Summary
- Borderlands debuts on Rotten Tomatoes to a score of 0% with 23 reviews.
- Critics take issue with just about every aspect of the film, including its uninteresting characters and action, and its limiting PG-13 rating.
- While Cate Blanchett’s lead performance is singled out as a possible highlight, Borderlands is otherwise a throwback to the “video game movie curse” of the early 2000s with few redeeming qualities.
Borderlands‘ Rotten Tomatoes score has arrived, and it’s accomplished a rare, undesirable feat. Based on the hit video game franchise, the Eli Roth film follows a ragtag crew as they attempt to rescue a girl who just may hold the key to a great power. Cate Blanchett leads the Borderlands cast as Lileth, with Kevin Hart, Jamie Lee Curtis, Ariana Greenblatt, Florian Munteanu, and Jack Black also starring. Ahead of the film’s release this Friday, August 9, the review embargo has now lifted.
With critics sharing their thoughts online, Rotten Tomatoes reveals that Borderlands has now debuted with a dismal 0% score with 23 reviews.
While this score could fluctuate as more reviews are added, the adaptation is evidently off to a very disappointing start. The audience score isn’t in yet, but one should appear with the film’s wide theatrical release this weekend.
Related
Where To Watch Borderlands: Showtimes & Streaming Status
The Borderlands video games have finally become a movie, and there are options for where to watch the film in theaters or at home on streaming.
Why Borderlands’ Rotten Tomatoes Score Is So Negative
What Critics Are Saying About The New Eli Roth Movie
While video game adaptations have seen more success in recent years with the likes of The Last of Us and The Super Mario Bros. Movie, among others, Borderlands, at least judging from this early response, seems to be a throwback to an era when studios just couldn’t get them right. Despite the talent of the actors involved in the project, Borderlands reviews criticize the movie for being little more than a hodge-podge of various unexciting action scenes. In his review for Discussing Film, Andrew J. Salazar laments the film as a perfect example of the “video game movie curse.”
Though Screen Rant‘s own Borderlands review by Tatiana Hullender is more lukewarm on the film, praising Blanchett’s lead performance and the rest of the cast, the opinions from other critics are generally far more negative. Clarisse Loughrey writes in her damning review for The Independent that the film suffers from “profoundly unlikeable characters” and that the movie’s “sacrilegious treatment of place and character will likely send its fans into a white-hot rage.” Cynthia Vinney’s review for Looper calls the adaptation “boring” and criticizes its limiting PG-13 rating.
In her review for Collider, Taylor Gates takes issue with the film’s large cast being “too cramped” for any individual characters to make much of an impact. Writing for Next Best Picture, Giovanni Lago makes the claim that Borderlands “fails at every level of filmmaking.” It remains to be seen how Borderlands will go over with audiences, but it’s certainly looking like viewers could be in for disappointment.
Source: Rotten Tomatoes
Borderlands
Based on the video game franchise, Borderlands is a sci-fi action-comedy film that follows Cate Blanchett as Lilith, a treasure hunter who returns to her home planet, Pandora, to find a tycoon’s missing daughter. Together with a group of unlikely allies, such as a soldier, a teenaged demolitions expert, a wise-cracking robot, and an eccentric scientist, the group will work together to save the girl – all while learning to deal with each other’s unyielding quirks.
- Director
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Eli Roth
- Release Date
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August 9, 2024
- Studio(s)
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Arad Productions
, Picturestart - Distributor(s)
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Lionsgate
- Writers
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Eli Roth
, Joe Crombie - Runtime
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102 Minutes
