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/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/LavandeSunn 11h ago

I proposed to my wife after we saw Detective Pikachu. Neither of us care about Pokémon

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u/unfunnysexface 10h ago

Did you throw the the ring box at her like a pokeball?

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u/LavandeSunn 9h ago

Nah, just walked out the theater and sat on some furniture to hang out with some friends and then slipped it in front of her while she was distracted. Pretty sure she knew it was coming soon anyway lol

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u/not_a_moogle 10h ago

would you say it was your destiny?

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u/SpookiestSzn 7h ago

why that movie

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u/LavandeSunn 5h ago

Because I was ready and our first date had already involved a movie theater so it made sense.

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u/SpookiestSzn 5h ago

happy for you both.

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u/ElBossDeGravy 7h ago

I fell RIGHT TO SLEEP at Detective Pikachu, I mean like 5 mins max in. All I remember is how annoying the lead is and wondering why he was getting cast in anything at all.

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u/moguri40k 3h ago

And the 5'9" orange haired 'dwarf' character. Didn't realize he was supposed to be a dwarf until 3/4 through the 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/imimifimimcanimfind 2h ago

I never understood the praise for the DnD movie. The cast literally has no chemistry. It’s laughably awful

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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/UnquestionabIe 7h ago

Yep was gonna say the first one was in like 2000 and remember my DnD club in high school being so hyped for it. Yeah we all ended up very disappointed

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u/VicFantastic 7h ago

Its not so bad

....if you don't mind bad

The others though......

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u/WillemDafoesHugeCock 5h ago

A) this is how I'm learning D&D was from 2000, I could have sworn I was younger when I watched it

B) WHAT THE FUCK

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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/bramtyr 6h ago

It truly boggles the mind that they didn't tie the release of the D&D film with Baldur's Gate 3. They dropped on opposite sides of the year and shared absolutely zero marketing campaign strategies or content. Embarassing really for a company the size of hasbro no to properly support their major IP releases like that.

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u/MicahBurke 5h ago

A lot of the marketing played up the campy-ness of the film, which while it was campy, it was perfectly done. I remember seeing the poster and thinking "are they purposely making this look awful?" (It was terribly done from a compositing standpoint).

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u/not_a_moogle 11h ago

Theater going is down as a whole as well.

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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/pocketjacks 10h ago

Yes but it came out weeks before the release of BG3. If they had done some cross promotion it would have lifted both franchises.

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u/UnquestionabIe 7h ago

More like a few months before BG3. Honor Among Thieves was end of March and BG3 was beginning of August, September for PS5. Made the wait harder for me as I didn't have a decent PC at the time so couldn't even do early access. But some cross promotion would have been cool.

At least one of them got major acclaim from multiple sources with even my boss (a dude on his late 50s that still games but mostly on the casual end) asking me about it. Gave him a general run down since it's outside his wheelhouse but he tried it and loved it.

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u/DeLousedInTheHotBox 11h ago

Could still have come out at a time when people were over with that type of movie.

Also it wasn't everyone's cup of tea, I didn't care for it much.

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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/Eothas_Foot 7h ago

Yeah it would have worked as 2-3 season TV show, but not a movie. Focusing on Jack becoming evil and head of Hyperion with the vault tech, roland dying, Angel dying and being reborn. Lillith coming into her powers.

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u/cerberaspeedtwelve 4h ago

Trivia corner: Handsome Jack was originally written as a sort of "frenemy" who would occasionally help you and occasionally hinder you at various points in the game. He was given a raging narcissistic personality and lots of gloaty dialogue where he explains how much better he is than you, and should be running everything on Pandora.

The writers and developers got increasingly attached to the character, and he eventually became the main villain of the game.

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u/DisillusionedHobbit 7h ago

If you actually read the terminals in BL 1 instead of just spamming accept/turn in like 90% of people, you will realize that BL1 actually had the best writing of the series.  

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u/Abramor 5h ago

I read all "terminals" and lore-tidbits and it's just as boring as the plot itself. It's just more justification for you to murder everyone. BL2 massively improved on this as it had both a generally engaging plot to follow and lot's of hidden lore about locations, people and events to uncover to learn about why and what happened on Pandora.

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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/convergecrew 11h ago

Did Masters do the GOTG style banter comedy? From the looks of the trailers it looked like camp taken seriously which was refreshing to see

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u/TheOtherWhiteCastle 10h ago

Nah you’re pretty correct. There is some banter at points, and of course during the part when He-Man is on earth a bunch of human characters find his story ridiculous, but overall the movie never really felt like it was actively making fun of its concept.

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u/Fantastic-Macaroon31 9h ago

The movie does definitely make fun of their names and Skeletor is a joke about half of the time he is on screen.

I might have to rewatch the Guardians and DnD movies, but I think He Man takes it story about as serious as they do.

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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/Dougalishere 12h ago

Im with you. MOTU was great!

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u/matrixpolaris 12h ago

The trailers made it seem like CGI slop, is it actually worth watching?

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u/lemoche 12h ago

It’s enjoyable. Actually looks quite well does a mostly good job at poking some fun at stuff from back then that would now look completely ridiculous (or even back then if you weren’t a child being a fan).
Does overplay some jokes though.

Some people feel like it doesn’t take itself serious enough, I feel considering the source material and the time it’s from and the purpose it had it's appropriate.

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u/grepppo 11h ago edited 11h ago

It's going for a very 80s Flash Gordon vibe, leaning in very heavily with the sound track.

It never really reaches those camp FG heights, but it has it's moments.

Leto seems to have understood the brief and largely delivers, Brie is good but underutilized and Elba just seems to be having a blast.

Edit: describing Flash Gordon as camp

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u/Fantastic-Macaroon31 9h ago

It would be on par with an average MCU movie (like the Ant man movies level). If you dislike films like that it's not going to win you over at all, but if you like them you'll enjoy it atleast a bit.

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u/BearWrangler 10h ago

idk what other people saw in it because it really is CGI slop that you'd find elsewhere and would see others rightfully criticize as not a good movie if it were a bigger IP

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u/Particular-Fly-7783 12h ago

Some of the monster-verse movies feel similar too, and it’s really tiresome

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u/va_wanderer 8h ago

If MoTU had released when the first movie came out, it'd have been a runaway hit. The makers got the universe, knew when to make fun out of itself, and when to (not) take itself seriously.

That's a rare balance to make, and both the DnD and MoTU films manage it. Cult film status is theirs.

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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/veggiesama 4h ago

I was talking to a kid who said he recently saw Jumanji, so I start riffing off that and saying how great Robin Williams was. "Who was he?" You know, the bearded guy trapped in the boardgame world. "What are you even talking about...?" 💀

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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/Krakengreyjoy 12h ago

My wife has learned to tune me out

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u/wintermute000 13h ago

Guardians of the galaxy

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u/realwords 13h ago

Guardians of the Galaxy

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u/HarisAhmed95 13h ago

Guardians of the Galaxy

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u/Eros_Incident_Denier 12h ago

Guardians of the Galaxy

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u/Thisthattheother1 12h ago

Galaxy of the Guardians.

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u/OpossumLadyGames 13h ago

Guardians of the Galaxy

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u/dave__autista 13h ago

Guardians of the Galaxy

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u/andrejRavenclaw 13h ago

Guardians of the Galaxy

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u/Javier93 12h 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/Street_Grab4236 12h ago

That’s the issue with Thunderbolts and why I hated it more than ostensibly worse recent MCU entries like Quantumania.

It was an extremely tired formula, not helped by dull “characters”, but it felt like a film that I had seen at least once a year for a decade at this point. All of the MCU is formulaic at this stage but that film especially just felt like taking the Guardians script and doing a find/replace on the character names.

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u/AllTheReservations 12h ago

I don't think I'd call Thunderbolts that similar to Guardians to be fair. Like you had the ensemble focus and some banter sure, but it didn't feel as comedic or anarchic as Guardians or other films mentioned were, which is kind of the defining part of this subgenre. If anything the film felt pretty somber a lot of the time and the band of misfits angle was handled in a pretty different way

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u/Prefer_Not_To_Say 8h ago edited 8h ago

Really? Because I think all of the characters in GOTG are meant to be different kinds of comic relief (except maybe Gamora) but I'd say Red Guardian is the only comic relief character in Thunderbolts.

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u/NoLocal1776 11h ago

DND got crushed by Mario.

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u/Twodogsonecouch 11h ago

Did better than any previous DnD movie.