It seemed like we had left behind the terrible “curse” of terrible video game adaptations to film and series with works of the caliber of ‘Fallout’, ‘The Last of Us’ or ‘Super Mario Bros.: The Movie’. But suddenly Eli Roth’s ‘Borderlands’ arrived like an elephant in a china shop and took us back to square one with its absolutely abysmal 0% critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes with which it debuted. What happened? Is it really as bad a movie as they say?
‘Borderlands’ and the reasons behind its resounding critical failure
Last Thursday, August 8, reviews for the film ‘Borderlands’ began to be published around the world after the corresponding embargo ended. Many were quick to point out the disaster on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, where the film debuted with a bleak 0% of criticismAt the time of writing this news, this rating has risen to 6%, but it is still a regrettable score.
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‘Borderlands’ (2024)
Cultural criticism is often disparate and there is rarely such an evident consensus among so many media from different countries and languages: only when one is faced with a true masterpiece of the seventh art or when one is actually faced with a really bad film. And it seems that we are facing the second case.
The vast majority of reviews highlight two main negative points: how far the plot and the representation of the characters and their relationships deviate from the original source and the poor chemistry between the actors on screen, giving rise to many indirectly uncomfortable situations or ones that do not occur naturally. There is also talk of an excessive desire to resemble James Gunn’s ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ (2014), sacrificing its own identity in the process.
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‘Borderlands’ (2024)
Some of the reviews from various media outlets read as follows:
- Collider: “It’s very disappointing that the source material has so much to offer in terms of complex characters and themes like trauma and survival and the film is unable or uninterested in addressing them.”
- Empire Magazine: “’Borderlands’ is obsessed with being ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ but it doesn’t even come close.”
- Hollywood Reporter: “Because the characters are as flat as cartoon avatars in video games, we never really care about their survival or their quest for the Chamber.”
- Variety: “When done right, the high level of self-parody can serve as an excuse for mediocre storytelling. But ‘Borderlands’ comes so close to ‘Deadpool and Wolverine’ that the comparative grievance is obvious.”
Others blame Eli Roth’s script directly, calling it “unwatchable.” In this regard, it should be noted that the film has had several phases of development, and that at one point its main screenwriter was Craig Mazin, one of those most responsible for the award-winning ‘The Last of Us’ and Max’s ‘Chernobyl’. But for some reason that has not been disclosed, Mazin decided to abandon the project and go so far as to have his name removed from it in June 2023, perhaps aware that a disaster was looming.
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‘Borderlands’ (2024)
What is ‘Borderlands’ about?
‘Borderlands’ is a 2024 action-comedy science fiction film directed by Eli Roth. The script is written by Joe Crombie and Roth. It is a loose adaptation of the video game series of the same name by Gearbox Software. It stars Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Edgar Ramírez, Florian Munteanu, Ariana Greenblatt, Gina Gerhon and Jamie Lee Curtis.
The plot of the film tells the story of corporate magnate Atlas (Ramirez) who contacts bandit Lilith (Blanchett) to offer her a lucrative job: to find his daughter Tina (Greenblatt) on the planet Pandora. Lilith accepts the mission and once there she meets mercenary Roland (Hart), psychopath Krieg (Munteanu) and robot Claptrap (Black).
Pandora is an inhospitable planet full of hostile wildlife and all kinds of bandits and criminals, where no one is who they say they are. The members of this peculiar group will have to learn to trust each other if they want to get out alive from the mess they have gotten themselves into.
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Official poster for ‘Borderlands’ (2024)
As we mentioned, although it is an adaptation of the first two video games in the Borderlands saga by Gearbox Software, there are so many elements that do not fit together that we are talking about a very loose adaptation, which can be a problem for fans of the games who expect to see a film that is relatively faithful to the original source.
