This post was published on August 8th and republished on August 10th.

I’m not sure I know anyone, Borderlands fan or not, who believed the movie adaptation of the game would be good based on the casting and trailers. Now, as reviews start pouring in ahead of tomorrow’s release, those fears have been confirmed. And then some.

As I write this, the Borderlands movie has a solid 0% on Rotten Tomatoes. No positive reviews (Update: A single positive review has been received, bringing the score to 3%, and the reviews that have been received are not only negative, but brutallyHere is a selection:

• Film discussion: “Fans deserve much better than what director Eli Roth is attempting with Borderlands. This is the curse of a video game movie at its worst.”
• Men’s Journal: “If Borderlands doesn’t stop studio bosses from salivating at the sight of every single IP that lands on their desks, nothing will.”
• The next best picture: “It’s impressive how Roth can mimic the poor quality of the video game adaptations of the 2000s and yet forget any discernible sense of fun or style that made even those terrible films stand out.”
• IGN: “Borderlands is a miserable waste of a beloved franchise, draining the life force of a crazed band of murderous misfits’ first adventure together.”

It’s true that there aren’t many reviews yet, and the score may rise, but everything I’ve seen, aside from a few video game industry influencers attending premieres (or literally being extras in the film), has been overwhelmingly negative, and I’d be surprised if it ended up with more than a handful of positive reviews, if any.

0% on Rotten Tomatoes is, of course, the lowest you can get. If we look at the worst rated video game movies of all time, that list would now read (updated list with the 4%):

• Alone in the Dark (2005) – 1%
• Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (2009) – 3%
• The House of the Dead (2003) – 3%
• Borderlands (2024) – 3%
• In the Name of the King (2007) – 4%
• Bloodrayne (2005) – 4%
• Mortal Kombat Annihilation – 4%
• Silent Hill Revelation (2012) – 8%
• Hitman Agent: 47 (2015) – 8%
• Post (2007) – 9%

I’ve included the year here so you can see that most of these extremely bad movies come from a decade when it was almost impossible to make a good video game adaptation, and half the time it was only directors like Uwe Boll who tried. Lately we’ve seen very solid live-action video game adaptations in both cinema (Sonic) and television (The Last of Us, Fallout), and Borderlands seems like a 10-15 year step back.

I Do expect it to rise above zero percent. There are so many critics on Rotten Tomatoes of questionable quality and taste that probably someone will like it and elevate it above some of these others (I’m one of those critics, so no judgement), but that hasn’t happened at the time of this writing.

Who saw this coming? Everyone. Everyone did. And here we are.

Update (8/10): We now have 92 reviews and Borderlands has gone from 0% to 3% and is now sitting at around 10%, putting it much higher on the “worst video game adaptations of all time” list, which would now look like

• Alone in the Dark (2005) – 1%
• Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (2009) – 3%
• The House of the Dead (2003) – 3%
• In the Name of the King (2007) – 4%
• Bloodrayne (2005) – 4%
• Mortal Kombat Annihilation – 4%
• Silent Hill Revelation (2012) – 8%
• Hitman Agent: 47 (2015) – 8%
• Post (2007) – 9%
• Borderlands (2024) – 10%

Of course, you can’t say that 10% is good. However, I agree that it doesn’t deserve quite as bad as that terrible decade of Uwe Boll movies and a few other very bad ones. So no, this is definitely not on par with Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li.

I’ve actually seen the film myself now and 10% is something I can support. My own negative review is now on Rotten Tomatoes and here’s an excerpt:

“This is neither a good Borderlands movie nor a good movie, period. It feels like Gearbox and Eli Roth tried to walk the tightrope here by making a mainstream PG-13 action movie but vaguely alluding to the games to try to get that audience to come along, too.

But the end result is that you throw the Borderlands games against the wall, watch them break, and glue a handful of somewhat recognizable pieces back together.”

I said in the article that the casting of Kevin Hart and Cate Blanchett is, as expected, a major problem. Hart mostly acts like a barely toned down version of his usual self and is nothing like Roland. Blanchett is of course normally a great actress, but an age increase of 30 years or so compared to Lilith is bizarre and doesn’t make sense in the context of the film, since actresses her age seem to remember her as a child.

This is a franchise killer. Gearbox had big plans for a Borderlands cinematic universe that obviously wasn’t going anywhere after this. And considering how the whole thing turned out, it’s completely justified.

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