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.

Eli Roth's adaptation of the wildly popular series of video games did initially make its way onto the review aggregator with a debut of 0%, although as of this writing, that's risen ... slightly. No matter way you slice it, it's a terrible first outing for the movie — a movie which, it should be noted, stars two Oscar-winners (Cate Blanchett and Jamie Lee Curtis) alongside Kevin Hart, Ariana Greenblatt, Edgar Ramírez, Gina Gershon, and a voice role from Jack Black.

Critics were pretty unequivocal in their assessment of "Borderlands" — it's a bad movie. (With a critical consensus that reads "Glitching out in every department, 'Borderlands' is balderdash," that shouldn't come as a surprise.) "It's not a movie for critics, as the saying goes," David Fear wrote for Rolling Stone. "Nor is it suitable for consumption by most gamers, film lovers, or 99 percent of carbon-based life forms." William Bibbiani of TheWrap agreed, saying, "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." Looper's own Cynthia Vinney joined the chorus of (rightful) detractors as well: "The movie feels like a string of sequences in a video game, but since you're not playing, it feels tedious instead of inspired, dull instead of gripping."

To say critics didn't mince words about "Borderlands" would be a severe understatement; as Matt Donato at IGN Movies put it, "'Borderlands' is a catastrophic disappointment that plays like hacked-to-pieces studio slop, betraying everything fans adore about Gearbox Software's franchise in derivative, regrettable fashion. Over at The Daily Beast, Nick Schager was even more pointed: "['Borderlands' is] so drearily routine and slapdash that even an A.I. would deem it too plagiaristic."

Barry Hertz at Globe and Mail had a veritable laundry list of complaints, writing, "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." Over at the Financial Times, Danny Leigh tempered his criticism with the most hesitant of compliments directed at Cate Blanchett: "Has [Eli] 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." Vicky Jessop for the London Evening Standard was much more direct, writing, "Is 'Borderlands' the worst film of the year? It's definitely in contention — so laughably bad, in fact, that it feels like being catapulted back to a time when video game adaptations were a byword for mediocrity."

Over at IndieWire, Alison Foreman made a solid argument as to why most video game adaptations might just be a bad idea, writing, "The definitive worst film of [Eli] Roth's career and another strike against AAA games brought to the big screen." Two other critics brought Marvel movies into the conversation; Dan Jolin of Empire Magazine quipped, "'Borderlands' so wants to be 'Guardians Of The Galaxy' ... But it doesn't come close." Jake Kleinman at Inverse echoed that sentiment: "In an age of CGI slop, 'Borderlands' gets points for crafting a vibrant post-apocalypse setting. It's just a shame it all adds up to 'Guardians of the Galaxy' with worse jokes." Variety's Peter Debruge compared it to a much more recent Marvel film, saying, "When done right, such biting self-parody can serve to excuse tired storytelling. Alas, 'Borderlands' arrives so close on the heels of 'Deadpool & Wolverine' that it feels like a belly flop to that film's cannonball." 

Those familiar with the video game, like Collider critic Taylor Gates, made arguments based on the fact that the film felt hollow in comparison. "It's just disappointing that the source material has so much more to offer in terms of its layered characters and complicated themes of trauma and survival that the film seems either uninterested in or incapable of tapping into," she wrote. 

If nothing else, "Borderlands" brought peace and unity to critics from all over the world and from a dizzying array of publications, all of whom soundly declared that they really, really don't like this movie. "There are snatches of crude enjoyment to be had, if you venture in with basement-level expectations," Tim Robey of the Daily Telegraph wrote, while Clarisse Loughrey at the Independent UK said, "It's dragged us back to a time when studios used to make these with all the grace and acuity of a drunk person attempting to place a 3am chicken nugget order."

David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter honed in on the thinly-sketched characters — "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" — while Tim Grierson of Screen International simply felt badly for star Cate Blanchett: "In her chameleonic career, Cate Blanchett has donned many guises — but never before has she had the chance to be a gun-toting, ass-kicking action star. Sadly, 'Borderlands' is an unworthy vehicle for her swaggering performance." This much is clear: "Borderlands" is a critical flop. As it heads into opening weekend, we'll see if it adds commercial flop to its dubious list of accomplishments.

"Borderlands" opens in wide release on August 9.