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.
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.)
$38,912,465
That's how much the 1993 Mario Brothers movie grossed worldwide. Really pause and think about that.
Let that sink in.
The mario brothers movie made $7,000,000 more than this, in 90s money. One of the greatest disappointments in movie history, which has a cult following for its level of fail, outperformed Borderlands.
That is the orbital nuke of fails.
As a part of the 1993 SMB movie's cult following, I wouldn't say it's the level of fail that has contributed as much as a combination of nostalgia, and just how damn unapologetically strange it is. Someone honestly went and pitched a grimy, dieselpunk take on Super Mario Brothers, with Daisy as the princess rather than Peach, and humanoid/reptilian koopas, Toad as a punk busker, a velociraptor Yoshi, and Dennis Hopper looking absolutely insane as Bowser. And somehow, that movie got made and didn't end up being the subject of "the insane reinvention of Super Mario Bros. that could have been" documentaries, and fan-film homages.
I'm aware that Hoskins and Leguizamo both have said that had a terrible time making the movie because of how disorganized it was, but I don't care, the finished product is amazing.
If you're interested, The Flop House (long running bad movie podcast with three hosts and sometimes a guest; 2/3 hosts are former Daily Show writers [they are three cishet white guys, but not stupid or bigoted]) did an episode with Parker Bennett, one of the screenwriters of the '93 SMB movie. He's got some pretty great anecdotes about making it!
The way I see it, SMB93 is just mental enough that it slipped into cult movie territory. It’s obviously not a cash grab rammed full of fan service, so there’s an authenticity to it that makes it endure.
Is it a great movie? Fucking right it is.
Is it a Super Mario Bros. movie? Weeelllll…
But I come it from the perspective of someone who was 12 when it came out, so didn’t really give a shit about it being faithful to whatever story the games had. It was just a stupid, fun movie for me.
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
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.
https://www.vanityfair.com/...
“We went to call our supervisor, and we’re like, ‘There’s a f--king a--hole in there! There’s buttholes!’”
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.
And weird trivia: the Alanis Morrisette theme song “I Remain” is not available on streaming legally. All of the other OST songs are there but that one is always missing.
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!"
Crazy that they spent that much on marketing and I still had no idea that movie was coming until I read articles about how badly it bombed. Did they blow the marketing budget on hookers and blow and call it good?? What the hell happened here?!
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.
I thoroughly enjoyed the Last of Us series. I do hope it ends where it is now, but it was some very good TV writing and acting.
Because the show writers are the same that wrote the game, last of us has a very strong advantage. They can't deviate from the plot and key elements because they are too invested in it. But they can change what they feel like is weaker, or wouldn't work as well in a show format. And its really noticable if you played both the game and the show. They've discussed how they already planned it to be a two season series, but they also mentioned if they have enough inspiration and they can figure out a way to make a third season that stays within the spirit of the story line, and they honestly enjoy it then they will.
With the first season being as good as it was, I have complete and utter faith in them.
I haven't played the games, so I was able to watch the series for what it was. It's also the reason I refuse to watch the Halo series. Thanks for your input, I was unaware the game writers were so involved.
Yes. Although I would have enjoyed it more if it wasn't called Uncharted.
Tom Holland is a pretty big draw. I think he might have carried the marketing. But you're probably right. The Uncharted name automatically gets everyone who enjoyed the video game. I never played the game, so I didn't have any expectations, but I knew about the movie because my wife played the game, and the title caught her attention.
Tom Holland was good, but Marky Mark was a big “meh”.
And the end action set piece was too over the top bonkers for my taste
As far as I remember the quality of the video sequences of the game were way better in comparison to the movie. They even had Mark hamil in it.
Freddie Prince Jr & Mathew Lillard.
It’s not great, but it’s fun. Might be a tad dated if you watch it for the first time today, but I enjoyed it a lot when I saw it.
Of course, I was very stoned when I watched it.
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.
Also Final Fantasy made $85m in 2001 (about $52m short of its costs). That's $151m today. And I liked the movie, so I include this as a video game movie that made more, not a bad one, though I believe that is how it was received back in the day.
GOOD! Now let games be games and learn to write an original story.
If all the game to movie adaptations weren’t studio led soulless cash grabs and some young filmmaker who loved a game’s story/world and passionately wanted to share it in their preferred medium I’d actually be interested to see it and it may actually be good
Aggressively or affectionately?
Fallout is good tho, and Sonic as well.
The thing that baffles me about Wing Commander is that Mark Hamill was right there and already had an established character in the game's canon. But even with a different story and cast, I don't understand how anyone could have screwed up a bog-standard space opera that badly.
Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat deserve their respective paydays. They're both stupid and fun. That's what the source material is after all. But Mortal Kombat might do well with a little love: just throw a few million at Corridor Digital and update the CGI effects and re-release it.
I mean it’s Chris Roberts. He is behind 750 milion dollar 12 year space demo alpha that perpetually can’t take off and his biggest released game was only released because of external intervention and removing him as a lead
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.
We can live in hope.
I'd like to think we're turning a corner on this now - Lionsgate have taken a beating with both Borderlands and The Crow, which should make others think twice before just crapping out some half-baked adaptation, remake or franchise fodder. Disney have certainly learned their lesson, dialing back both Marvel and Star Wars releases to, hopefully, focus on quality not quantity. It's clear that people just won't turn out for more "content" and that they want to see something made by skilled creators who genuinely want to make the film or TV series, not some soulless corporate-mandated product. I'm confident that James Gunn's approach at DC will also show the benefit of this approach (it's basically just an extension of what he was doing in the MCU).
Almost everyone, including Kevin Feige, seems to have learnt the wrong lesson from the success of the MCU (that it's all about the franchise and the IP) and it is now really starting to hurt their bottom line, which is the only stimulus they really understand. It'll take a bit for the supertanker to course correct as it has a lot of momentum (so we will probably have to endure the seemingly endless Avatar films for a while) but it should lead to better blockbuster films and the cinemas being less carpet-bombed with franchise-fodder leaving room for lower budget films to have their chance to shine (and we've seen quite a few do very well recently which might encourage more studios to take a chance - your hit to miss ratio can be lower if you aren't spending 100s of millions on a film).
Personally, I was burnt out of MCU stuff after Endgame, so quality vs quantity didn't even enter my equation. It was just too much quantity, plus knowing how connected they've made these shows and movies ends up creating a bit of a mental barrier where I might be missing context (or getting spoilers) if I try to casually just pick one of the movies and watch it.
I did eventually watch Loki and it was pretty good quality IMO. Same with Wandavision and the what if series.
I'm still not in a rush to get caught up on the newer movies, though.
I've never played Borderlands, I don't really like the comic book aesthetic, but I really enjoyed the movie.
The first iterations was peak humor. Worth the playthrough. BL3 and TT are a maybe though.
If Wing Commander's $11.5 million is in 1999 dollars, that's $21.7 million today. Still less than Borderlands, although it probably also cost less to make.
I'm glad that it seems to be higher up on this list in terms of money made. Probably my favorite one of these movies, next to Mortal Kombat, although I haven't seen Uncharted yet.
Yeah, I enjoyed it too. Felt bad for Duncan Jones when it seemed to get shit on from all directions.
That said, I was never much of a WoW player, so didn’t know any of the lore going in. My wife is though, and she enjoyed it too.
Would Valve allow an aperture science/black mesa film?
Why would you guarantee that?
I’ve wanted this so badly for years
Rofl
There is prob a 'can it run Doom' joke somewhere in there but it's not worth making 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.
Still waiting for a Duke Nukem movie
I never realized any of those were movies.
The FNAF movie is actually not that bad. It surely isn't masterpiece, but its good movie and also understandable for someone who barely knows anything about fnaf.
This has to have been some form of egregious waste.
I can’t recall seeing any promotional material for this besides the trailer being reposted to talk shit about the movie.
I don’t think the movie was that bad. Sure was predictable, but it was fun.
need for speed is the best video game adaptation imo, completely captured the vibe of NSF Most Wanted (2005), fite me.
I also think Wow could have been decent, but there seems like there was some studio meddling or weird cuts that makes the movie disjointed as it weirdly shifts tone to being about love.
NSFW Most Wanted
👀
Reflex
Wow was a difficult one to make. You've got the cliche of humans vs orcs, but in the context of Warcraft the orcs aren't pure evil antagonists. How do you make a swords and magic story where neither side are the bad guys?
I didn't think it was a bad movie but I've never played the video game.
It certainly wasn't anything amazing but I watch a lot of movies and I've seen far worse movies that were touted as cinematic masterpieces.
Ok, how tf did I miss this many gaming-related movies?
And, should I be glad I did or not?
Bcs imho Borderlands is a solid rpg movie with a basic story imagined by a nice, productive dm (not the best as far as dms or rpg movies go, but like a reliable standard).
Ok, how tf did I miss this many gaming-related movies?
There's a lot - I have a list that's incomplete but has 86 films on it, Vulture ranked all video game films back in 2016 and there is, obviously, a Wikipedia page for them.
That list is for bad adaptations that made more money than Borderlands, so it leaves out all Us Boll's tax scam movies that are pretty universally awful (I had to bump Alone in the Dark's rating up, so I could rate the sequel lower than it).
And, even with that criteria, it misses out:
- Rampage - $418M
- Angry Birds - $353M
- Angry Birds 2 - $152M
- Monster Hunter - $42M
Here's an idea: Maybe stop making films no one asked for?
Even fans of the franchise didn't really want this. How do you translate a looter shooter into a watchable 2 hour film?
I really enjoy playing Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, 15 minutes at a time on my Steam Deck. I'm not sure I need to see some forced deep cinematic character development extrapolated from it. There's not that much to it.
How do you translate borderlands into a watchable film?
It's a piece of cake to bake a pretty cake.
Deadpoolesque humour, Mad Maxy aesthetics with Idocracy-like characters and frequent Wick tier violence.
Mortal Kombat isn't a good movie. Nostalgia just tells you it is
to me, Mortal Kombat goes under the "Soo bad its good" category.
For sure, it's entertaining but in a cheesy, turn your brain off way
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@lemm.ee
Matrix room: https://matrix.to/#/#fediversefilms:matrix.org
Warning: If the community is empty, make sure you have "English" selected in your languages in your account settings.
A community focused on discussions on movies. Besides usual movie news, the following threads are welcome
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- Weekly threads: what have you been watching lately?
- Trailers
- Posters
- Retrospectives
- Should I watch?
Related communities:
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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.
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