It Sounds Like Borderlands Was 'Blowing People's Heads Off' With The OG Cut. So What Happened To The R-Rated Version?

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In CinemaBlend's Borderlands review, the movie is referred to as “a total mess” and most critics seem to agree. The film also came in fourth at the box office during its opening weekend, during which Deadpool & Wolverine threepeated at No. 1. Despite being highly anticipated as an upcoming video game adaptation, general audiences didn't seem to excited about it either. Part of that may have been that audiences were likely expecting a more over-the-top and violent movie and, apparently, they could've received just that.

The theatrical cut of Borderlands is rated PG-13, a fact that surprised and upset some fans of the games who were hoping to see the (occasionally cartoonish) hyper-violent sequences from the video games recreated in the movie. That didn’t happen, but the film’s stunt coordinator, Jimmy O’Dee, recently told ScreenRant that when the movie was being filmed, it was being shot as if it was going to be R-rated. And that came complete with exploding heads and severed limbs. O’Dee explained…

We were shooting an R-rated movie when we did it. 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. We shot that nearly three years ago, or we just finished it. So, I guess a lot happens in post, and they see where it's going to go and what market they're aiming for. But literally the idea and the brief was carnage, head cutting off, feet cutting off. Go for it and then we'll sort it out in post. It was that kind of thing.

This is very much the sort of movie that many were expecting when it was announced that Eli Roth would be directing Borderlands. The man is known for horror, and it was expected that he’d bring those sensibilities to the plaent of Pandora. Jimmy O’Dee indicates that’s exactly what happened on set, with Roth himself suggesting more violence rather than less. O’Dee continued…

And of course, Eli loves horror. He loves horror. It was funny, he was on the second unit, he came over, and he was like, ‘Uh... just cut the ankles off. Yeah, get the knife and cut the ankles and we will leave these stubs.’ It was kind of like there wasn't enough gore for him sometimes. Eli was all over that kind of stuff. He was great to work with. It was such a fun time with him.

Which leads us to the question, just what the hell happened? If Eli Roth was more than willing to make a violent and gory Borderlands, why didn’t we get one? Was this a case of a studio looking to maximize profit by increasing the size of the potential audience with a lighter rating? Did Roth himself simply change his mind over the course of the three years it took to finish the film?

Is there an R-rated version of this film somewhere? It’s possible, depending on when these shifts took place, that there could be a completed cut of the film with all the gory glory. It’s also possible that post-production was never completed on an R-rated cut and everything is only half done.

None of this necessarily means that an R-rated Borderlands would automatically be a better movie than the cut that was released, of course. At the same time, if transforming the R-rated version into the PG-13 version required removing more than just the violence, maybe the original concept really was a better movie. It’s unlikely we’ll ever see it to find out, but if there are enough fans who care, maybe it could happen.

Borderlands, which is one of the biggest entries on the 2024 movie schedule, is now playing in theaters.