Month: August 2024

After an unsuccessful box office run, Borderlands is getting a streaming release earlier than expected.

You’ve likely heard the less than complimentary reaction to Borderlands by now. At the time of writing, it has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 10% and has only made back $21.3 million of its massive  $110–120 million budget. Given its box office flop, it is now heading to a streaming service earlier than expected.

According to the Hollywood Handle, Borderlands will arrive on an as yet unspecified streaming service just 21 days after its cinema release on August 9. So viewers will be able to tune in at home from August 30.

While we don’t know exactly where the videogame adaptation is streaming yet, there’s been some speculation that it could be available for rent or purchase on Prime Video, due to the fact they already carry a number of Lionsgate titles such as the Saw movies.

While the audience score for Borderlands is slightly more favorable at 53% on Rotten Tomatoes, it’s still considered rotten, and its early move to streaming suggests they are not expecting much of a box office success going forward.

With the streaming release only 10 days away, you should expect to find out more information about where to find the movie very soon. Until then, it’s just speculation based on what we already know about the best streaming services. 

Is Borderlands really that bad?

(Image credit: Gearbox)

In short, yes. If the hundred or so rotten reviews don’t put you off, we also left the cinema disappointed as you can see in our Borderlands review. I was pretty dramatic about it, probably because I was so angry, and I said it had officially killed the era of good videogame adaptations.

It’s no Fallout or The Last of Us, both absolute gems that will be returning for season 2 over on Prime Video and HBO respectively. So honestly, this one is one to approach if you’re morbidly curious or you want something to hate watch, because you’re not going to get a good quality adaptation here.

Art is subjective and hey, maybe you’ll think differently to me, and if that’s the case I can only be thankful that some people might take something away from this mess of a movie. 

You might also like

Fallout season 1 is Prime Video’s explosively entertaining addition to the golden age lineup of video game adaptationsPrime Video cancels My Lady Jane despite its 94% Rotten Tomatoes score – and I think it’s making a royal blunderPrime Video releases first-look images of its new The Office Australia series – and I hope it’s as good as Deadloch

Read More 

DJI is rumored to be launching a mirrorless camera soon – here’s why that’d be a major deal and what we could realistically expect.

DJI is best known for drones like the incoming DJI Neo, but it’s also been quietly disrupting other camera spaces. And now some new rumors are predicting that it could soon make its biggest splash yet, with its first dedicated mirrorless camera.

The rumors come from Andrea Pizzini at Sony Alpha Rumors, who has previously been a reliable source for Sony-related launches. He says that “two trusted sources” have told him that DJI is planning to “launch something big in September” and that the most likely scenario is a “new mirrorless product that will compete more directly against Sony, Canon and Nikon.”

These rumors come with a couple of caveats. Firstly, the sources aren’t from inside DJI but from insiders at unnamed Japanese camera manufacturers who are apparently bracing themselves for a big DJI bombshell in September. Also, there’s been no specific leak hinting at what kind of product DJI apparently has in store, so talk that it’s a mirrorless camera (for stills and video) remains speculative.  

That said, a DJI mirrorless camera wouldn’t be a huge surprise given its recent history – and it could genuinely justify the oft-used ‘game-changer’ label. For a start, a mirrorless camera would sit neatly in DJI’s current lineup. On one hand, DJI already makes non-mirrorless cameras – the DJI Pocket 3, for example, which currently tops our list of the best vlogging cameras you can buy right now.

(Image credit: Future)

On the other hand, DJI also owns Hasselblad, which makes niche medium-format cameras like the Hasselblad X2D 100C (above). These rumors are predicting something that sits somewhere between the two – a DJI-branded mirrorless camera with interchangeable lenses. That’s why the rumors refer to it as a “more direct competitor to the Japanese manufacturers” that currently dominate the camera world.

Unfortunately, those “trusted sources” haven’t specified whether DJI might be prepping a video camera or hybrid camera, nor what lens mount it might use. But if the rumors are true, there are plenty of hints within DJI’s existing products that give us an idea of the most likely scenario – and a DJI camera that would theoretically be a major deal for non-professionals…

Why it could be a game-changer for cameras

The world’s best cameras are incredible image-making tools, but they’re also nearly all hampered by some legacy issues (usability, connectivity, convoluted menus) that the Japanese giants haven’t been in a huge rush to fix. 

If DJI combined the existing tech from across its Ronin, Pocket, and Hasselblad lines, it could instantly raise the usability bar and make hybrid cameras feel like they’re actually from the same era as our phones.

Firstly, there are camera menus. While models like the Sony A7C II have improved the situation, most of the best mirrorless cameras are still more approachable for pros than amateurs. As we discovered in our Hasselblad X2D 100C review, its minimalist Scandinavian menus are a joy to use and feel “more in line with smartphones than most other camera touchscreens.” Despite its tiny size, even the DJI Pocket 3 is more intuitive than many cameras. 

(Image credit: Future)

Then there’s connectivity. Most cameras are still relics from a pre-smartphone era when photos were stored on SD cards and laboriously transferred to laptops. Sending photos to your phone remains a glacial experience in most cases, but DJI could easily replicate the Leica SL3, which uses a combination of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi MIMO tech to send full-size DNGs to your phone in a few seconds.

Like Leica, which for some reason remains an outlier in the camera world, DJI could also make an interchangeable lens camera with internal storage. The Leica M11, for example, has 64GB of internal storage, while drones like the DJI Mavic 3 offer up to 1TB of internal storage. DJI could quite easily put that into an actually affordable camera and make it a mainstream feature.

Fourthly, as Sony Alpha Rumors has speculated, DJI could theoretically add an e-SIM to its camera to make a truly modern mirrorless hybrid. That could potentially let you wirelessly back up photos from an internal SSD for peace of mind. While that would be nice in theory, DJI hasn’t really done that with its drones aside from pro models like the Matrice series. So we think this feature, plus the idea of third-party apps on cameras, could be ones to file under ‘wishful thinking.’

Lastly, a more realistic shake-up for mirrorless cameras from a new DJI player would be lenses. The DJI Ronin 4D, which we called “the Hollywood Steadicam for (nearly) everyone,” has an interchangeable mount that works not only with DJI’s DL lenses but also with L-Mount, E-mount, and M-mount glass. If a DJI mirrorless camera could do the same for a much lower price, it could be a versatile new player.

What’s actually realistic?

These DJI mirrorless camera rumors have sparked a lot of wishful thinking about what new features the drone giant could bring to mirrorless cameras – some of it realistic, some a bit more far-fetched.

The more important question is arguably why DJI might want to make a traditional interchangeable lens camera. Aside from film-like compacts like the Fujifilm X100VI, the growth area in cameras is video, and this is one of DJI’s strengths.

(Image credit: Future)

That’s why a larger version of something like a DJI Pocket 3 with interchangeable lenses (or a smaller version of the DJI Ronin 4D) is arguably more realistic than a hybrid rival to the Nikon Z6 III or Sony A7 IV. Another potential strike against a hybrid camera, as opposed to a video-focused one, is DJI’s ownership of Hasselblad, which it’s previously referred to as its home for stills-shooting cameras.

Also, while the looming DJI drone ban in the US only affects its flying cameras, it could also have a chilling effect on a more ambitious launch, given the size of the US camera market. 

So while these DJI mirrorless camera rumors are exciting, we’re approaching them with caution – and are anticipating a camera that has a closer genetic resemblance to DJI’s existing Pocket or Ronin lineup than the Canon-destroying revolutionary that many are hoping for.   

You might also like

I spent a day with the DJI Ronin 4D – and it took my filmmaking to the next levelI tested Hasselblad’s 100MP camera and it made my full-frame Nikon look ordinaryThe 12 most exciting cameras of 2024, from a Fujifilm X100V successor to the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra

Read More