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For a long time, it was rare for a live-action video game film or TV adaptation to hit with the public, but that’s been changing in recent years thanks to critical and/or commercial successes like Sonic the Hedgehog, Five Nights at Freddy’s, The Last of Us and Twisted Metal. 2023 was certainly one of the best years for video game movies and TV shows ever, but if you were hoping for the 2024 movie Borderlands to help keep this streak going, you’ll be sorely disappointed. The R-rated adaptation of the popular video game series from Gearbox Software and 2K is being with a wave of negative critical reception ahead of its wide release, which includes someone calling the movie a “visually repulsive dud.”
That first comment comes from @AdriCaporusso, who also called Borderlands a “disaster” and said that there’s absolutely no positive element to enjoy in the movie:
BORDERLANDS is a disaster. Filled with every cliché you can ponder, this film swaps the mayhem and imagination of the games for a lifeless, unfunny, and visually repulsive dud with annoying characters and a cast with not one ounce of chemistry.
@SmatthewAF echoed those sentiments, saying that he went in hoping for the best, but was profoundly disappointed by the entirety of Borderlands:
Oh hey I can tell you I’ve seen #BorderlandsMovie now and that it’s really bad. I really wanted to like it, but an uninspired plot + several phoned in performances + being stuck in a weird place where it looks both expensive and cheap a the same time make it a huge misfire.
@GreatBriTom wrote the below scathing words about Borderlands, and the last sentence refers to an attached gif showing a stone-faced Homelander from The Boys watching a movie (Dawn of the Seven) inside of a packed theater, clearly unimpressed with it:
Can *finally* give my thoughts on the Borderlands movie, a film I’ve been dying to tell everyone how cancerously unfunny it is. An absolute dull and trite experience that makes gaming movies from the 2000s look like masterpieces. This was my face the whole time in the theater:
@edgorteg felt that Borderlands is just a “mess” across the board and certainly won’t go down in film history as one of those ‘it’s so bad, it’s good’ watches:
Borderlands feels like what an out of touch executive thinks the “cool kids” find appealing. There is not a single earnest character moment here, just obnoxious quips that feel dated as soon as they leave the actors’ mouths. It’s not even so bad it’s good, just a complete mess.
Finally, @LuminousDagger called Borderlands one of the “worst films” they’ve watched this year and a “disgrace” to one of their favorite video game franchises. As they explained:
Eli Roth sucks out all the personality and visual style like a vampire at night. He takes the name of Borderlands and the names of its characters and decides to create his own lore, separate from what we all know and love from the games. With such a poor script, Cate Blanchett and Ariana Greenblatt truly do try their best, but an actor can only do so much when their director simply shows that he doesn’t care through his writing and direction.
These are just some of the Borderlands reactions that are online now, but it’s looking pretty clear that this movie won’t be a critical darling. Although the movie originally filmed in summer 2021 with Eli Roth sitting in the director’s chair, by January 2023 Tim Miller came aboard to helm two weeks of reshoots in Roth’s place. Cate Blanchett and Arianna Greenblatt, who play Lilith and Tiny Tina, respectively, are joined in the Borderlands cast by Kevin Hart as Roland, Jack Black as Claptrap, Edgar Ramírez as Atlas, Florian Munteanu as Krieg, Gina Gershon as Mad Moxxi and Jamie Lee Curtis as Dr. Patricia Tennis, among others.
You can judge Borderlands for yourself once it opens in theaters this Friday, August 9. As always, continue checking back with CinemaBlend on all the biggest film and TV news items.