Today, during IGN Live, we got our first real look at the Borderlands movie, and folks, I’m not sure this is going to be very good.
Based on the popular looter shooters developed by Gearbox and published by 2K Games, Borderlands was first announced all the way back in 2020. The movie is being directed by Eli Roth and has been in production hell for years now. But finally, our long national nightmare is almost over as Borderlands arrives in theaters on August 9. Sadly, I’m not sure its going to be worth the wait based on a scene released earlier today during IGN Live’s Day 1 showcase.
In the new scene, we see Roland (Kevin Hart), Lilith (Cate Blanchett), Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt), Kireg (Florian Munteanu), and Claptrap (voice by Jack Black) in a dark underground facility filled with boxes and not many lights. It’s hard to see what’s happening.
This is supposed to be an action-packed sequence from a major motion picture, but it feels more like a pre-recorded skit from a so-so episode of Saturday Night Live. Enemies get shot and just fall down with no blood or gore, characters move around slowly even though this is meant to be a fast-paced sequence, and all of this is done to generic music that you’ll forget about the moment the scene ends.
it was over as soon they casted kevin hart
The clip doesn’t make any sense. Cate Blanchett is shooting people standing up, then she’s suddenly inside of a box? When does she gets in the box, why is she suddenly in that box? She doesn’t get out of the box either. She’s teleported from there box to somewhere else. But now she has a flamethrower.
Yeah I had the exact same confusion, so I watched it again and she gets tackled into the box, then stands up from inside it.
If this was all in one continuous shot, it would probably be kind of funny. Quite why directors are still making the exact mistakes called out by a 9 minute youtube video 9 years ago is beyond me.
So it looks like bad editing is another thing to get excited about.
Realistically, celebrities get about 8 movies to perform in their career before my brain is unable to see them as some sort of new character. Kevin Harts comedy stopped carrying his horrible acting about 5 movies ago.
It depends on the actor. When you have an actor, like Gary Oldman for example, that really transform into its role, they can play in an infinite number of movies and they won’t get boring.
But actors, like The Rock or Kevin Hart, that just play themselves over and over again get tiring fast.
To his credit, the trailer does make it look like Kevin Hart is making a genuine attempt to play Roland from the game. Still a weird casting decision.
Rated PG. It can work (The old Mortal Kombat movie), but this looks like crap.
The casting alone is a reason to be skeptical.
Yeah it’s relying in star power and the drooling masses to get money. It’s an awful awful attempt and it’s extremely apparent from the trailers that this is going to be hot fucking garbage. The only thing that would potentially save it, is if all this shit was promo trolling and the actual movie used completely different better suited people with better lines etc.
Not going to happen. Nobody can afford promo trolling because then people are simply not going. Word to mouth propaganda doesn’t bring the masses needed to pay the bills nowadays.
The only thing that would potentially save it, is if all this shit was promo trolling and the actual movie used completely different better suited people with better lines etc.
That would be hilarious as shit.
It would be the most on brand thing to do too imo.
if all this shit was promo trolling
we can only hope
I always wished a Batman movie would do that. Imagine going into it and realizing you have no idea who Batman is. That would be fun.
It’d be fun to make it halfway through the movie to reveal Bruce Wayne is a worthless playboy, and have Barry Allen show up and explain to the current Batman “I’m here to correct a mistake. In my timeline, that drunkard over there is Batman.” “I’m sorry, what?”
but then you can’t promote george clooney in all the marketing to draw people in.
They didnt promote him in the last one. So it’s not too far fetched.
A villain POV where you see Batman dismantling the organization until the very end would be amazing.
Hell yeah.
Just remake The Usual Suspects with Batman instead of Kyser Sosey.
Hollywood always fucks up movies based on games. I’m not expecting much from this movie.
Had a drunken discussion about this last month. Basically there’s less than 10 decent game adaptations ever. I remember the first mortal kombat, first 2 resident evils, tomb raider… A few others. But yeah.
I think we’re past this now, we’ve had a number of good (or at the very least enjoyable) adaptations now, Sonic, Mario, Pikachu. Werewolves Within was really good though no one has heard of the game. And of course TV has been knocking it out of the park, Last of Us, Fallout, Cyberpunk, Castlevania, League of Legends. Even stuff about people who play games like Gran Turismo and Players were really good. We also have things that considered bad at the time are being reclaimed like Mortal Kombat
Borderlands is (by the looks of it) just an IP dump which isn’t exclusive to video games.
I mean, Pikachu and Mario were very enjoyable and fun, but Sonic was more ‘meh’ honestly.
There are exceptions
They should’ve hired Uwe Boll as a director, at least they would’ve had an excuse then
Hoo boy, Kevin Hart doesn’t even look like he knows how to hold a gun at all. Did nobody think to give him any semblance of weapons training?
that would involve having to talk to Kevin Hart
Is he a dick or something? lol
I don’t really keep up with celebs
Tinytina coyly laughing behind her hand actually made me angry
I just don’t understand why this is even being made. Borderlands is definitely nowhere on my list of games I want adapted. I understand I am not the arbiter of what gets made into movies, but it definitely feels like a shared sentiment among the general gaming population lol just feels like a bizarre choice
It’s being made because there is a successful franchise to be exploited to death for the sake of earning a few more pennies for shareholders.
You aren’t looking at the creative human spirit here. You are looking at a stupid money printing machine banking purely on the inertia of fans hoping for more of what made the original work of art magical.
I get that normally but my point is…can borderlands still be considered a successful franchise in 2024?
BL2 was 13 years old and it’s never hit those heights since. Each mainline release has performed poorly or mediocre and TFTB has been pretty well received but they weren’t huge releases like the main games. They’ve been sort of irrelevant for almost a decade, limping along to middling applause lol
BL3 did well financially for the most part but that was what? 5 years ago? And critically it did poorly/had no staying power. It died pretty quickly.
The first Tales was well received, but it was made by Telltale and much closer to the Borderlands 2 era. Gearbox made another one recently that was terrible and panned.
I think you’re right in saying the franchise is just dead. As someone who played actually thousands of hours of BL2 in my youth, I have zero interest in the rumored Borderlands 4. I think I own all the DLC for 3 and just never bothered to play through all of it.
they’re about 10 years too late on this. can’t even blame the pandemic.
Yeah no one has been excited for it in years. It peaked a long time ago. Pre-sequel was a disaster, 3 landed with a mediocre thud, tales has a following but it’s modest. This is not going to go well.
You could easily exploit borderlands- but live action? Its like a live action Kerby.
That would be an awesome horror flick.
The fact they chose Kevin Hart to play Roland shows how little they care about the games themselves
Or Jack Black. I love him, but this dumb Hollywood trend of hiring Jack for anything comical is absurd.
Supposedly he met the creators at a party after the first game came out and asked to play claptrap. I don’t have a source to share with you, but if that’s true then I’m fine with it.
But yeah, most of this movie looks very bad.
Or Cate Blanchett. Like if me and my friends were dream casting this movie one of us would say Cate Blanchett as a joke and we’d all laugh and move on. Don’t get me wrong, she’s one of my favorite actresses, you can Tar and feather me all day but this was frankly a bizarre call.
Reminds me of the show Barry, the character Sally is on a press circuit and someone throws the question at her “Who should play the next Spiderman” and confused by the question she says Ben Mendelson
Me and my sister have a running joke casting for a movie of the Uncharted games, I’m pretty sure Danny DeVito was Sully and Mel Gibson was Elena. I’d rather watch something that stupid than something as uninspired as this.
Tar and feather
I see what you did there
Looks wise Hayley Williams is great for Lilith, don’t think she acts but there has to be a ginger actress other that Karen Gillian interested
anya-taylor joy so that it all comes full circle to mad max
But then noone will watch it
That sally example is such a good pull lol
My personal theory is that they wanted The Rock (who would be straight out of central casting for Roland) but he declined and so some exec was like “okay, just use KH instead, they both work together on a lot of the same movies”
It’s all IP baby. They think we are the unwashed masses with no taste or critical thinking and just consume whatever they excrete.
At the same time movies based on a recognized intellectual property tend to omit crucial pieces of character and world building, because come on, the audience is supposed to know that.
And this is how they often produce garbage that is impossible to understand if you are not in the know, and impossible to watch if you are ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Close, but they genuinely think video games are a lesser medium than movies. So of course they don’t take this movie, or out standards seriously.
At least it’s not still just Uwe Boll making adaptations.
I think some game developers think like this too, that’s why they try to turn their games into movies, either directly or by making their games more “cinematic”.
In my opinion, not all cinematic games are trying to be movies, some do it right and preserve the essence of what game is, about others we probably not hear too much except for how bad they turn out to be
It’s okay. I played Borderlands 3 with voices off, only sfx/background sounds/music. I’m sure I can do the same with this. Maybe turn picture off too while I’m at it.
I remember hearing that some Hollywood contracts require that if you sign up for some studio, you must make X amount of films. Big stars get to chose those films to some degree, but once in a while, they have to do “a stinker” to end the contract as “X amount of films done, okay?” or something. Contractual Obligation and all. This film feels like a dumping ground of a lot of those contractual obligation hires from the trailer alone.
Wouldn’t it be smarter to do a lower budget drama, then? This seems like an expensive throwaway.
True, but a movie like this, if successful, has a much higher potential profit than a small drama. As an actor, why not take a bit of a gamble on a big blockbuster for a potentially massive paycheck?
Requirements like that in the music industry are why there’s an excess of Christmas music albums. I like the idea that video game movies and other slush-level movies are the equivalent.
After how expertly Fallout nailed its landing by using literal assets from the game for set design…
Yeah this is gonna flop hard.
It blows my mind that we’re still getting uninspired shitty adaptations after Fallout, The Last of Us, honestly even stuff like Sonic and Mario showed suits that people will praise any adaptation as long as it shows them what they know.
Omg, haven’t been this hyped since the live action Dragon Ball movie.
Almost as hyped as the live action Avatar movie!
James Cameron really knows his stuff.
I had already resigned this movie to the shit bin just because they cast a comedian for the role of the only character in the games that was a serious straight man (as in the comedy trope) instead of someone more suitable like Idris Elba.
Then again, maybe they wanted someone else but Hart was the only one who accepted to work on this turd.
I mean Borderlands 1 Roland is pretty different from the guy allergic to smiling we all know from Borderlands 2. I guess Handsome Jack changes comedians into Idris Elba.
I’d honestly have been interested if Kevin Hart just did Roland instead of being Kevin Hart
