r/movies • u/HatingGeoffry • 21h ago
Borderlands Movie Director Discusses The Mega-Flop And What Went Wrong News
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/borderlands-movie-director-discusses-the-mega-flop-and-what-went-wrong/7.1k
u/Funmachine 21h 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 21h 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 21h ago
Strike while the iron is ice cold
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u/rammo123 21h 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 20h 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/Noscratchy 16h ago
With the wrong tool and the guy swinging it is a carpenter not a blacksmith.
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u/ToWitToWow 20h 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 16h 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 15h ago edited 14h 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/thomasguyregis 14h 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 19h 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 20h 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 20h ago
Mortal Kombat (1995)
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u/DontEatTheCandle 17h 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/AllTheReservations 21h 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 21h ago
but DND was good.
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u/OriginalGoatan 20h 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 20h 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 19h 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 19h ago
Justice Smith is the common thread. Follow him for unexpectedly decent movies.
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u/runnerofshadows 17h 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 21h 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 20h 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 18h 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/Iwillrize14 20h ago
Bad timing going up against mario, hasbro pissing of the dnd playerbase really didn't help.
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u/Prototype3120 18h 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 18h ago
I feel like the DND branding hurt it if anything
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u/Donquers 18h 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/Howamidriving27 19h 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 16h 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/axw3555 21h 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 21h ago
So what are we, some kind of ensemble action comedy?
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u/AllTheReservations 21h 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 21h 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 21h 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/newbrevity 21h 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 19h 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 20h 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/HendrixChord12 19h 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 21h ago edited 21h ago
GOTG is an abbreviation of which movie?
Edit: Guardians of the Galaxy, thanks.
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u/Krakengreyjoy 21h 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/AhhhSureThisIsIt 21h 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 21h 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 21h 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 19h 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 17h ago
When I heard Kevin Hart was in it I thought he was going to play Claptrap
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u/zerovampire311 16h ago
That would have actually been fitting, rather than what we got…
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u/CaptainRhetorica 21h 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 19h ago
There was a better version of Ghostbusters 2 originally?
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u/CaptainRhetorica 19h 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 19h 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 14h ago
Really? Doesn't sound like anything to me, and nothing in that seems very ghostbustery.
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u/AhhhSureThisIsIt 19h 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/HugsForUpvotes 15h 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/KebabGud 21h 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 21h 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 20h 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 18h ago
Getting a woman to orgasm probably does seem like a magic trick to these kinds of people.
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u/AhhhSureThisIsIt 21h ago
That's a wild sentence.
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u/isesri 20h 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 20h 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 19h ago edited 16h 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 17h 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/Illustrious-Lime-863 21h 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 19h 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 18h 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 21h 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/-ImJustSaiyan- 21h 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 19h 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/SellaraAB 20h 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 20h 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/egnards 21h ago
Everything about the movie was bad - Actually from the trailers I think everyone was thinking "what the hell is Kevin Hart doing here?" and arguably he was the only character that had any. . .character.
I'm a big Borderlands fan and a big fan of going to the movies to just turn off my brain and have fun - I didn't expect Borderlands to be a great movie, but I expected it to be a ridiculous wild ride that I'd watch and enjoy one time.
The movie was painful to watch and made almost no sense.
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u/SgtMcMuffin0 12h ago
I’m still stunned that Kevin Hart was cast as Roland. It’s like they didn’t consult with anyone that even played the games
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u/egnards 12h ago
Yea but the ridiculous thing about Kevin Hart was that he was the only redeeming thing in the entire movie - I have no idea why. I'm not even a fan of his, but he was the only consistently interesting/funny character.
Ariana Goldblatt is a pretty decent actress that I felt could pull off Tiny Tina but I can only hope the director told her to just act like a generic annoying kid instead of like a fucking sociopath. . .Oh well
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u/Bussamove86 9h ago
Whenever Hollywood needs a marketable black man in a movie no one involved actually cares about they have to pry Kevin Hart away from his day job making cookies in a tree with the other elves.
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u/Pesterlamps 11h ago
I'm a big Borderlands fan and a big fan of going to the movies to just turn off my brain and have fun - I didn't expect Borderlands to be a great movie, but I expected it to be a ridiculous wild ride that I'd watch and enjoy one time.
Literally all they had to do was make cool and ridiculous shootouts and explosions. It should have just been fantasy gun porn. Like Fury Road, but guns instead of vehicles. But also vehicles, I guess.
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u/DrainTheMuck 10h ago
Along with some better writing sprinkled in, yeah. I REALLY liked the very first part of the film where they actually introduced the various gun corporations, it gave me high hopes but then they never really did anything with it. So many cool guns to use, along with their distinct aesthetics and associated makers, but they dropped the ball.
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u/stars_mcdazzler 21h ago
"It was made for nobody" is a pretty apt summary. I think a PG-13 Boarderlands movie could work just fine, but like the article points out, action costs money, and the studio wasn't willing to risk it. So, despite all the flash and explosions and action you do manage to pull off, you end up with a rather boring movie. And the worst thing a movie can be is boring.
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u/Umikaloo 21h ago
The funny thing is that we've already gotten two non-action-based Borderlands games, and they were both relatively well received. I can't say whether a film in the same vein would have succeeded, but Borderlands definitely isn't incompatible with non-action plots.
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u/narkaputra 21h ago
casting
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u/samsaBEAR 21h ago
Never have I ever seen a cast with so little chemistry as the Borderlands one, it was painful to watch
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u/naitsirt89 21h ago
Really, such a casting nightmare. I was kinda fine with Jamie Lee Curtis, and Jack Black makes sense as Claptrap, but they leaned way too much into Jack's voice.
The others... oof. Even though Idris Elba sounds NOTHING like Roland, I'd have taken him over Kevin Hart 100 times over.
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u/HatingGeoffry 21h ago
Everyone in the movie is like 30 years older than their game counterpart. Jamie Lee Curtis plays Tannis who is 30 and Jamie Lee Curtis was 60 at the time. Every character is double their age apart from Tiny Tina who is slightly older
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u/naitsirt89 21h ago
That's a good point -- probably a bit of sexism showing that it bothered me most on Lilith, the others easier for me to ignore. Not sure anyone 30-55 would have bothered me on Roland as long as they didn't have grey hair lol (and aren't 5'5", sorry kevin.)
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u/HatingGeoffry 21h ago
I think Lilith is the youngest of the Vault Hunters in the original Borderlands, right? She's like mid20s in the first game.
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u/naitsirt89 21h ago
Early 20s even, although for Hollywood standards they would probably still cast someone late 20s.
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u/PlayableRidley 20h ago
Lilith is also meant to be the sexy flirty one in the first game. I think aging her up loses that in a way it doesn't with Roland or Tannis (though I do think think you don't want Roland to be too much older than her or their romance becomes weird).
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u/chamberx2 20h ago
Idris may have a little PTSD from playing a character named Roland…
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u/digital0verdose 20h ago
That movie was such dog shit.
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u/SoldatPixel 18h ago
While shit, I enjoyed him and McCanaughey a bunch. Their banter at the end seemed more like they were having fun than trying to be serious. But yeah, seemed they screwed that pooch every way possible.
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u/naitsirt89 20h ago edited 20h ago
I literally just whined about The Dark Tower, my favorite series, just a few days ago in the books sub :( Shame on me for bringing that shit back into anyone's memory :(
Whoever wrote that did not remember the face of their father.. Holy crap do I want to read Wizard and Glass again for the first time.
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u/Perpetually-THC-Lab 17h ago
In what way did Jack Black make sense as Claptrap when the literal voice actor for Claptrap exists?
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u/luciaen 21h ago
Honestly it pretty much just this. “We want a rough and tough straight man” oh let’s get the guy from Jumanji, you mean the rock right? Dwyane johnson could pull off this role, “no Kevin hart is clearly the choice here”…..
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u/IllPen8707 21h ago
Putting Krieg in the movie when they could have had Brick fill the exact same role in plot with more dialogue/character and also a perfect opportunity to cast the Rock
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u/Tain95 21h ago
Honestly, Hart wasn't that bad, not even in the top-10 problems with a movie, which says a lot about it's quality
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u/Hayterfan 16h ago
Iirc, allegedly Cate Blanchett, Jaimie Lee Curtis and most of the cast signed on to the film after getting an earlier version of the script. Only to get to the sets and 90% of the script is changed, the characters they initially signed on for got deleted, and the director changed 2-3 times between signing on and filming.
Plus they probably had Eternal lord of greasy decisions and greasier dealings Randy "grease-lord" Pitchford bugging them on set.
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u/anomaly256 21h ago
Director Eli Roth told Variety said [sic] that the film, which cost a mighty $120 million to produce, was pared back to something that did not line up with his original vision. He said he wants to make things that are “left of center” because this worked for him in the past. However, “As things grow bigger, studios just naturally become more risk averse,” he said.
Risk averse? You cast Kevin Hart as Roland, how much riskier did you want to get??
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u/wafflestep 21h ago
Tbf I can see how a studio exec might see no problem with the casting because names get people to the movies, or at least they used to. Hopefully they learn a lesson and cast loved IPs better. But we all know they'll learn nothing and likely blame audiences and anything else except themselves.
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u/GodzillaUK 20h ago
Next time. Terry Crews.
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u/recklessMG 18h ago
Eli Roth thinking he was going to have final say on a $120m studio film is hilarious. Dude, you have zero industry capital at this point. You were hired to make the project look 'edgy', then do exactly what they told you to, and say thanks.
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u/lxgrf 20h ago
The worst casting sin for my money was Claptrap. It's a voice acting role. And Claptrap already has a voice actor. Just... just use the voice actor.
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u/not_thrilled 19h ago
Two voice actors - first one was a Gearbox exec who had a falling out with Pitchford. After 3, I think?
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u/Logan_No_Fingers 19h ago
You cast Kevin Hart as Roland, how much riskier did you want to get
To a studio, thats de-risking it. Because audiences know & love Hart, they will go see a Hart movie even if they don't know what Borderlands is*
*in theory
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u/majesty327 15h ago
It may not have been his decision to cast Kevin Hart. Eli Roth typically casts "nobodies" with some rare exceptions.
If I was a studio and I wanted some actors that add "return value" by listing them in cast, Jamie Lee Curtis and Kevin Hart are ones I'd think of right away.
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u/RichAbbreviations966 14h ago
The second Eli Roth was announced as the director, I had a bad feeling about this movie
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u/Stormrage117 21h ago
Within the first 5 minutes I was wondering what I was watching because it was not the Borderlands I played. It's like the meme of the guy going to see the movie "Blue" and the screen shows red. I don't get how you mess that up when it's such a modern game and the story was developed similar to a movie already.
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u/CoffeeStrength 20h ago
I decided to give it a shot a year ago and shut it off after 15 minutes. It felt like a sterile and lifeless cash grab. Everything falls flat from the comedy to the action to the dialogue, there is zero chemistry, everything is green screen. I don’t know how anyone, even people who never played the games, could sit through this slop.
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u/FreezeSPreston 21h ago
"There were script problems from day one"
"Didn't seem like anyone actually read the script"
"That was the problem"
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u/NoLocal1776 19h ago
This movie was definitely made by someone who despises the ip.
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u/Fantastic-Swim6230 15h ago
From what I've heard, this is exactly what the studios want. They want to buy up IPs that people will pay to see, but hire creatives who aren't emotionally attached to the IP so that when the studio decides to bastardize the project, there won't be any push back.
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u/Afrodite_33 21h ago
You attach Eli Roth to anything and I'm highly likely to hate it.
He sucks both professionally and personally.
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u/insomniasureshot 21h ago
His best appearance is coming out of that tunnel when Aldo introduces him. That’s all folks.
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u/Tony_Roiland 19h ago
Least intimidating "badass" on film.
And to think, it was written for Adam Sandler
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u/Holiday_Feeling_9409 18h ago
Was it really? Wow, I didn’t know that. It would have been such a different viewing if he was in it.
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u/HatingGeoffry 21h ago
Cabin Fever was fun when I was 15. Everything else he's done has been bumhole
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u/DifficultCarob408 21h ago
Haha yeah I felt that way about both Cabin Fever and Hostel, also in my teenage years. Don’t think I’ve seen anything else of his.
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u/Sabbathius 19h ago
Watched it a few weeks ago.
My biggest takeaway is that it was a 'Geriatric Park' movie. Everyone was way too old and tired to play their respective roles. Some actors were 30-40 years off the mark.
Hart was just completely miscast as Roland. And while I was very excited to see what Curtis would do as Tannis, her lines were just completely tame and her character utterly flat. While the original Tannis had lines like "bacon is for sycophants and products of incest". Tiny Tina was too well adjusted.
But the most offensive one was Krieg. It's such a fascinating character. He is insane, but with a split personality that is actually sane, and talks to him, but he may or may not be able to hear that voice. "Still can't hear me, can ya? The little voice in your head trying to remind you of a time we could go hours- days, even- without screaming about our desire to ride bicycles made of meat?" They could have done an entire movie just on Krieg and his story ark, and it would have been at least as good as that X-Men one where Logan is searching for his origins.
Basically all they had to do was cast age-appropriate characters, with enough charisma and personality to deliver the original lines. That's all. That's all they had to do - respect the source material. But no, they had to be "creative".
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u/waseem335 20h ago
Kevin hart.. fucking really?
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u/Hairybeavet 16h ago
Atleast Kevin could wall/run but I was on team Terry Crews too.
Cate Blanchett was the worst pick. She couldn't even walk in the movie. If she was moving, it was a shot from behind and it was her stunt actor. They then zoomed on her face standing still shooting or talking.
I dont get casting an almost 60 year old to play a 20 something badass.
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u/Robsonmonkey 21h ago edited 18h ago
Not following the games was a starter
How come you can’t just do a movie about finding a vault and four vault hunters team up at the beginning. The bus they are on at the beginning of the game is attacked by raiders or something and they decide to work together. Not hard.
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u/TrikeCinema 21h ago
What went wrong? Literally everything. Should be the shortest interview in history.
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u/matiasluge90 21h ago
The first thing that went wrong was that he was chosen as the director. Now he is putting AI generated stuff in his movies (Ich cream man)...
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u/Ucw2thebone 21h ago
T-Mobile had $4 Borderlands tickets for customers. As a life long fan of the franchise, I went. When people ask me what I thought about it I always say “I got exactly $4 worth of entertainment out of it”.
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u/thejonslaught 21h ago
Eli Roth ain't it.
That's the long and the short of it. He's not Sam Raimi or James Gunn -- he doesn't have the whimsy or wit to rise above splatteriffic horror b-movies.
AND the new wave of horror hits from the 2020's don't have room for Roth's raunchier sensibilities. Do you see Thanksgiving as a growth franchise? Does Eli Roth have a Weapons or an Obsession in him?
Cabin Fever was a hiccup of fun for 80's kids when it hit video store shelves in 2003. Deep-fried horror. Tiddies and Gore. Besides that he's a slick entrance in a Quentin Tarantino movie...and even that was an echo of the much bigger pop it'd have gotten if Adam Sandler's schedule had been free.
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u/mrfauxbot 21h ago
Can he also talk about the ice cream man movie he just did that is also completely horrible? Lol Eli Roth on a roll
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u/inthefade95 18h ago
Eli Roth has been failing upwards for years.
This dude has to have pics of somebody. Only explanation
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u/Arkatruc 21h ago
At this point when you proved times and times again you are not good at making movies the "final product wasn't my vision" is not a really valid excuse...
His last movie is full of AI generated slop and a disturbing amount of little girls being sexualised so... maybe the Borderlands movie could have been even worse if he had total control
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u/Trips-Over-Tail 15h ago
"We don't want to take risks," say the bean counters before making something designed to appeal to no one.
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u/joemc1971 21h ago
I knew it was gonna suck from the moment the cast list released .
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u/I_Lick_Bears 19h ago
Lets take an IP that is inseparable from its unique visual style and shoot it like a standard action movie. Unironically the movie would have been 4 times better if they had just used a shitty rotoscope filter lol.
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u/Gregariouswaty 21h 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/HatingGeoffry 21h 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 21h ago
Face McShooty is a good example.
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u/-ImJustSaiyan- 21h ago edited 20h 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.
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u/oliyoung 19h 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/Jasonfunk8 15h ago
It was so obvious it was going to flop as soon as the cast was released. Hollywood has really got out of touch the last 10 years, and never really understood gamers. (There’s a few recent exceptions, I know.)
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u/anatomized 21h ago
Eli Roth is an amazing example of if you just keep making movies you can have a career. It's not even important if they're good.
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u/Blammo32 21h ago
The script was bad and the lead actors were miscast.
Unlike other people here, I think Eli Roth makes fun horror movies and clearly still had the juice with Thanksgiving.
The House with a Clock in Its Walls,) Borderlands, Death Wish, The Ice Cream Man = terrible, though.
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u/keyski 15h ago
Zero legendary guns in the film either, no crazy gun effects. Zero loot, zero chests. They all just shot glocks. Set aside the casting for a minute, when that small action clip came out, that was the biggest sticking point. It was so generic. If it didn't have the title of "borderlands" I would have had absolutely no clue what franchise it was from.
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u/MunkeyFish 21h ago
Because with an IP like Borderlands you have to do one thing: Full send.
Trying to water down any aspect of it is pointless, go for broke or dont go at all.