Borderlands Is Going To Be A Box Office Disaster Of Epic Proportions

I have to start with the casting, in particular Kevin Hart as Roland, the stoic, no-nonsense soldier of the original game. Hart has improved in movies since he started, but as the trailers revealed, Borderlands fans’ worst fears have come true, and he is not playing Roland. Sure, the name is the same, and he has a gun, but that’s like giving someone Atlantic Rim for Christmas when they wanted Pacific Rim.

That is, however, old news, and fans have been upset over his casting since the initial announcement. At least Jamie Lee Curtis and Cate Blanchett seem to match their counterparts, so this isn’t a total deal breaker. But that’s the biggest problem with Borderlands, even one of the worst casting choices since Vince Vaughn as Norman Bates is only the tip of the iceberg.

Borderlands struggled for years to be made, and it was nearly a decade before Eli Roth signed on as the director. This means that tastes have changed during that time, and the series is nowhere near as popular as it once was. The fan base has moved on to other games, and the lore of the game’s universe is as deep as a crack in the sidewalk.

Though fans cheered, and I was one of them, when Borderlands emerged from production purgatory, a monkey’s paw curled somewhere, and what we have is a movie with no clear audience. Suicide Squad destroyed the general public’s desire for a Guardians of the Galaxy-style film, but going by every trailer and still so far, that’s exactly what’s coming.

What we can see on-screen in the trailers is bad enough, but behind the scenes, Borderlands has gone through a lot of upheaval, to the point that Craig Mazin, the writer of The Last of Us, had his name pulled off the credits. Instead, the screenplay is being credited to Joe Crombie, and considering that person seemingly doesn’t exist (the IMDb page is amazing), it’s a pseudonym for someone. Mazin has insisted it isn’t him, which means it’s someone else or covering up a situation with writing by committee, but even then, a movie with a fake name attached is never a good sign.

As evidence, there’s one line in the Borderlands trailer that truly sticks out for fans of the franchise, and that’s explaining Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt) is the only one who can open the Vault. To say that this spits in the face of the entire point of the original games is an understatement because the whole deal was Vault Hunters trying to open up alien vaults on Pandora, and there was purposely no chosen one; it was a frenetic race. And then the writer(s), whomever it may be, had to choose a one-joke side character to be the MacGuffin?

Tiny Tina, introduced in Borderlands 2, is a small girl in pink who loves explosions. She becomes more interesting later when she narrates the Assault on Dragonkeep DLC, but even that goodwill was squandered with Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, which expanded the game to full length. The only worse choice would be if Mr. Torque, who also loves explosions, as he reminds you in every single sentence, was a major character.

Borderlands never met a joke that couldn’t be run into the ground.

When it comes to the box office, I expect Borderlands to land around $20 million domestically and end up around the same level as Madame Web. Between the casting, going through production hell, and mangling what little plot drove the games, this is one of those movies where it feels like, at every opportunity, the wrong decision was made.

I also can’t wait to experience it for myself. I’m either going to be pleasantly surprised or witness the biggest theatrical trainwreck since I was dragged to I’m Not There, the Bob Dylan biopic in which a young kid falls into San Franciso Bay and is swallowed by a whale.