Lionsgate’s Borderlands movie that adapts the popular video game franchise is now out in theaters.
However, judging by the Rotten Tomatoes Score from both the fans and critics, the movie may have a hard time finding an audience.
Update: Some fans are offering the flick is worse than Madame Web. The CEO, Strauss Zelnick, of the video game company, Take-Two Interactive, responded to the terrible reviews ahead of a company earnings report:
“Let’s give the film a chance. A lot of people worked really hard on it. The underlying intellectual property is phenomenal, the cast is amazing, I think the look and feel is really terrific. So let’s see what audiences have to say. But to answer your question, no, the performance of the film wouldn’t have a financial impact on us or on the franchise one way or another.”
Sunday update: The box office underperforms and brings in only $8.8 million, and it is learned the CinemaScore is only a “D+.”
The Borderlands Rotten Tomatoes Score is at only 8% from critics, with the first 40 reviews.
The Audience Score comes in at 67%, which isn’t that good for a franchise that has sold somewhere around 100 million copies and brought in north of a billion dollars.
Friday update: Rotten Tomatoes Score has dropped to 6%; Audience Score dropped to 50%.
Presently, there are only four positive reviews from critics including YouTuber Grace Randolph who says, “I’ve never played the games, but I got a kick out of Blanchett starring in a movie like this – and doing a great job! I do wish the script had been adjusted a bit better to accommodate her age. Blanchett fans will enjoy this, not sure about anyone else.”
The Borderlands budget is also said to be around $120 million or more. Box office opening estimates are only around $10 million.
The reactions fit with the backlash to the movie. The trailers and promos have received a massive amount of dislikes from fans on YouTube. Just two weeks ago saw the final trailer released with fans giving it 20k dislikes to 7k likes. The first trailer released five months ago has 85k dislikes on the official Lionsgate YouTube channel, and another 29K dislikes on the official Borderlands movie YouTube channel.
Check out reactions below.
Borderlands is directed by Eli Roth and stars Cate Blanchett, Kevin hart, Jack Black, Ariana Greenblatt, Florian Munteanu, and Jamie Lee Curtis.
What do the negative reviews say?
Here is a selection from the top-rated critics:
Like the original first-person shooter game, “Borderlands” is set on a junkyard planet named Pandora that was once a home base for an advanced alien species, but has since been overrun by violent marauders and women with formidable push-up bras. – NY Times
Blanchett, outfitted in sparkly gear and a swoop of bright red hair, deserves credit for not shrinking from a task so far beneath her. – Guardian
This film, instead, is lazy bricolage, cobbled together by so-called creatives who appear not to care and by some who should clearly know better. – Times UK
“Borderlands” trudges through its treasure hunt scenario and endless ripoffs of better franchises from “Lethal Weapon” to “Star Wars.” It makes you want to go home and blow up your Playstation. – San Francisco Chronicle
It’s not a movie for critics, as the saying goes. Nor is it suitable for consumption by most gamers, film lovers, or 99 percent of carbon-based life forms. – Rolling Stone
The biggest problem with Eli Roth’s ‘Borderlands’ isn’t that it’s bad, it’s that it’s not interesting enough to be bad. It’s mass-produced pabulum. -TheWrap
So drearily routine and slapdash that even an A.I. would deem it too plagiaristic. – The Daily Beast
Tonally messy, narratively janky and slathered with pasted-over narration that reeks of creative indecision, the film is an embarrassing affair for even the most hardcore of gamers. – Globe and Mail
Has Roth botched an attempt to make a multiplex hit from an edgy nugget of intellectual property? Almost certainly yes. But there are faint, stubborn signs of something more interesting: Blanchett’s charisma unkillable, an occasional lairy oomph. – Financial Times
Since the characters remain one-dimensional — not much more than cartoonish gamer avatars — we’re never terribly invested in their survival, or their quest to get to the vault first. – THR
Watch the trailer:
