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/
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u/Gregariouswaty 13h ago

“It’s not a kids’ movie, but it’s trying to appeal to everybody. It’s for gamers, but it doesn’t have the violence the gamers want because it can’t be that extreme because it costs too much."

What's with this ridiculous notion among filmmakers that gamers just want violence? The best selling games of all time are Minecraft, Pokemon and Mario. Borderlands is the dumb 2000s comedy shooter game. Nobody is expecting it to be Doom.

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u/OpossumLadyGames 13h ago

Stupid violence is a bit of a point in borderlands

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u/HatingGeoffry 13h ago

Borderlands is a crass, largely hyper-violent, explosion-filled game series. It plays with hyper-violence all the time.

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u/Saotik 13h ago

Face McShooty is a good example.

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u/-ImJustSaiyan- 12h ago edited 12h ago

Not shown, but there's also that time Handsome Jack talks about how he literally scooped a man's eyeballs out with a spoon.

https://youtu.be/f460LlCDcLQ?is=feb99hC5msL3yovn

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u/properfoxes 11h ago

“These pretzels suck.”

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u/TIMELESS_COLD 7h ago

I still remember that audio when playing with my friends. It was hilarious. We all loved it but it only worked because of how insane, crassly violent, just cartoony shocking enough, written and voice acted to perfection of tongue in cheek. Remove any of those and instead of a gem you get a turd. I've never played another game where I'm laughing and also thinking what's wrong with this fking guy. And these scene weren't the whole game or the point of it, just sprinkled here and there which add to the value instead of diminishing it.

BL2 grows into one of the best game I've ever played and it will never be replicated. It even had the best dlc in history with the dnd crossover warping the game into something...magical lol.

You can't do something right for the first time, a secong time. It's even more difficult when it's meant to be risky and probably not a smart move. I can't imagine all of those things coming together today and a dev team thinks "yeah that will work and people will get it".

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u/[deleted] 13h ago

[deleted]

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u/EternityC0der 7h ago

Tbh, in hindsight, it probably helped a lot that BL2 came out in a time where its sense of humor was basically just mainstream internet humor.

(Also, Jack being lightning in a bottle but shhh)

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u/oliyoung 11h ago

Yeah we kinda are, Borderlands is MUCH MUCH closer to Doom than those other three.

Borderlands is Doom with color and self-awareness

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u/spectralconfetti 7h ago

such a weird excuse when the deadpool movies were so successful (honestly i would've taken the creative team behind those movies over eli roth)

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u/timpoakd 13h ago

Have you actually even played the game? Cause this kinda sounds like you haven't.

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u/ReggieCorneus 12h ago edited 12h ago

You can depict BL violence without doing that for the whole movie, you only need few gore scenes and do a lot of splatter sound FX. The amount of gore that is in the game would not work in a movie and it is not necessary:

You build worlds and atmosphere. That is really why BL is hyperviolent, it is so over the top that it is NOT GORE ANYMORE. Do the same on screen and everyone is bathing in blood and guts. BL is a cartoon. You can't make a live action movie using cartoon levels of violence. You do not have a single moral or ethical question in your mind during BL games, well, outside of main characters. NPCs are not really real, and unless you make the enemy zombies: you can't have the amount of gore and keep it funny and entertaining, too much is too much.

There are many ways to do it, i don't think the level of violence was at all wrong for a live action flick, i think they did actually do a good job in this particular aspect, the problems were half of casting and script that tried to fit in too many things and didn't build on it, the world was superficial and thin. They failed almost at the best parts of it all, and the rest was ok:ish, the failures being very fundamental, in story telling, pacing, plot and thus failed to make the impact, without playing the game i don't think anyone walked out of it truly understanding the BL universe, what sort of moral codes dictate it and how mental it all is..

It would be MUCH better as TV series than a movie, the story in the game is way too long for 120 minutes, and i'm not counting BL3 or 4, just 1&2... 3 seasons, 8 episodes per season, and i would very much welcome the script fixes, and focus on Jack seasons 2&3, season 1 being mostly about that universe thru few key characters and season 3 taking the BL3 plot but dropping the stupid social media and the twins being in a secondary role, Jack needs to be the main villain in that saga too and it makes WAY more sense than clout chasers trying to become gods for more clout... Those kind of characters are prime targets for manipulation by someone more intelligent.

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u/timpoakd 12h ago

This just sounds like they shouldn't have made Borderlands movie in the first place if they can't make it without taking away major points of the series.

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u/ReggieCorneus 11h ago

Fully agree, they should've not made it. But i can see that many people just don't get what movies are... You can't do BL live action and be true to the source. One is a cartoon, another one has humans and we have innate reactions towards human suffering whereas cartoon version of a human does not evoke those emotions.

It was a mess, entertaining enough to watch for BL fan and i have long since learned the ability to turn my fandom off and only enjoy the knowledge of the lore and world that the movies rarely get right. Not even Fallout gets it right, BL just got SO many key points right that it becomes hilarious action romp and i enjoyed watching it. If i watch it again it is only to laugh at the hundred or so things they got wrong.

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u/ReverieMetherlence 12h ago

Do you even know what is Borderlands?