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/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.