The Borderlands Movie Was A Lot More Violent And Gorey Before It Went PG-13

Summary

• Borderlands stunt coordinator Jimmy O'Dee has revealed that Borderlands was originally shot with an R rating in mind.
• According to O'Dee, the original vision had characters "blowing people's heads off" and that "the brief was carnage."
• O'Dee then explains that filming was finished over three years ago, and a lot of the intended violence was probably decided against in post-production.

Borderlands is a pretty violent video game series. We're talking about games that let you melt the flesh of your enemies with acid, burn them alive, and shoot them in their face because they asked you over and over again. It's the absurd levels of violence that amplify the absurdity of the whole package, but the recently released Borderlands movie went against that in favor of a more family-friendly approach.

Unfortunately, actually making a decent movie probably should have taken precedent over getting more bums in seats, and Borderlands' toned down violence is one of the bigger reasons as to why the movie fell short of fan expectations. However, it seems like a PG-13 release wasn't always on the cards for Borderlands, as the stunt coordinator Jimmy O’Dee recently revealed that shooting for the movie was down with an R rating in mind.

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Speaking with Screen Rant about their time working on Borderlands, O'Dee explains that characters in the movie were "blowing people's heads off" before the change was made, so the movie could be shown to younger audiences.

"We were shooting an R-rated movie when we did it," says O'Dee. "We always knew that we were going to go either 15 or R rating, it's 15 in UK, for a slightly mature audience. So, we were blowing people's heads off. And we were cutting feet off. We were doing all of that. But then, you know, a lot happens.

The Borderlands Movie Was A Lot More Violent And Gorey Before It Went PG-13

According to O'Dee, filming ended around three years ago, and that a lot of the intended violence was toned down during post-production. So, if you're planning to watch the Borderlands movie at some point in the next few days (firstly, my condolences), you might be able to see some scenes that were supposed to be a lot more violent than they are in the finished product.

The brief was carnage, head cutting off, feet cutting off. Go for it and then we'll sort it out in post.

However, something tells me that even if Borderlands had gone ahead with the maiming and the killing, it still wouldn't have saved it from the scathing reviews it's been receiving. It astonishingly managed to debut at 0 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, though it was shortly saved by a few outliers, and I think no amount of decapitated heads or feet would've changed that. At least Randy Pitchford liked it.

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