Well, the Borderlands movie has indeed flopped, beginning Thursday with a zero percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
This figure has since “Improvement” is 3%On a movie review aggregation site, we found one critic who had some sympathetic words to say about Gearbox Software’s otherwise poorly conceived adaptation of the loot-shooter franchise. But that review: From the other side of the trailerIt starred Cate Blanchett in the lead role, and many other critics praised her performance while panning the rest of the film.
Either way, it was a nice break from the idea that video game film adaptations were finally shedding their past of boring money-making movies with 10 times more marketing than story. In 2018, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s Rampage film adaptation was The world was shocked It received a 51% score on the Tomatometer, making it the first video game movie to be rated “good” by the majority of critics.
Then, in 2019, Detective Pikachu received an astounding 68% on Rotten Tomatoes. 2020’s Sonic the Hedgehog was a very pleasant surprise with a 64% rating. Its sequel matched Detective Pikachu’s 68% two years later, convincing even non-Blue Blur fans.
Unfortunately, the genre took a step back that same year with Tom Holland’s Uncharted (just 40% freshness), but the trends were positive, and with The Last of Us and Fallout receiving rave reviews from prestigious TV fans, the days of video game movies being implicitly sleazy felt over.
Are video game movies getting better or worse?
Anyway, when it comes to AAA tentpole games on consoles, we might be back to square one. Remember, 2016’s Assassin’s Creed starred Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard and Jeremy Irons, and the trio was nominated for five Oscars, winning two. But it was a massive flop, with an 18% rating on the Tomatometer. Then came Uncharted, and now this massive flop.
The majority of reviews say Borderlands doesn’t even measure up to a popcorn movie. It’s not a critics’ pick, but it’s at least a crowd-pleaser with some laughs and intense action.
So the real story will come from opening weekend box office takings, which are tallied on Sunday. Borderlands has an estimated budget of $100 million, and distributors would likely need to gross two or three times that amount to consider it a success.
This article Borderlands’ Rotten Tomatoes rating jumps from 0% to 3% after one critic loves it first appeared on ReadWrite
