'Borderlands' Movie Opens To 0% Rotten Tomatoes Score, Critics Put It In Contention For 'Worst Video Game Movie Of All Time'
You'd have to be a really crummy movie to be worse than some infamous video game adaptations like Silent Hill: Retribution, House of the Dead and Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, but this may be the fate of the Borderlands movie, releasing tomorrow, if early reviews are to be believed.
The review embargo for the film lifted today, and it opened to a 0 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes. That score has since lifted to 3 percent as more reviews have come in, but the people who have seen the film tend to agree it's pretty dire.
Among the eye-popping pans is Rolling Stone's review, which dubs it "an insult to gamers, movie lovers and carbon-based life forms," and The Daily Beast's, which calls it so "drearily routine and slapdash that even an A.I. would deem it too plagiaristic."
When audiences got their first look at Borderlands posters in February, most didn't have high hopes. The games were already well past their time in the cultural zeitgeist, and most felt their divisive sense of humor wouldn't translate well to the silver screen in the modern era. The castings of Kevin Hart and Jack Black didn't do much to improve their impression.
The film had a troubled development period. It was first helmed by Eli Roth when it was shot in 2021, but it went through two weeks of reshoots in 2023, helmed by Deadpool director Tim Miller. During this time, the script was altered by someone named "Joe Crombie," which may be a pseudonym for someone who didn't want their name attached to the project.
The early slew of reviews led to a cocktail of schadenfreude and morbid curiosity online about just how bad Borderlands could possibly be.
Perhaps the negative reviews are a small blessing for Borderlands, because at least compared to Morbius, people are expressing that the negative reviews make them want to see it in a gawk-at-a-trainwreck sort of way. We're still unconvinced anyone saw Morbius despite all the memes.
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Revic
On the one hand, if people go into a movie expecting it to be terrible, it's pretty much a guarantee they're going to come out saying it was terrible, even if they might have given it a fairer shake going in blind. But on the other… yeah, this looked pretty dire from the first leak.
DavidM
yeah Idk how this was a surprise to anybody…
Jon the Wizard
Pardon me for dragging up old memes related to Borderlands 3, but it appears we've found the Big Succ.
Yes that was part of a quest in BG3. Yes it was cringeworthy then and time has not helped it.
Rynjin
Borderlands is one of the most bizarre franchises around because I genuinely think with every successive game the gameplay gets better but it also loses the charm that made the first game work. It's like there's an inverse relation between how funny the game is and how fun it is.
OldGrayMare
1 is pretty scrappy but it does have some good atmosphere. 2's fun, the story's pretty good, the humour is pretty lame in a lot of places but nowhere near as bad as people make it out to be now. 3 is fun, the story is a mess, and the humour is like being stuck in a conversation with a man who only learned how to speak through 9gag. Did not care for the Pre-Sequel because of the gameplay gimmicks.
Spyfox
Unironically I enjoyed Pre-sequal and its story.
Its not BL2 fun or even 3 but I wouldn't say it was unfun
The low gravity gimmick, while it gets a-bit tiring by the end, is a fun ride, characters all have unique reactions to situations (which BL3 was lacking) which made replaying the game more interesting, and you get more Jack, not "handsome" because he isn't that character yet in 2. (even though Pre-sequal shows you all the signs that Jack was always a Villain or at the very least a massive sociopath in the making who was going to be a dangerous person no matter what, but no lets blame Lilith for just PUNCHING someone in the face. I'm honestly not surprised the story devolved into a mess when THAT was what people were bitching about at the end of the day).
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Pikazilla
Should have been done by Illumination, lol.
gillnavisingh
Guarantee this movie is gonna sell a Bordillion tickets
Commodore V
Here's the real question: Is it poorly rated because its not good at replicating Borderland's story and jokes, or is it because its too good at doing so?
Chris the Lovable Jerk
It's an odd time to release a Borderlands movie, back in 2010-2013 it was everywhere and generally well-liked, but over the years the property's popularity decreased mainly due to the increasing infamy of Gearbox's failures like Aliens Colonial Marines and Randy Pitchford's antics. By the time 3 came out no one seemed to care and those who spoke of it were only shit talking it.
Say what you will about Mortal Kombat 95 and Street Fighter 94, but at least they were striking while the iron was hot.
Also there's weird casting choices, both Cate Blanchette and Jamie Lee Curtis are 30 years older than the characters they're playing and many have said Kevin Hart is totally miscast.
Aziz gANTENG
if that's the case, then it's proof that everything regarding Borderlands is aged so poorly that doing an even more faithful adaptation will not help it either way. if it isn't the case, then it's just another piece added to the pile of bad video game adaptation.
either way i don't like Borderlands since the very beginning, it sucks.
Sheeps44
borderlands to me is the definition of unevolved, back then in 2011 this kind of humor worked
now? we grew up, evolution has passed them by.
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Captain L
But is it Mortal Kombat: Annihilation good, or Uwe Boll bad?
Panuru
THIS gets released, but Coyote vs Acme gets thrown in the trash as a tax writeoff.
2L84ME
We.
Got.
ROBBED.
Chris the Lovable Jerk
This seems to be similar to the Snyder Cut situation, with Eli Roth's original cut was panned by test audiences and because he was too busy making that Thanksgiving slasher movie to do the reshoots so he was replaced by Tim Miller (a real mixed bag as he gave us the first Deadpool and produced the Sonic movies but is also responsible for the abominable Terminator Dark Fate) and the original writer (the dude who wrote the Chernobyl mini series and bizarrely enough also was a writer on Scary Movie 3 and 4 and the crappy Hangover sequels) had his name removed from the project and his replacement has literally no other credits to his name aside from this which led to many to believe it was an Alan Smithee-esque pseudonym.
The behind the scenes leaks and stories have got to be a sight to behold.