The 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Borderlands movie has been in various stages of development for nine years now, but we only got our first real look at the finished product this week. With the teaser trailer out today, I’m once again thinking about what makes a good video game movie. With superheroes on the w𝔉ane and video gꦓame adaptations on the rise, it's something we're all going to be thinking about, as studios pump out more and more attempts to turn valuable gaming IP into box office gold. The problem is, the things that make Borderlands a distinctive video game become a liability when you attempt to transplant it to another medium.
For one, the selling point of Borderlands has always been the guns. It’s not like there's a conflict between guns and good movies. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:John Wick is right there, and the fourth film even cribs from video game imagery directly, with a top down set piece seemingly inspired by 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Hotline Miami.
But Borderlands’ particular approach to guns does seem a little uncinematic. Though some of the guns in the game do fun things — the one I always remember is the gun that shoots out smaller guns that then run around shooting your enemies — the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Borderlands 3 trailer promised "," and that uncountably high number means that most of the weapons you get are only slightly different from others. When you play Borderlands, you're sifting through a bunch of similar guns, trying to find the one that works best for your current loadout or offers a fun gimmick that goes beyond simply firing bullets.
The gameplay hook has always been the satisfaction of slowly getting more powerful with better and better guns. That translates less well to film. That John Wick scene worked so well because it was built around one very specific weapon that did something cool. The world of Borderlands is built around guns, with the major corporations that rule the galaxy in place of governments all being weapons manufacturers. It's easy to make a single gun look cool. It's harder to make a world of guns anything but overwhelming.
Maybe more importan🅠tly, if the movie keeps the Borderlands tone, it will be extremely annoying. The Ringer’s movie podcast The Big Picture recently did . Host Sean Fennessy defined “wink action” as the kind of action movie that isn’t a full-on action comedy, but undercuts its stakes with Internet-y humor. The episode was timed to coincide with Argylle, which they listed as an example. But most Ryan Reynolds movies, per The Big Picture, are wink action, to﷽o.
Though that enterprising Canadian has nothing to do with the series, Borderlands is the purest distillation of Ryan Reynolds ever captured in video game form, like someone built a game out of Deadpool's brain. It's a tone that I don't like much in movies, and have come to really hate in games because games are longer, have much more writing, and are written, by and large, by people who have little experience in writing comedy. The result is that one of Borderlands' best loved jokes involves repeated references to Butt Stallion, Handsome Jack's diamond pony. Its most iconic character, Claptrap, is just the kind of annoying comic relief that people hated in the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Star Wars prequels.
168澳洲幸运5开奖网: Why Are Games So Unfunny?
High on♓ Life isn't the only game that doesn't know when to shut up.
None of this seems like a good recipe for a movie. Gameplay can be difficult to translate to movies and TV. Even a well-received adaptation like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Last of Us has bits in it where the characters need to get around a building or cross a gap with a plank; vestigial limbs that serve little purpose in TV. Gunplay can be represented viscerally with good action direction, but Borderlands' specific approach to guns seems like a bad fit for a cinematic adaptation. And the humor, one of the series' main selling points, could be a major liability.
The movie might still work. But, the chances seem about as slim as finding a Dahl gun in a Hyperion vending machine. We may just♉ be looking in the wrong place.
🐻I Will Never Give Up On The Borderlands M🐟ovie
Borderlands continues to languish in post-production hell with no release date in sight, and Gea൩rbox might be ไwondering if it can ever be successful
