What would you make a core of a Borderlands movie for it not to suck as the recent one?

andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 62 points –

Making it 17+, changing cast and visuals don't count. Let's say it's live action with heavy CGI. What would be here for the main attraction, the plot, the cast of characters?

44

Well, first off, I'd make it a Space Western.

And inspirational.

I'd let Nathan Fillion star in it.

All jokes aside, Borderlands was perfectly fine as a video game. There was hardly a need for a movie and even if there was, I'd only have people associated who have more than the total average of hours into the game. If you haven't played The Pre-Sequel for more than 200 hours, you have no business here.

I've never played the game, I just like Space Westerns.

Ask me how to improve most movies, and the answer will be "make it a Space Western". Hamlet? Check. The Princess Bride? Check. Speed Racer starting Christina Ricci? Check.

I like space westerns. I like giant monsters. Surely we can make a space western with giant monsters.

Nathan Fillion ๐Ÿฅน

Oh yeah I've had a huge mancrush on him since he was Johnny in Two Guys, A Girl and and a Pizza Place.

I wasn't aware of Firefly until I went to college.

If you haven't played The Pre-Sequel for more than 200 hours, you have no business here.

Why did you use the worst game in the series as an example?

Because if you truly love the series you will have also played TPS a lot. You can't just keep playing 2 and then saying you're a huge fan. That would make you a huge fan of Borderlands 2.

That's some gatekeeping bullshit. I'm a huge fan of several games in the series (1, 2, Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, and Tales From the Borderlands). You can't tell me I'm not a "true" fan just because I didn't like every game with a Borderlands logo on it. That's akin to saying someone isn't a true Zelda fan if they don't love the Zelda CDI games

You may not have liked it but at least you played it... Right?

I played TPS. The low gravity was an awful mechanic and the humour writing was extremely unfunny. I never finished it.

I didn't bother playing the 3rd game because I heard the writing hadn't improved much.

But again, none of this matters. You don't need to play every game in a franchise to be a fan of the series. That's just gatekeeping.

Do the borderlands comic series, but make it a TV show instead of a movie.

Also dump all the A-list celebrities. Nobody needs Cate Blanchett, Jack Black ๐Ÿ–•, or Kevin Hart in a series that already has established voices for their characters.

Why vitriol towards jack black more than the others? (Genuine question.)

He killed Tenacious D mid-tour in an act of dick-riding for Donald Trump, while campaigning for Biden.

Also Borderlands is shit, and his role as the voice of Claptrap took the spot of two talented voice actors who have already played the character across multiple games.

He was in a tough situation. We need to remember the extent of right wing vitriol and hate. Anyone who speaks out against Trump gets death threats. Their concerts would have had protestors outside. Continuing the tour could have been a safety risk for their fans. I'm not saying cancelling everything was the right move, but it's not as simple as "dick riding for Donald Trump."

Oh no, that sucks. Waitโ€ฆ he was campaigning for Biden but cancelled his tour to benefit Trump? Intentionally?

Jack Black Cancels Tenacious D Tour and โ€˜All Future Creative Plansโ€™ After Kyle Gassโ€™ Remark on Trump Assassination Attempt

The situation is rather complicated and it's probably best to read for yourself, as I didn't even know they had announced the band getting back together, possibly.

Jack Black Says Tenacious D Will โ€˜Be Backโ€™

All this is coming from the guy who just that night sang:

People inside me are asking me to blow up City Hall

his partner on stage made a joke about his birthday wish being that next time the trump shooter doesn't miss, and jack cancelled the tour over that. its debatable if this was actually intended to be in service of trump or if jack is just really against assassinations but the end result is that trump benefitted and the duo Tenacious D is no longer doing thier tour

it was supposed to point out we don't want political violence, but you know what, Trump's been spewing hate for 20 years at least, and someone followed his advice. boo fucking hoo, don't talk shit if you can't take it. I stand with Kyle and not pandering shit, stand up for what you believe in. dick move by black.

People could say "oh change this or that" but this isn't just a bad borderlands movie, it's a really bad movie in general. It's college student level work(the college students are business majors) The whole concept failed from top to bottom.

Improving? Scrap the whole thing and start over. You end up with a better movie simply by rerolling the same odds.

Like the game, my movie would have 4 new vault hunters, with a supporting cast of returning characters. Perhaps each would have found a respective vault which lead to a piece of a key which they all need to work together to combine and open the mega vault.

Lean a little less into humor, add a touch of seriousness, not cast little funny Kevin to play strong serious Roland.

And obviously set it up for a sequel and a prequel.

I was literally talking about this with my fiancee and I agree with you. The Borderlands movie should have been Borderlands 4 and been a direct continuation of the games, then the next game is just borderlands 5.

It would have been on theme for the franchise.

As soon as I saw Kevin Hart casted for Roland I knew it was a corporate cash grab. I liked his standup when I was like 12 but I honestly can't name an acting role I've liked him in.

IMO the biggest failure of most video game movies is they try to translate the story or characters directly to film, ignoring the biggest part of games is player interaction. Make a film in that universe with an original story. Sure cameos are fine, or if you really want a main character from the game, don't just rehash events from the games.

That's not safe. Just with Hollywood stars, CEOs think the main drag is the cast of characters, and the content of the original. And since they don't play these games, they hardly get what makes people like them.

An anecdotal case: the Doom movie, a guilty pleasure of mine, where the only highlight is a scene of brutally shooting imps from the first person perspective for 2 minutes. In a 90 minutes movie, boggled down by pure boredom, somewhere in the end. That's when many people woke up in the cinema and started to cheer, because it was more DooM than anything else in this movie.

For me, it's not even a story (in Borderlands, lol), but catching the feeling people got from these games. In the first game, as per my OP, it was treasure hunting and greed in the middle of nowhere, accompanied by trash humor and stupid gore. Shooting shit from a wind generator while taking headshots with a non-credible sniper-scoped rocket revolver? Sign me in.

My movie (although, I like the idea of a TV series better) would focus on Handsome Jack and Angel.

We learn little bits of their story through recordings, side quests, and references across 4 games. Let's hear it from start to finish cinematically.

The game is already story driven so do a Fallout on it and make a tv show with each episode being a main quest line from the pov of vault hunters and Commandant Steel trying to get to the vault.

Hell, you could do S1 as everything up the the Rackhive, and the S2 opener as defeating the Rackhive and the rest working through to defeating the destroyer.

S3 and S4 can be a mashup of BL2 and the pre sequel

Then do a prequal spinoff show with the struggles of the vault construction by the Eridians from the Siren from BL3 pov.

Then have the DLCs as standalone films.
Buttstallion becomes the star of a g rated kids program about exploring Pandora.

Borderlands to me felt a lot more linear than Fallout. Especially this heavy focus on loot in BL makes it so bland. I'm surprised someone thought this would even be a good universe to tell another story in. The comic book esthetic is fun, but always keeps the emergence at bay.

I'd make it a TV series. If it's doing well for Fallout, it shouldn't be hard for Borderlands to be a show. Because with something as big as Borderlands, it's not a good idea to compact all of that into one entire film. It's got to be a chain of events in an episodic format.

I'd like to see the story of supporting characters from the first game and DLCs as the first entry. There are a lot of bounty hunters coming here, trying their best at finding the Vault on the planet with competing corporate entities, aliens, local bandit clans. These NPCs can tell a lot of stories of those who didn't make it in hilarious ways, or, on the other hand, did a thing we know only by little in-game clues. Something to vibe with a beggining of Zombieland movie, probably.

It would be fun to do a wonderlands movie instead. Call it bunkers and badasses and do a cute and violent short story.

Make it canon,

Eli Roth, โ€œThe gameโ€™s the game, and the movieโ€™s the movie. That was one of the first things I talked to Randy Pitchford the creator about. I was like, I want to make a great, big, fun sci-fi movie. I want to do a mix of Star Wars, and Mad Max, and Fifth Element, and Barbarella, and Blade Runner, and Escape from New York.โ€

Somehow he forgot to mention Borderlands in his mix...