All the Wrong Lessons Hollywood Will Take From The ‘Borderlands’ Failure

Borderlands came, saw, and a pin drop could be heard in theaters around the globe. Eli Roth’s $100-million+ adaptation of the video game franchise flopped spectacularly at the box office – even having Uwe Boll, the king of bad video game movies, laughing at its failure on X. Well played, Herr Boll! Unquestionably, Borderlands goes down as one of the biggest box office bombs in recent history, and there will be a major inquisition into where it all went wrong here.

Let’s be real, though: Hollywood loves accountability just as much as politicians do. Don’t be surprised to see finger pointing, ludicrous stories about behind-the-scenes troubles on set, and the regular merry-go-round of the blame game surface in the near future. Best brace yourself for all the wrong lessons that Hollywood will learn from the Borderlands fiasco.

It will blame Deadpool & Wolverine for lapping up all the attention and ticket stubs

To be fair, Deadpool & Wolverine rocked this summer’s box office like a hurricane. From the explosive cameos to the positive word-of-mouth appeal, it wouldn’t shock anyone if people watched this three or four times in theaters. However, Borderlands arrived two weeks after the MCU movie’s debut; it wasn’t competing on opening weekend or the week thereafter. In reality, there was enough breathing room for Borderlands to leave its own mark on the box office. Unfortunately, it left nothing more than a paper cut in this instance.

It isn’t Deadpool & Wolverine‘s fault that the audience ran away from Borderlands – or didn’t give two hoots about it. The overwhelming negative reviews ensured this film was dead on arrival since it only confirmed what everyone suspected from the trailers: That it’s a rotten movie. If the executives at Lionsgate Films didn’t see the writing on the wall, that’s on them.

It will blame the source material

Look, Borderlands isn’t Super Mario Bros. or Sonic the Hedgehog. It’s a popular video game franchise, but ask the average person in the street to name any main characters from the series and they’re likely to struggle. In this instance, Borderlands isn’t a global franchise that sells itself based solely on its name. Maybe people might have heard of it before, but the audience needs to be educated about the universe and all its characters.

This responsibility falls slap-bang on the studio – Lionsgate Films. The trailers should have been smarter and introduced the lore better, rather than presume everyone understands what’s going on. In the event that Lionsgate discovered that the project might be too convoluted or complicated for a single film, it should have turned it into a show instead. Look at Fallout as a prime – pardon the pun – example; there’s no way it could have worked as a film, but it shines as a series.

It will hate video game movies all over again

In days gone by, there were three certainties in life: Death, taxes, and video game movies flopping at the box office. Hollywood saw them as cursed pictures that never yielded any rewards for those who dared to invest in them. Here’s the secret, though: The reason they sucked is because studios avoided everything that made these properties appealing to fans in the first place.

So, instead of finding screenwriters and directors who were passionate about these franchises and lores, studios would hire malleable creatives who would bend the knee to the corporate overlords and accept all notes and script amendments as gospel. Somehow, Borderlands smells of the stench of design by committee too, but there’s absolutely no way that the VP of Tomfoolery or the Chief Idea-Killer Officer will own up for their roles in this mess. No, it must be the fault of video game movies being unadaptable and the “toxic” fanbase’s influence, right?

It will continue to pack these movies with more big stars

While there’s still room for movie stars in showbiz – such as the irrepressible Glen Powell – audiences smartened up to Hollywood’s tricks. No longer do the names on a film poster sell a film; the marketing team needs to work extra hard to convince the viewers to part with their hard-earned money and detach themselves from their couches. Otherwise, the cinema-sepsis known as Movie 43 would have joined the billion-dollar club based on the high profile of the stellar cast alone.

Borderlands loaded the film with everyone from Jamie Lee Curtis to Kevin Hart and Cate Blanchett. On paper, this looks like the event of the summer and an unmissable time at the movies. Unfortunately, there’s nothing the cast can do to save this project from itself. The stars spark, but not enough to create enough warmth for this soulless production.

Hollywood doesn’t like to hear this, though. Studio executives still believe that the power of the movie star compels us to watch, no matter how awful or unappealing something looks. Prepare to see them double down and include more big names in future video game movies as a way to sell them to the viewers.

Hollywood will think AI is the solution to every problem

Oh, everyone better believe it. These studio executives are itching at the prospect of only paying for AI subscriptions instead of forking out cash to writers and animators for creating movies. Every current box office bomb is seen as a human error that could have been entirely avoided. They believe that algorithms and artificial intelligence reveal what audiences want to see and that’s where they should focus all their time and attention. The best part? It’ll be cheaper to produce, baby!

Here’s the thing, though: AI scrapes for data and information to learn from. Once there are no more writers, artists, or creatives to suck the juices out of, what happens? It starts to spit out derivative and boring results that showcase the personality of a Norwegian mushroom. As it stands, there’s already a dearth of creativity in Hollywood as execs follow the money – not passion (case in point: Borderlands). The reliance on AI will only make matters worse, as potential algorithmic plagues like 2 Border 2 Lands or Borderlands vs. Doom: The Dawn of FPS become the standard moving forward. May the gods of film help us all.