You know those days when you’re feeling low, like REALLY low, and then the worst person possible comes around to deal you the “final blow” to just make everything even worse? For the Borderlands Movie, that’s officially happened. Let’s recap, shall we? This movie was announced several years ago, and it was to be headed up by director Eli Roth, who is known for horror movies. The game adaptation had several struggles just to make it to production, but it got there! Then, when it started to be advertised, people noticed that there was something “off” about it.
Sure enough, the studio behind the film tried to pitch it as a kind of Marvel-style film, which isn’t what the video games are like at all. So, when the film came out, it wasn’t just panned by just about everyone who saw it; it bombed heavily at the box office. In fact, it bombed so hard that it might be one of the worst movies of the year. It might be spared that dishonor due to a certain other film featuring a “Kraven hunter” coming out in December, but we digress.
So, where’s the “finishing blow” here? Well, it came from none other than the infamous director Uwe Boll. Yes, THAT Uwe Boll, who made some of the worst movies ever, and pretty much all of them were video game adaptations. He went to Twitter to make his feelings known about the project:
So, on the one hand, his movies technically did make more than the Borderlands movie has so far, but that might not hold up later on. Plus, it’s the COMBINED total of Boll’s films that beat what Eli Roth did, so it’s not exactly the biggest flex around. Second, as people made clear on Twitter, they DIDN’T want him to direct the film and wanted him nowhere near other video game properties.
However, one thing he is right about is that when he made his films, regardless of how bad they were, they followed his vision to the end and were all R-rated. In contrast, this film was confirmed by one of the team to have been shot in an R-rated fashion and then “fixed in post” to be PG-13. The games were rated “M For Mature,” so they should’ve embraced the violence and madness that is seen all the time in Pandora.
Instead, they took the “safer” route, and that was one of MANY reasons why the movie bombed so hard.
