Borderlands movie director says it failed because PG-13 studio cuts meant it ‘belonged to nobody’
Fans didn’t get the violence and kids weren’t interested, Eli Roth says
The director of the Borderlands movie says it was a failure because studio interference meant it no longer appealed to any demographic.
Eli Roth – best known for his gory horror films like Cabin Fever, Hostel and The Green Inferno – appeared to be the ideal choice on paper to direct the film adaptation of Take-Two‘s adult-oriented video game series.
The movie was a huge disaster, however, grossing just $33 million worldwide against a reported production budget of roughly $115 million, plus marketing and distribution costs of $30 million.
Its launch reviews led to a rare Rotten Tomatoes critic score of 0%, though this has increased to 10% since then.
In a new interview with Variety, Roth blames the film’s failure on studio executives who demanded the film’s more mature content be cut in order to drop it down to a PG-13 rating at cinemas.
“As things grow bigger, studios just naturally become more risk averse,” Roth said. “My nature as a filmmaker is to do the thing that’s left of centre, because that’s what has worked for me.”
Referring to the Borderlands film, he added: “You got something that belonged to nobody. It’s not a kids’ movie, but it’s trying to appeal to everybody.
“It’s for gamers, but it doesn’t have the violence the gamers want because it can’t be that extreme because it costs too much. You just wind up with a movie that’s neither fish nor fowl.”
It’s “hard for studios to be distasteful”, Roth says
Roth’s latest film, Ice Cream Man, is a horror film that will be released independently and will be released unrated, in order to avoid the issues that he experienced with films like Borderlands.
“Part of horror is you’re being distasteful,” he explained. “And for people in studios, it’s hard to be distasteful because they’re making stuff that they want to be celebrated and socially acceptable. And part of what you’re doing by making a good horror movie is you’re being transgressive and you’re pushing the boundaries.”
The first 25 critic reviews of the Borderlands movie after the embargo lifted were negative, leading to an initial Rotten Tomatoes score of 0%. Many of these reviews leaned on the idea that the film felt too sanitised.
The Hollywood Reporter‘s review said: “It’s conceivable that long-time fans of the video game might get more out of Borderlands, but I wouldn’t count on it. At one point, Claptrap returns to operational mode after a heavy-weaponry assault and says, ‘I blacked out. Did something important happen?’ Not in this movie.”
ComingSoon.net gave the film a score of 3/10, calling it “one of Roth’s weakest films, offering little excitement or laughs”, while Collider’s 5/10 score said: “It’s just disappointing that the source material has so much more to offer in terms of its layered characters and complicated themes of trauma and survival that the film seems either uninterested in or incapable of tapping into.”
