The Borderlands movie is in theaters now. However, if you are the type that relies on reviews to decide which movie gets your attention, there’s a huge chance that you may never see this video game’s live-action adaptation. The reviews are so bad that it would be hard to stay optimistic.
Most Borderlands reviews on major review aggregation sites have been overwhelmingly negative. At the time of writing, Borderlands has received hundreds of reviews on both Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, most of which are not nice.
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The numbers from the opening weekend are in and it has become apparent how much of a disaster the movie had been. According to a report by Variety, the movie debuted at fourth place in the North American box office with just $8.8 million.
Deadpool & Wolverine which is in its third week at the box office still performed better by grossing $54.2 million. Variety’s report showed that Borderlands’ international performance was worse than its domestic performance with earnings of $7.7 million, bringing its total weekend gross to $16.5 million. Variety describes it as embarrassing.
At this rate, it will take something special to recoup the movie’s $145 million production budget—including marketing and distribution. Variety noted that 60% of that cost was covered by international presales but said the opening weekend is still “a disastrous result for the film, and one that was far behind already low pre-release expectations”.
A peek at some Borderlands reviews
Some of the Borderlands’ reviews were so critical that you would bury your head in your palms. Coming on the heels of successful video game adaptations like The Super Mario Bros. Movie, The Last of Us, and Fallout, Borderlands is a reminder that making movie adaptations of video games is still risky.
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William Mullally of The National News wrote, “Borderlands, based on the massively popular first-person shooter space western, is bad – very bad. Unfortunately, it’s not even the kind of bad you can have fun with – that would have taken someone putting their heart into it and failing.”
“This isn’t just a bad video game adaptation,” wrote TK Burton of Pajiba. “It’s a bad movie, full-stop. I don’t know that there’s a director alive who could have saved this malodourous ode to poor dialogue, pacing, and action.”
Johnny Oleksinski of the New York Post had this to say about the movie, “Unfortunately, for the time being, the star of “Tár” and “Blue Jasmine” is stuck as the lead of the worst movie of the year — a grueling, 102-minute endurance test that’s as lifeless as the video game it’s based on.”
If there is one thing that many of the reviews agree on, it is the close-to-accurate replication of the costume. However, tossing in A-list actors couldn’t save the adaptation from bad scripting and seemingly worse directing.
