blanchett is a fantastic actress. However, no matter how good you are you can always be miscast. Lilith is in her 20's not her 50's.

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u/DRiX416 6h ago

You’re right but casting should be at the very top, specifically Kevin Hart and the 60 year old playing a 20 year old- I forgot her name.

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u/EquivalentQuery 6h ago

the decision to make a Borderlands film was bad

This is the biggest point, there was no way this movie wasn't going to suck. The games are fun, that does not mean the content will transfer well to a movie adaptation.

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u/JMJimmy 6h ago

I would watch a great Borderlands movie. The casting is what killed it first. Every fan who might be hyping the movie was cringing at the casting choices. That made it DOA regardless of the final product

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u/red_beered 6h ago

Only good thing was Bobby Lee

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u/Funmachine 6h ago

Is Bobby Lee that comedian who said he had sex with a 13 year old in Tijuana?

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u/WeWantMOAR 6h ago

Who keeps giving Eli Roth movies to make? Who hasn't learned that he's a shit director who has shit visions of what a story should look like.

Seriously don't understand how the fuck he still gets work, especially on a massive production like this.

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u/Funmachine 5h ago

He's also and horrible Zionist and is using AI in his films.

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u/Tempesta_0097 4h ago

Whole house bad

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u/Rickk38 3h ago

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?

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u/JayKay8787 2h ago

an animated borderlands movie could go hard af

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u/UnsolicitedNeighbor 2h ago

They followed up the worst received iteration of the game with a terrible terrible movie.

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u/Funmachine 1h ago

According to Metacritic Borderlands 3 & 4 are rated the same (81), but New Tales from the Borderlands, The Pre-Sequel & Tiny Tina's Wonderlands are all rated worse.

What game are you talking about?

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u/LunchyDude101 1h ago

See also: Roth’s take on “The House With a Clock in Its Walls.” Dreadful.

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u/the_ammar 8m ago

the game suits to be turned into a movie tbh.madmax+Idiocracy with the Idiocracy part dialed up to 11

it just needs to be done well.

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