Marvel Directors Blew Everything Up For The New ‘Borderlands 4’ Trailer

It’s been six long years since the last mainline Borderlands game, and its creators know it. Borderlands 4 is billed as a grand return to the franchise’s roots, with more guns than you can think of, an expansive world to explore, and a dynamic story that introduces four new Vault Hunters.

Gearbox Software is going big with Borderlands 4, and the grand return of the series demanded something special. Inverse can exclusively reveal Borderlands 4’s live-action “Quit Earth” trailer, a practical effects smorgasboard directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, the filmmaking duo behind Marvel’s Loki and Daredevil: Born Again.

“Over the last four years, we’ve done maybe 200 to 300 days of production, and there’s been so many high points. But watching a miniature couch go out a miniature apartment window was the most delighted I’ve felt as a filmmaker in maybe our whole career,” Benson tells Inverse. “I wanted to give one of those monologs that Werner Herzog gives about art.”

Inverse had the chance to talk to Moorhead and Benson, as well as publisher 2K’s marketing team, to learn how the project came to be and why it leaned into practical effects. As you might expect, landing two acclaimed directors can be a complicated process.

“When we were getting this gig, we were directing Daredevil, and [Aaron] was the only one awake during the morning the call came in, and we were so excited, it was infectious,” Benson says. “But we couldn’t find a meeting time that wasn’t during shooting hours, so we’d leave set and get in a passenger van and take the meeting while we drove around the block for 30 minutes in New York.”

The months-long creation process was a collaborative effort between the directors, Gearbox, and the creative agency Battery (which has previously brought its talents to other video games, like Apex Legends). Easter eggs for megafans were carefully included, but the trailer also needed to communicate Borderlands’ wacky vibe to a whole new audience.

“Moorhead and Benson, they did Loki, and there’s a certain kind of humor to it. And then they did Daredevil, which is really raw and action-packed,” Sami Thessman, Senior Vice President of Global Creative at 2K, tells Inverse. “They really get both sides of things, because we still want to feel raw and crazy but not overproduced. They understand that and the humor, how to make it fun.”

While Benson hasn’t played much Borderlands, Moorhead describes himself as a gamer, and Borderlands holds a special place for him. During lockdown, co-op Borderlands was a crucial way to connect and bond with longtime friends. He “didn’t know what the hell was going on” in Borderlands 3, but his friend was an expert who guided him. That spirit of cooperation, to Moorhead, is Borderlands’ special sauce, and a major part of what the duo wanted to capture in “Quit Earth.”

To that end, there was constant collaboration with Gearbox, which provided access to scans of the game’s weapons, characters, and other assets. But what’s especially interesting about “Quit Earth” is that the title moniker could be taken a few different ways.

“Borderlands is a sci-fi game out in the ether, and we had to be careful — I spoke to [CEO] Randy [Pitchford] about this early on. He’s like, ‘Earth isn’t a part of the canon of Borderlands,’” Craig Mitchell, VP of Marketing at 2K, tells Inverse. “So it can be a rocket ship leaving Earth to go to the video game, but the ship is more like a state of mind. You’re entering our world of craziness and our unique blend of mayhem and chaos. So Quit Earth, to me, was about getting out of your everyday. All the crap, whatever it is, get out of that, grab your friends, and come have a good time in Borderlands.”

To nail that transition from the real world to the surreality of Borderlands, Moorhead and Benson thought it was vital to embrace practical effects. Nearly everything in the ad is practical, with just a bit of CGI layered on top.

“Aaron and I talk about this a lot, this sort of sad thought that film peaked in the late ‘90s or early 2000s, in the sense that things like Seven or The Matrix photographically look amazing, almost better than anything today,” Benson says. “That’s why we used miniatures, it just looks better to do everything you can in real life, rather than with VFX.”

Moorhead thinks 2005 was the sweet spot of visual effects, and that VFX has since become a “crutch” for creatives, a way to “cover your ass” rather than just another tool.

“We love visual effects. We’ll always use them in our movies in different ways. It’s a tool in the toolbox,” Moorhead says. “Really great visual effects are in a lot of our favorite movies, like Dune. It’s very practical, but there’s also some amazing effects going on. I think there needs to be an adjustment to the ratio of how much we use it and how we use it.”

For “Quit Earth,” that meant not just making the weapons and iconic psycho masks, but an entire apartment set, and even a life-sized elephant. Everything in the ad is either a miniature or a practical item; the elephant, Benson says, was animated in stop-motion, in the way pioneering creator Ray Harryhausen would do it. Putting so many different elements together was a huge undertaking with a couple of mishaps.

“We have this scene near the end where it’s a TSA-style checkpoint to get into the rocket, and the robot dog is standing up, waving goodbye to the passengers — there are hundreds of extras, smoke, everything,” Benson says. “We see on the monitor this thing trying to wave, and then, in like a Simpsons-style animation, in one frame, it eats s*** onto the ground, and everyone loses their minds, thinking we just blew up a DARPA robot. It did seem a little dazed, and seemed to obey us a little less after that.”

“Quit Earth” harkens back to a different era of gaming when many companies were producing wild live-action ads. That approach has faded as the years go by, and games get increasingly expensive and time-consuming to make.

“There’s a lot of retro throwback things in this with the models and miniatures,” Moorhead says. “I remember the ad for Super Smash Bros., where a bunch of mascots start fighting each other, to the song ‘Happy Together.’ I think it’s such a good way to get a generation to remember something. You’re not just throwing them gameplay. The old Borderlands ads are so memorable because of the ‘No Rest for the Wicked’ track lining up to it. That’s what was really cool about working with Gearbox. They resist popular trends.”

For Gearbox, “Quit Earth” is a chance to capture Borderlands’ neurotic energy and deliver it to a new audience. For Moorhead and Benson, who say they would “1000 percent” be on board to do something similar again, the experience taught them a vital lesson about the lasting value of practical effects.

“The more we got to work with high-end miniatures and a puppetry crew, the more we realized you can just commit to it. You don’t really know until you try it. You can work your way up to it with horror films, things with gore and prosthetics and all that,” Moorhead says. “We had a top-of-the-line practical effects studio, and the money to back it; you realize that once you commit, you don’t have to worry about it looking silly on set. I think you’re going to see a lot of miniatures and practicals in our films.”

Borderlands 4 launches on September 12 for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC, and on October 3 for Nintendo Switch 2. You can pre-order Borderlands 4 from its official website.