If you haven’t heard by now, the Borderlands Movie that just debuted in theaters was a total flop. Not only did it bomb in the financial sense, but it flopped in the eyes of critics and fans as well. Just about everything that was going on with the film was “wrong” in their eyes, and it led to a wave of discourse online about how everything failed and why director Eli Roth allowed things to go in this direction. While we don’t know all of the answers, we do know one key change about the film. Specifically, we know how much it was toned down.
You see, the Borderlands Movie was rated PG-13, but Eli Roth is known for making R-rated movies with tons of violence and gore. So, what happened here? The answer came from stunt coordinator Jimmy O’Dee, who revealed to ScreenRant that the movie was actually meant to be R-rated at first. In fact, they were so under the impression that the movie was shot to emulate that “R” rating, including very over-the-top violence that resembled what happened in the games.
“We were shooting an R-rated movie when we did it. We always knew that we were going to go either 15 or R rating, it’s 15 in UK, for a slightly mature audience. So, we were blowing people’s heads off. And we were cutting feet off. We were doing all of that. But then, you know, a lot happens. We shot that nearly three years ago, or we just finished it. So, I guess a lot happens in post, and they see where it’s going to go and what market they’re aiming for. But literally the idea and the brief was carnage, head cutting off, feet cutting off. Go for it and then we’ll sort it out in post. It was that kind of thing.”
Clearly, the “sort it out in post” aspect is what doomed the movie. Or, at least part of the movie, for while the lack of violence that resembled the title’s gameplay was noticeable, it wasn’t the only thing that went wrong. For example, many people noted that while the characters “looked the parts” at times, they didn’t act like their characters, nor did they dig into the major elements of Pandora.
In fact, many noted that the movie tried to play it more like a Marvel film than one by Gearbox Software. When you add all these elements together, the movie was doomed to fail.
