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Borderlands characters looking down the well.
Screenshot via Lionsgate
Category:
Borderlands

‘Visually repulsive dud’: The Borderlands movie is being slaughtered by early reviews

Who would've thought?
Image of Mateusz Miter
Mateusz Miter
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Published: Aug 8, 2024 09:46 am

The Borderlands movie is right around the corner, with its widespread release scheduled for tomorrow, Aug. 9. The initial reviews are in, and they are about as bad as they could get.

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“Is it too soon to call Borderlands the worst movie of ’24?” Peter Howell, movie critic at the Toronto Star, asked on X, in what is just one of the many stinging reviews of the flick. “This gobbler mixes inept directing, terrible writing, indifferent acting and gawdawful CGI into such stupefying boredom, it feels nothing could top it for badness,” he added.

Borderlands characters riding a car.
Riding to hell, but back? Doesn’t look like it. Screenshot via Lionsgate

“BORDERLANDS is a disaster. Filled with every cliché you can ponder, this film swaps the mayhem and imagination of the games for a lifeless, unfunny, and visually repulsive dud with annoying characters and a cast with not one ounce of chemistry,” Bitesize Break’s Adriano Caporusso added on X.

And if these reviews aren’t enough, let’s take a broader look. On Aug. 8, Borderlands landed on Rotten Tomatoes with a zero percent Tomatometer based on 14 critic opinions at the time of writing.

The video game industry has long been cursed with horrible motion picture adaptations of its original stories. Halo, Max Payne, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time or Mortal Kombat: Annihilation are just a few examples of this. Recently, there have been stellar exceptions, though, like The Last of Us and Fallout, which were highly rated by critics and general audiences alike. It seems like the Borderlands movie will join the former crowd—a shame, given its phenomenal star power.

The cast includes Cate Blanchett (Lililth), Kevin Hart (Roland), Jack Black (voice of Claptrap), Jamie Lee Curtis (Patricia Tannis) and Ariana Greenblatt (Tiny Tina), boasting a reported budget between $110 and $120 million dollars, according to Deadline.

Did the early reviews get it right? We will know soon enough, with Borderlands set to premiere on Friday, Aug. 9. And if it is as bad as they suggested, fans will be able to commiserate over a new game in the series that might be announced soon.

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Author
Image of Mateusz Miter
Mateusz Miter
Freelance Writer at Dot Esports. Mateusz previously worked for numerous outlets and gaming-adjacent companies, including ESL. League of Legends or CS:GO? He loves them both. In fact, he wonders which game he loves more every day. He wanted to go pro years ago, but somewhere along the way decided journalism was the more sensible option—and he was right.
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