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the wedding's off

‘Borderlands’ cut its big gay wedding scene & we would like some answers

By Cameron Scheetz July 24, 2024 at 3:00pm
Image Credits: Instagram @mrcheyennejackson (left) | ‘Guns, Love, and Tentacles,’ Gearbox Software (center) | Charles Babalola, Getty Images (right)

Blockbuster hopeful Borderlands hits theaters in a few short weeks, boasting a bananas cast—including icons Cate Blanchett & Jamie Lee Curtis!—and a bonkers world, based off the popular video game series of the same name.

Now, even if you’re not a gaymer, chances are you’ve at least heard of the Borderlands series, which have made space for multiple LGBTQ+ characters and stories across its colorful, sci-fi universe.

The 2022 spin-off New Tales From The Borderland, for example, introduced a surprisingly thoughtful trans storyline for a recurring character, while downloadable content for Borderlands 3 offered up a new mission set in the lead-up to the wedding of gay supporting players Sir Alistair Hammerlock and Wainwright Jakobs.

But it turns out that the Borderlands movie might not be quite as inclusive as its source material. In fact, they actually filmed a gay wedding sequence—and then decided to leave it on the cutting room floor.

In other words, the marriage of Jakobs & Hammerlock has been called off! So, what gives?

According to director Eli Roth (the man behind 2023’s campy slasher Thanksgiving), they filmed an entire set piece at the wedding, with none other than IRL daddy Cheyenne Jackson playing Jakobs and Black Mirror star Charles Babalola as Hammerlock.

“It was one of those things that we all loved,” Roth tells EW of the sequence. “We loved the actors. The scene itself turned out great, but in the overall mission of the film it felt like a detour that stopped the mood and then went back.”

You mean to tell us we could have seen these two hunks kiss on screen, and you denied us of that???

It feels like Roth could’ve just not told us about the edit, and we wouldn’t have known any better. But now that we’re aware of the gay goodness we’re missing out on, we’re upset.

To be fair, the director reveals there were plenty of other scenes and moments cut from Borderlands—scenes that didn’t necessarily center on LGBTQ+ characters—though this loss certainly stings, especially in the wake of numerous other big-budget movies reportedly nixing their moments of queer representation.

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Other times when LGBTQ+ representation has been cut from movies

Now, we’re going to give Roth, Borderlands, and the film’s studio and distributor, Lionsgate, the benefit of the doubt here. We’re definitely not accusing anyone of homophobia—or fear of a homophobic backlash to the movie. It’s possible the wedding did throw off the flow of the rest of the movie.

But the truth is: This has happened before! There have been reports of studio’s tinkering with their films and removing scenes of LGBTQ+ representation, especially when said films are designed to appeal to—and make money from—the widest audience possible.

We see this happening particularly when blockbusters are positioned for international release, and are intended to open in countries where sentiment toward the queer community is less than welcoming, to put it mildly.

Let’s take a moment to look back at a few instances where studios have reportedly cut (or tried to cut) gay scenes and characters from their films:

Lightyear’s Controversial Gay Kiss

Image Credit: ‘Lightyear,’ Disney/Pixar

Perhaps most infamously, Disney and Pixar’s sci-fi Toy Story spin-off Lightyear featured a female character (voiced by Uzo Aduba) who was in a relationship with another woman. The two share a brief kiss during a montage, which Variety reported the studio attempted to cut, but was kept in after Pixar employees sent a joint statement to the Walt Disney Company alleging they has actively censored “overtly gay affection” in multiple films.

Though Disney did ultimately stand by the scene, it prompted outrage among certain conservative viewers, and Lightyear was either banned or received viewing restrictions in multiple countries in Asia and the Middle East.

Star Wars‘ First-Ever Same-Sex Kiss

Image Credit: ‘Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker,’ Disney / Lucasfilm

Another smooch that caused a stir for Disney was a brief one shown between two minor characters in a scene from Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker—hyped as popular franchise’s first same-sex kiss. Though it was definitely in the version we saw in U.S. theaters, The Guardian reports it was cut from the film’s release in Singapore (and allegedly Dubai as well), where would have warranted a rating higher than PG-13.

Star Trek Removes Sulu’s Loving Moment

But Disney isn’t the only culprit. In Paramount’s Star Trek: Beyond from 2016, John Cho’s Sulu was confirmed to be gay and married to another man—a nice nod the legendary out actor George Takei, who played the character in the original series.

As Cho revealed, a scene was filmed where the couple kissed while at the airport with their daughter, though it mysteriously didn’t end up in the final cut. “It wasn’t like a make-out session,” the actor revealed to Vulture at the time. “It was a welcome-home kiss. I’m actually proud of that scene.”

Erasing Dumbledore’s Gay History In Harry Potter

Image Credit: ‘Fantastic Beats: The Secrets Of Dumbledore,’ Warner Bros.

And, sometimes, it’s not even physical displays of affection that get the snip. The Harry Potter author-who-shall-not-be-named long ago confirmed that Albus Dumbledore was gay, and the prequel film Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets Of Dumbledore promised to explore the professor’s foundational relationship with dark wizard Grindelwald.

The film never really depicts their romance, but makes things quite clear when Dumbledore (here played by Jude Law) references having been in love with Grindelwald (Mads Mikkelsen) on a couple different occasions. According to Variety, for the film’s theatrical release in China, those lines of dialogue were cut to appease the country’s censors.

These are just a few of the many instances where major motion pictures have removed moments of LGBTQ+ representation in order to satisfy or avoid pushback from certain audiences. Of course, the fact that all of the above examples could so easily be excised without compromising the broader story being told is another issue entirely—that the so-called representation we do see in mainstream movies is rarely all that consequential or deep.

So, it feels significant that, at the very least, Borderlands‘s big, gay wedding would’ve been the setting for a full action set piece, and not just a background kiss or tossed off line of dialogue. We don’t know quite how much screen time Jackson and Babalola’s gay characters would’ve gotten (and it’s possible they do still appear in the movie, just not at their wedding), but it’s clear Roth & Co. don’t take their decision to leave the scene on the cutting room floor lightly.

For now, Roth remains hopeful the scene will some way, somehow still see the light of day—maybe in deleted scenes revealed down the road, or maybe even in a sequel?

“All you can say is, you know what? If we’re lucky to do another one, we know we got them for another one,” Roth tells EW. “And that’s a very hard thing, but ultimately your responsibility is to the movie and to the story.”

The gay wedding-less Borderlands arrives in theaters everywhere on August 9.

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3 Comments*

  • Cam

    Oh Please, we all know what happened, Roth filmed it and the right wing studio bosses demanded it be cut so the movie could play in China and the Middle East.

  • Kangol2

    This is a fail, Hollywood.
    We won’t go backwards.

  • Kangol2

    More Babalola, please

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