This summer has delivered many great movies that also succeeded with audiences, with Inside Out 2 and A Quiet Place: Day One being just two notable examples of both artistic and commercial successes. However, nothing compares to Deadpool and Wolverine’s absolutely astonishing feat of becoming the highest-grossing R-rated movie of all time in just a little over three weeks. To date, the movie has grossed over $1.2 billion worldwide, blowing former champion Joker out of the water by $200 million by comparison.
Although we have all of these smash hits over the summer, some notable movies were not so well received. One of these failures was the video game adaptation, Borderlands. With a cast including A-List actors like Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, and Jack Black and a budget of over $110 million, one would think that surely this movie would be set up for success: Instead, the movie reached a paltry $18 million in the box office and was shunned by critics everywhere, falling to a dishonorable 10% on Rotten Tomatoes.
What could’ve led to such a miserable flop? Surprisingly, the answer to this movie’s letdown actually lies within Deadpool 3’s success. The first disparity between the two movies comes from how they marketed themselves. The Deadpool and Borderlands franchises already had a reputable legacy, but where one took full advantage of this reputation, the other passed it over.
The marketing campaign for Deadpool & Wolverine was everywhere: On Heinz Ketchup, on Xbox controllers, and even on Jack in The Box restaurant billboards. It was hard to miss the movie’s promotions. Some of these promotions play into the Deadpool franchise’s crude humor as well, with the movie’s popcorn buckets setting the stage for the internet to meme on, and inadvertently promoting the movie even further.
Meanwhile, there is little to say about Borderlands’s marketing, as the only form of promotion that can be found for the movie is in the half-hearted imitation of Deadpool’s popcorn buckets sold in movie theaters. Besides this, the movie’s marketing seemed to be practically non-existent.
The marketing also led to the different amounts of hype that the movies mustered up from the public. Before Deadpool & Wolverine even released, people were praising the movie’s arrival due to several bombshell announcements that led to a huge amount of social media engagement. With Hugh Jackman returning to reprise the role of Wolverine and the MCU being in a tight spot with their recent TV Shows and movies failing to meet audience expectations, the movie’s announcement was seen by many as a bold new experiment that still respected the roots of comic fandom. Marvel clearly believed in the movie and put much effort into advertising, making it clear to the masses that this project would live up to the hype.
Borderlands, on the other hand, also had a fair amount of attention by the public, but not in a good way. Many fans of the video game were outraged by the casting for the movie, most often bashing the casting of the main character, Lilith. Lilith, in the first Borderlands game, is 22 years old. Cate Blanchett on the other hand was 55 when she was cast.
“As a game-player, the age-gap from her to OG Lilith is distracting”, says a longtime Borderlands fan and Forbes journalist, Paul Tassi. “The movie has Tannis and Moxxi telling her about their time with her mother and remembering her as an eight year old. Jamie Lee Curtis is 65, ten years older than Blanchette’s 55. Gina Gershon is 62. It’s just goofy.”
Not only was Borderlands itself received exceptionally poorly, but the movie also failed to market itself to at least sell well in the first place. All of its failures in properly advertising the movie can be seen through the successes of Deadpool & Wolverine’s marketing, which led to its smashing success in the box office.
The same comparison holds true for their respective treatment of their source material: X-Men movie fans were overjoyed by the amount of love and respect for the Fox Marvel Universe, while Borderlands fans were appalled by the complete lack of care for the video game’s lore.
Funnily enough, the last nail in the coffin for Borderlands was its release date. The movie released on August 9th, only about 2 weeks from Deadpool 3’s release on July 26th. From a person with common sense’s point of view, it almost seems as if the Borderlands marketing team was praying for its downfall. How sad that not even Wolverine’s healing factor could save this catastrophe of a film’s inevitable box office bomb.
