Video game movies have been on a broad cultural upswing over the past few years. From Detective Pikachu in 2019 to the mounting excitement for Sonic the Hedgehog 3 later this year, the concept is no longer the poison pill it used to be. Borderlands is the next big-budget live-action example, and fans are expecting the worst. Some believe that a tragic box-office disaster might negatively affect the genre. On the contrary, Borderlands’ grim fate could keep video game adaptations on prestige TV, where they seem much more comfortable.
Some video game concepts fit the world of cinema better than others. There’s no guaranteed set of conditions that perfectly match one to the other, but any game could become a good movie. The problem is execution, and a more challenging or unfriendly source material will require considerably greater work and lateral thinking skills to push it into the right shape. Borderlands is a series known for its irreverent sense of humor and endless dialogue, but the aspect of the game that people like loses a lot when it leaves the interactive medium.
Borderlands looks pretty rough
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DIrector |
Eli Roth |
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Writers |
Eli Roth and Joe Crombie |
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Stars |
Jamie Lee Curtis, Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jack Black |
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Release Date |
August 9, 2024 |
Borderlands is not out at the moment, but its marketing campaign recently started running and gunning at full speed. Lionsgate announced the release date last July, when only a couple of screenshots existed to assure fans. The first official trailer hit theaters and YouTube in February. It wasn’t anything mind-blowing. Most immediately recognized the cynical similarities to Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, prompting many viewers to lose interest. Director Eli Roth seemed surprised to learn that the project would carry a PG-13 rating, ranting and raving about all the blood and guts he’d shoved into the adaptation. Most of the trailer’s jokes fell flat, immediately crippling one of the two main selling points of the franchise. Fans hated the casting choices for several key roles and bemoaned the absence of many beloved characters. The action looked like a mixed bag, but none of it stood out enough to forgive the massive red flags. Things did not get better as new clips emerged.
Lionsgate launched a brief clip of Borderlands on YouTube in June. It’s a little over a minute long, but it encapsulates so many problems with the project that critics have created feature-length dissections. Borderlands‘ humor is hit-or-miss in the gaming market. Fans of the franchise swear by it as its best selling point, but it’s also the biggest complaint from the games’ detractors. The movie will lean into the games’ worst impulses and top it off with a truly heinous reproduction of its action. Fans can still hope that the trailers are completely unrepresentative of the film’s quality. If the trailers are cut straight from the final product, the Borderlands name will have one more bad project hanging off of it.
Video game TV shows work better than movies
Sure, video game movies are working out of the deficit they dug themselves into, but video game TV shows have a much better track record. Fallout and The Last of Us are the titans of the genre today. Both shows earned a frankly patronizing level of support from critics, each taking time out to express their shock that interactive media could produce something so nuanced. The truth is that there have always been good video game adaptations. They just weren’t taken seriously because they were animated. Today, many of the best video game adaptations are animated series. In either case, the best of the genre comes straight to streaming. There are several reasons TV shows seem to fit video games better. They’re long enough to accommodate a game’s extended narrative. They have more varied presentation options. Perhaps most importantly, they have lower budgets that allow risk-averse studios to experiment without panicking. Projects like Borderlands are bound by Lionsgate to make every penny they possibly can. This leads to bland garbage as the company consistently puts opening weekend profit ahead of quality.
Could Borderlands slow down video game movies?
There are several video game movies currently in some form of production. These things are unreliable, as many projects in the genre fizzle out long before they reach the screen. Massive gaming properties like Bioshock, Gears of War, Ghosts of Tsushima, Minecraft, and The Legend of Zelda have movies in progress. Most of them have been in some version of development hell for years. Many will never see the light of day. A lot of adaptations start as movies and gradually work their way off of the big screen. Game of Thrones, The Boys, and The Mandalorian were all pitched as movies first. If a high-profile project like Borderlands tanks with everything going for it, other studios might take the hint and shift their projects to TV.
There aren’t a lot of reasons to have faith in Borderlands. At this point, almost every fanbase knows the irritation of seeing their favorite story turn into something terrible. If the movie doesn’t work out, it will likely prevent the production of any future big-screen disasters in the franchise. Studios often struggle to learn lessons, so this might be an odd situation. Hope for Borderlands to be good first, but if it isn’t, hope it bombs hard enough to send a message.
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