The first impressions of the Borderlands movie are about as negative as you'd expect

A first crop of people have now watched the Borderlands movie, and following the lifting of a social media embargo have shared their opinions, which are mostly that it is pretty bad. Critics and early viewers from a fan event are being very blunt and very frank: They did not like it much. We're seeing words like «lifeless» and «obnoxious» and «baffling.» Praise is pretty thin on the ground among these first responses, and faint when it does appear—with an exceptional few giving short, relatively positive summaries.

I hope that nobody is surprised by this reaction: That would mean they missed the copious quantities of people dunking on this movie after the first, then second, then final trailers debuted. A wacky big-budget adaptation of a videogame franchise being roundly panned is almost a fait accompli—especially one that has little to immediately recommend it aside from star power and budget.

«I really wanted to like it,» said reporter Matthew Simpson (via GamesRadar), who went on to say that it had an «uninspired plot» and «several phoned in performances.»

The Borderlands movie is an action comedy directed by Eli Roth, and stars people like Jack Black, Kevin hart, Ariana Greenblatt, Jamie Lee Curtis, Florian Munteanu, and Cate Blanchett as characters from the first game—Claptrap, Roland, Lilith, and the rest—going on an adventure to, of course, rob an ancient and secret vault of its copious treasures.

Cate Blanchett, notably, said she's probably only in this movie because of a «touch of covid madness» after being cooped up at home with nothing but gardening for too long.

Oh hey I can tell you I’ve seen #BorderlandsMovie now and that it’s really bad. I really wanted to like it, but an uninspired plot + several phoned in performances + being stuck in a weird place where it looks both expensive and cheap a the same time make it a huge misfire. pic.twitter.com/nek6r0CuTmAugust 7, 2024

Bitesize Break's Adriano Caporusso said that it «swaps the mayhem and imagination