‘Borderlands’: What Critics And Audiences Are Saying About Eli Roth’s Messy Video Game Adaption
Courtesy of Lionsgate.
Lionsgate’s ‘Borderlands’ hit theaters on August 9, with the review embargo being lifted the day prior. Early reactions, to say the least, were horrid.
Eli Roth’s latest film is a live-action adaptation of Gearbox Software’s extremely popular video game series, tackling the story about a group of outlaw misfits including Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Ariana Greenblatt, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Jack Black.
Initial reviews on Thursday evening saw a staggering 0% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, with a recently updated 10% from 94 reviews. The audience score is higher (though still rotten) at 50% from over 250 verified reviews.
The critic score on Metacritic holds at 27 based on 31 certified.
As if things couldn’t get worse for the film, Letterboxd holds a 2.1 rating out of 5, and seems to be going down as more people issue their reactions.
A review from Inverse by Jake Kleinman left this review regarding the adaption: “Motivations don’t really matter, the characters are paper-thin, and the plot moves at the speed of a gamer rapidly clicking their way through dialogue to get to the next level. On the other hand, it’s impossible to cast Cate Blanchett as the star in an action epic and not have it be at least a little fun to watch; and 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.”
Another negative review came from The Hollywood Reporter by David Rooney: “The big mystery is how such a noisy nothing of a movie landed the stacked cast.” He then touched on issues with the film’s production: “To be fair, the project for which Blanchett and other major names signed on possibly looked a little different given the number of screenwriting hands it passed through. The most notable of those belonged to Craig Mazin, a co-creator and co-writer of The Last of Us, who reportedly chose to remove his name from the project. The script credit ultimately went to Roth and first-timer Joe Crombie, with speculation that the latter is a pseudonym.”
Take a look at additional reactions from the web:
However, it’s not entirely negative, as Collider‘s Taylor Gates offered the film a few positives notes, including Ariana Greenblatt performance: “Borderlands is an action-adventure movie at its core, and it undoubtedly delivers on that front. The action — especially the hand-to-hand combat and more acrobatic fight choreography — is a blast. — The film suffers when it comes to pacing, too. Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to have a movie sit well under two hours — something the majority of films these days don’t seem to do — but the speed at which plotlines get resolved feels rushed instead of efficient, the breakneck pace sacrificing clarity and much-needed tension and stakes.”
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