Everybody hates the Borderlands movie

Reviews for the Borderlands film are in and they're certainly not pretty

Lionsgate

The Borderlands film is out tomorrow, with a star-studded cast consisting of Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jack Black, and more. As is usually the case ahead of film releases, critics have started releasing their reviews for the film, and to the shock of perhaps nobody – especially following the terrible early impressions of the movie – it’s been slammed by just about everyone. 

Among the dozen or so reviews from professional critics published at the time of writing, we’ve yet to find one even approaching faint praise for the video game adaptation. Critics across the board have called it sloppy, boring, unfunny, and forgettable, with some going so far as to call it the worst film of the year. 

Variety’s review of the film is probably the least overtly negative, although it’s not exactly positive either. “For all practical purposes,” Variety reviewer Peter Debruge writes, “this could be a generic ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ knockoff where the cantankerous ensemble has guns instead of superpowers.” 

Dan Jolin over at Empire wasn’t much more fond of the film, saying that the “wisecracks are stale, the reaches for emotional resonance feel stretched, and the group dynamic is off balance.” Jolin also calls the film “sloppily assembled,” and similarly draws attention to the obvious inspirations of Guardians of the Galaxy, naming it a “botched Guardians wannabe.” 

Clarisse Loughrey of The Independent didn’t hold back in their review, calling it a “total disaster” and “incomprehensible to the casual viewer.” Radio Times’ Dave Golder was similarly harsh, calling it “lifeless” and suggesting potential viewers “watch a snow globe in a tumble dryer for 90 minutes” instead. 

We could go on, but the gist of it is that the film is terrible. At the time of writing, the film holds a score of 33/100 on review score aggregator Metacritic, and we can’t imagine that’s going to go up as more reviews are published. 

So what happened? We were supposed to be in a golden age of video game adaptations, with IPs like The Last of Us, Super Mario Bros., and Sonic the Hedgehog all making, at the very least, serviceable transitions into the realm of film and TV.

“At last,” the people cried, “The video game curse is broken!” But the video game curse was never real, there will always be both good films and bad, and Borderlands seems to have fallen into the latter. 

Perhaps it was the near decade of production woes, the revolving door of writers, or the chaotic COVID filming schedule that led to the film’s downfall. Or maybe some games just shouldn’t be adapted to film. Who can say? Either way, it’s probably not the start of the Borderlands cinematic universe Randy Pitchford dreams of.