Borderlands Rotten Tomatoes Reviews Are Worse Than We Could Have Imagined
The first reactions to the "Borderlands" movie are . . . well, there's really no other way to put this. They're terrible, and its Rotten Tomatoes rating is unbelievably bleak.
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00:00The first reactions to the Borderlands movie are… well, there's really no other way to
00:05put this.
00:06They're terrible, and this Rotten Tomatoes rating is unbelievably bleak.
00:09Eli Ross' adaptation of the wildly popular series of video games initially made its way
00:14onto the review aggregator with a debut of 0 percent, although as of the making of this
00:20video, that's risen ever so slightly to 3 percent.
00:24I want people to go, that is the best time I've had in a movie theater in years."
00:27Sorry, Eli, but critics were pretty unequivocal in their assessment of Borderlands.
00:32It's a bad movie.
00:34David Thea wrote for Rolling Stone,
00:35"...it's not a movie for critics, as the saying goes, nor is it suitable for consumption by
00:40most gamers, film lovers, or 99 percent of carbon-based lifeforms."
00:45William Bibbiani of The Wrap agreed, saying,
00:48"...the biggest problem with Eli Ross' Borderlands isn't that it's bad, it's that it's not interesting
00:53enough to be bad.
00:54It's mass-produced pabulum."
00:56Looper's own Cynthia Vinny joined the chorus of detractors, writing,
01:00"...the movie feels like a string of sequences in a video game, but since you're not playing,
01:05it feels tedious instead of inspired, dull instead of gripping."
01:09To say critics didn't mince words about Borderlands would be a severe understatement.
01:14As Matt Donato at IGN Movies put it,
01:17"...Borderlands is a catastrophic disappointment that plays like Hacksaw Piece's studio slop,
01:22portraying everything fans adore about Gearbox Software's franchise in derivative, regrettable
01:28fashion."
01:29Over at The Daily Beast, Nick Shager was even more pointed, writing,
01:32"...Borderlands is so drearily routine and slapdash that even an AI would deem it too
01:37plagiaristic."
01:39Barry Hertz at Globe and Mail had a veritable laundry list of complaints, writing,
01:43"...tonally messy, narratively janky, and slathered with pasted-over narration that
01:48reeks of creative indecision.
01:50The film is an embarrassing affair for even the most hardcore of gamers."
01:54Vicky Jessop for The London Evening Standard was much more direct, writing,
01:59"...is Borderlands the worst film of the year?
02:01It's definitely in contention, so laughably bad in fact that it feels like being catapulted
02:06back to a time when video game adaptations were a byword for mediocrity."
02:10Two other critics brought Marvel movies into the conversation.
02:14Dan Jolin of Empire magazine quipped,
02:16"...Borderlands so wants to be Guardians of the Galaxy, but it doesn't come close."
02:21Jake Kleinman at Inverse echoed that sentiment, writing,
02:24"...in an age of CGI slop, Borderlands gets points for crafting a vibrant post-apocalypse
02:29setting.
02:30It's just a shame it all adds up to Guardians of the Galaxy with the worst jokes."
02:34"...It's pee.
02:35It's pee.
02:36Why do you think it's called piss wash?"
02:37Variety's Peter Debruge compared it to a much more recent Marvel film, saying,
02:42When done right, such biting self-parody can serve to excuse tired storytelling.
02:47Alas, Borderlands arrives so close on the heels of Deadpool and Wolverine that it feels
02:52like a belly flop to that film's cannonball.
02:55Those familiar with a video game like Collider critic Taylor Gates say that the film felt
02:59hollow in comparison.
03:01Gates wrote,
03:02"...it's just disappointing that the source material has so much more to offer in terms
03:06of its layered characters and complicated themes of trauma and survival.
03:11That the film seems either uninterested in or incapable of tapping into."
03:15If nothing else, Borderlands brought peace and unity to critics from all over the world
03:20and from a dizzying array of publications, all of whom soundly declared that they really,
03:26really don't like this movie.
03:27"...God, I hate this plan."
03:29Many critics simply felt sorry for Oscar winner Cate Blanchett.
03:32Like Tim Grierson of Screen International, who wrote,
03:35"...in her chameleonic career, Cate Blanchett has donned many geysers, but never before
03:40has she had the chance to be a gun-toting, ass-kicking action star."
03:43Sadly, Borderlands is an unworthy vehicle for her swaggering performance.
03:48"...How are we gonna get through this?"