So that’s bad, yeah, but just how bad is it? With help from Google and The Numbers’ movie comparison feature, I can tell you this: It’s really bad.
I present to you…
An Incomplete List of Shitty Videogame Movies That Made More Money Than Borderlands
(in no particular order)
- Warcraft ($439 million)
- Max Payne ($88 million) Doom ($59 million)
- Street Fighter ($99 million)
- Assassin’s Creed ($241 million)
- Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time ($336 million)
- Hitman ($99 million)
- Mortal Kombat (but Mortal Kombat is actually good) ($122 million)
- Need for Speed ($194 million)
- Five Nights at Freddy’s ($297 million)
- Uncharted ($401 million)
One big-budget, big(ish)-cast Hollywood film Borderlands managed to beat, which I bring up only because I paid good money to see it in theaters and I’m still sore about the whole thing, is Wing Commander, an utterly execrable celluloid waste of time and effort that bumbled to $11.5 million globally. Frankly I’m surprised it did that well.
I don’t think the movie was that bad. Sure was predictable, but it was fun.
Calling it now. Next Borderlands game is going to have some referential jokes about this train wreck that are meant to be funny self-deprecation but will actually be transparent attempts as covering up how much Randy Pritchford is malding about this.
I’m honestly surprised we aren’t seeing more public meltdown from him. Can only imagine what’s happening behind closed doors.
Was he heavily involved in the film’s production? I’m not very familiar with how this movie was made, but a lot of the stuff I’ve heard about it gives me the sense that his style didn’t influence it very much (weird casting, lame jokes, etc.)
Street Fighter in 1994 is $99m, and adjusted to inflation it would be $210m, while Super Mario Bros 1993 is $38.9m, today would be $84.7m. Rub it on Randy’s face, hope it leave a mark.
Street Fighter is a masterpiece
The Warcraft movie wasn’t even bad, they just didn’t go hard enough. It was impossible to cram that whole story into one movie. They shoulda done a Hobbit with it.
If they literally just made a trilogy of the wc3 campaigns they would’ve easily made decent cinema. While the arthas storyline is a little derivative (as most things blizzard makes) it is still the best epic saga they made to date, aside from perhaps the original StarCraft and broodwar shakespearean intrigue fiesta.
I haven’t watched the Warcraft games (to a degree that I memorize the story) do you think the Warcraft movie will be entertaining for me?
(I have tried to finish WIII several times, but for one reason or another I always end up quitting, not liking the game is not one of them 😅).
Honestly, if you don’t know the game stories, it will be a confusing mess. They take very little time on the movie to explain what is happening and why.
Hollywood budgets are insane these days.
I watched Godzilla -1. That movie was fucking boss, and apparently its budget was only $15 million. That’s less than they spent removing the CGI buttholes from Cats.
Forgive my ignorance, but did they make CGI buttholes, then remove them before it premiered?
#releasethebuttholecut
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/04/cats-butthole-cut-vfx-editor
“We went to call our supervisor, and we’re like, ‘There’s a f–king a–hole in there! There’s buttholes!’”
Curious as well 👀
There was a rumor to that effect, yes. But I think it was mostly a meme 😂
Uwe Boll has entered the chat.
Uwe Boll is schlock you know your getting schlock, shclock is fun
I actually liked his take on Postal.
Was it great cinema? No… but since Postal doesn’t take itself too serious, it kind of worked out.
Postal might be the only one he did well. But I think by the point he made that one he had learned something about his own abilities and even ripped himself a new one in one scene of the movie.
It should also be noted that he’s a PoS in general. However, my conscience is clear, because I pirated the movie.
I didn’t even realize there was an Assassin’s Creed movie.
Must have blinked and missed it.
I saw it in theaters with a friend who was really into the assassins creed games. It was pretty disappointing. Michael Fassbender is the lead though, I think he did a good job
After I made the comment I looked it up and realized I have actually seen it and that is how forgettable it is.
This is the kind of thing that ruins careers and maybe even production companies. Of course, Eli Roth will never be given a big budget to direct again and in the cast of the film, more than one will drop significantly in their next works.
in the cast of the film, more than one will drop significantly in their next works.
Kevin Hart. There’s a feeling already thst we are getting too much Jack Black on our screens but Kevin Hart was a lead and his part just fell flat. JLC is a legend at this point and Cate Blanchett is getting there, they can both coast through a stinker or two with all the accumulated good will. But Hart…
I had no idea that Roth directed this movie. Like who thought that getting a cheesy splatter film director was a great decision? Honestly they got what they deserved with this mess.
who thought that getting a cheesy splatter film director was a great decision?
Honestly on paper that sounds pretty good, Borderlands should really work as a bit of a campy gorefest. Just… not Eli Roth.
Eli Roth will never be given a big budget
Please don’t threaten me with a good time.
Is it yet another one of those “our adaptation has barely anything to do with the actual games and that is good!” kinda tone-deaf deals?
I watched it so you dont have to. It is not just a bad Borderlands movie, it’s an utterly terrible movie period. CGI is bad, characters are ill-conceived, the story is a mess, editing is a mess, everything is a mess. I liked the end-credits though.
Abd I say this as not being a fan of Borderlands. I played the first one for a total of a few hours and somewhat liked it but never got invested into it. Someone who is invested into it would of courses mention that it is an utterly terrible adaptation.
The number one reason I had no interest in it was they replaced Claptraps voice with jack fucking black. Ultimate slap in the face to any fan. Everything else was terrible, but that was the worst to me. Pure Hollywood. “We’ll just throw in what we think gamers like and call it a day!”
Slightly off-topic: might be alone in this, but I actually really enjoyed Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. It’s nice, self-contained, has some fun action, some cool scenes, and it turned me on to Jake Gyllenhaal and I’ve liked his work ever since. It’s Generic and schlocky but it’s better than the usual videogame movie garbo.
It fits nicely into that B-movie slot IMO.
It’s a not awful swashbuckler and few of those are made these days.
Wait, there is a Wing Commander movie?!? How did I not know that…
Because it’s not very good and we all made a pact never to speak of it again. A pact now broken!
I will watch it and curse you twice
I never even saw any marketing for it.
That’s because they seem to have realised it was going to flop hard and cut back on the marketing - it’s usually similar to the budget but they only spent $31M which is very low for a film of this size.
Am I the only one who enjoyed the Hitman movie? I haven’t seen it in a long time, and I never played the games.
The one with Timothy Olyphant and Olga Kurylenko in it? It was fine, had a few good action sequences in it. Managed to both not be much of an adaptation of the game, but also trying to be enough of an adaptation that it frequently makes very little sense. Probably have been better if they’d cut loose a little more, had some more fun with it. Gets a completely OK / 10 from me.
Right, I forgot there was a second one. I meant the one with Timothy Olyphant.
Missing:
Resident Evil (2002) $103m ($180m adjusted)
…of the rest of the movies on your list, I have only not seen Hitman and Five Nights at Freddy’s; but I would be pretty safe in betting that they would both be more enjoyable than Borderlands.
I’m a fan of the Resident Evil movies but I’ve never played the games
Still waiting for a Duke Nukem movie
