The arrival of Mario and Luigi on the big screen in 2023 was a colossal success, but the Sonic movies, the adaptation of Five Nights at Freddy’s with Josh Hutcherson, the Resident Evil saga, Tomb Raider, or the most recent Fallout series, from Amazon Prime, have also achieved notoriety. Video games are experiencing a new golden age in the movie theater, but not everything that studios release in this category has the same good looks.
The recently released Borderlands, set in the 2009 sci-fi shooter for Xbox and PlayStation and now in its third installment, has come up against the critics, who have already ranked it as one of the worst films based on video games in history. The blow that Lionsgate has taken has been huge. Failed on IMDb and Filmaffinity, a poor 9% on Rotten Tomatoes (it actually started with 0%) and barely 1.8 out of 5 on Letterboxd.
On social media, the general public agrees with the criticism. Videos are constantly being uploaded to YouTube trying to explain what went wrong, calling it “terrible” or “worse than Madame Web” (which is saying something). On X, memes abound about how terrible the film is.
This coincidence between critics and audiences suggests that it is not even the same fate as those films that, despite being trashed by the press, have something special that makes them cult gems among fans of the genre. There don’t seem to be many people who liked this adaptation even a little.
And it shouldn’t be because of the cast: we find big names like Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jack Black or Jamie Lee Curtis. Its director, Eli Roth, has the experience of having directed the recent horror film Black Friday, although the rest of his film catalogue does not generally have very positive reviews on cinema portals.
So what’s wrong? Possible reasons point to poorly done CGI, an ensemble cast of veteran actors playing characters who should be in their 20s, poorly justified celebrity cameos, and humor that falls flat. “Borderlands feels like what a clueless executive thinks cool kids find attractive. There’s not a single moment of sincerity from the characters, just nasty comments that feel dated the minute they come out of the actors’ mouths. It’s not even bad enough to be good, just a complete mess,” says @edgorteg.
Resounding failure at the box office
Losses in the millions are already assured. The film cost, including production and marketing, around 150 million dollars. After its first weekend of release, it has only earned 17 million dollars worldwide, which places it among the worst theatrical releases for films based on video games. Lionsgate did not expect such a disaster, despite the fact that video game adaptations are at a peak.
What happened serves as a reminder to the major Hollywood studios that success is never guaranteed, even if they are quick to continue milking the current cash cow that is the gaming universe as a source of inspiration for blockbusters.
The only positive thing about the story is that the premiere does seem to coincide with a slight increase in the series’ player count on Steam, although many fans joke that viewers who were unfamiliar with the game want to see if video games are, in fact, as bad as the movie they saw.
