The obvious explanation for Mordecai and Brick being left out of the “Borderlands” movie is to make room for characters from the game sequels. Arianna Greenblatt’s Tiny Tina was a non-playable character in the games, but her love of explosives overlaps with Brick’s, and having both characters in the movie might have felt kind of redundant.
For similar reasons, having two berserker-type characters might have been a bit too much, and Roth’s “Borderlands” already features Krieg, a playable character introduced in the second game. Played by Florian Munteanu in the film, Krieg is a Psycho — one of the wild bandits that populate Pandora. A generic Pyscho is the unofficial mascot of the “Borderlands” games, featured on the cover of every main game in the series, so for brand recognition purposes, it makes sense to include Krieg on the team.
Mordecai’s absence is a little harder to puzzle out. Why would anyone choose not to include a guy with a killer pet bird in their movie? But aside from the aforementioned issue of making room for characters from the “Borderlands” game sequels, Lionsgate may also have wanted to save some major characters for a potential movie sequel. That’s exactly what the “Sonic the Hedgehog” movie did, revealing Sonic’s good friend Tails in a mid-credits scene and waiting until “Sonic the Hedgehog 2” to introduce Knuckles the Echidna.
