The live-action Borderlands movie adaptation arrived in cinemas over the weekend to a remarkably low hum. Critics slammed the movie while audience-goers didn’t exactly show up in droves to watch director Eli Roth’s action romp based on the popular video games. Instead, it tanked with critics and fans and seems to be a catastrophic box office dud.
The live-action Borderlands movie stars Cate Blanchett as Lilith, Kevin Hart as Roland, Jack Black as Claptrap, Jamie Lee Curtis as Tannis and Ariana Greenblatt as Tiny Tina. It’s a rock-solid cast by all means, though the reception speaks a different story. Over on the review aggregate website RottenTomatoes, the movie currently sits at a very low 9%. On IMDB, it has so far averaged at 4.4/10.
According to Variety, the Borderlands movie managed to only rake in $8.8 million worldwide during its opening weekend at the box office. This is scorched against its hefty $110 million budget, which doesn’t account for marketing and promotional material expenses on top of that. Audiences reported attending nearly empty screenings of the movie all weekend, which isn’t a good look for what should’ve brought in blockbuster numbers.
Criticism was aimed at the movie’s poor acting (many cited Jack Black’s voice performance as Claptrap to be especially annoying, while Cate Blanchett and Jamie Lee Curtis seemed like they didn’t want to be there). The action scenes were also criticised for being poorly edited and hard to follow, stung by its PG-13 rating which pales in comparison to the video game source material’s notably violent gameplay.
Most of all, criticism was thrown at the movie’s boring plot, terrible dialogue and characters that tried their best to emulate Guardians of the Galaxy but failed.
Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford previously stated that he hopes the Borderlands movie will kick off a cinematic universe. Something tells us that isn’t happening anymore.
