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Video Game Adaptation 'Borderlands' Hits Theaters With Rare 0% on Rotten Tomatoes (forbes.com) 115

An anonymous reader shares a report: I'm not sure I knew of anyone, Borderlands fan or not, who believed that the movie adaptation of the game was going to be good, based on everything from casting to trailers. Now as reviews come in ahead of its release tomorrow, those fears have been validated. And then some. As I write this, the Borderlands movie has a flat 0% on Rotten Tomatoes. No positive reviews whatsoever, and the ones that are in are not just negative, but brutal.
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Video Game Adaptation 'Borderlands' Hits Theaters With Rare 0% on Rotten Tomatoes

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  • by BigFire ( 13822 ) on Thursday August 08, 2024 @12:08PM (#64690474)

    Not exactly a sign that it could be good.

    • Yeah this is bad studio timing at the very least. In those 2 short years the landscape of video game adaptions has changed entirely and the viewer expectations.

      Borderlands seems like it was made with the previous idea of "don't worry about the quality just get an adaptation moving so we can cash in" ala Prince of Persia, Assasins Creed and such whereas now after the likes of the SMB movie, Fallout, Twisted Metal, The Last of Us it's been proven you can do high quality video game adaptions that do respect f

      • by Hodr ( 219920 )

        Uh, excuse you. There were plenty of excellent video game translations to film in the past. Postal, Bloodrayne, Mortal Kombat, Tomb Raider, and all 37 Resident Evils just to start.

        • You're kidding ... right?

        • Look, I have a lot of nostalgic love for the first MK movie, I saw it in a theater, I'm that old. It's great as a B-movie. It's schlock of the best kind. The bad effects, the moustache twirling villain. the plot that really makes no sense, Christopher Lambert just EATING up the scenery as the whitest man wearing an asian sunhat. It's not a "good" movie but it is entertaining.

          Same can apply to the first RE1, a loving schlockfest but everyone after that was the worst kindof schlockfest, or as RLM put it

          • by cusco ( 717999 )

            Milla Jovavich dresses up in black leather

            Which kind of makes watching them worthwhile . . .

          • MK movies were as you describe. Just fun to watch if you didn't take them at all seriously. RE exactly same thing. Plus I've always liked Milla Jovavich. Simple dressing her up and having her kick stuff IS entertaining.

            Come to think of it, pretty much every video game movie I've seen can be classified as "fun to watch" but I would never call any of them "good" movies. They are fun movies. Some worse then others.

            • Yeah but that's just it, the medium has been elevated past that type of curved grading critique. There's no reason they can't be both entertaining *and* good films from a structural and character perspective.

              What's Milla Jovaviches most famous role? It's not the half dozen RE movies, it's still the Fifth Element, a movie that still get rewatched to this day I would imagine many times than the entire RE franchise because it's a real movie that's actually pretty good.

              This is also a side effect as VG movies c

              • Yeah but that's just it, the medium has been elevated past that type of curved grading critique.

                It's all pulp fiction. Hollywood doesn't put out elevated anything.

          • Look, I have a lot of nostalgic love for the first MK movie, I saw it in a theater, I'm that old. It's great as a B-movie. It's schlock of the best kind. The bad effects, the moustache twirling villain. the plot that really makes no sense, Christopher Lambert just EATING up the scenery as the whitest man wearing an asian sunhat. It's not a "good" movie but it is entertaining.

            Same can apply to the first RE1, a loving schlockfest but everyone after that was the worst kindof schlockfest, or as RLM put it "this is possibly the fifth or sixth episode in the Resident Evil series, a franchise that exists solely to keep the directors wife in work. Milla Jovavich dresses up in black leather and kicks a bunch of people. Brought to you by the good people at Sony"

            The rest are worse than bad, they're boring. Are we really gonna start retconning the Uwe Boll era of video game movies? God help us all.

            Most video game adaptions are done because they have a big built in audience, which generally means RPGs and FPS with an identifiable character. That leaves filmmakers locked into a particular story/narrative that's really hard to adapt to a good film.

            MK might be a bit of an exception because there was no narrative so they were free to write an action film (I have no memory if it was actually good).

            I think Fallout succeeded because the franchise was humorous so they could embrace that humour in the TV serie

            • They did exactly that. The main characters are Lilith, Roland, Krieg, Tina etc. Which you correctly said is goofy, Fallout avoided that as there are hundreds of vaults and you have the rest of America to tell stories in. Borderlands gets new characters every game, they easily could have done that. Classic case of the execs thinking the audience is way stupider than it is.

              The original MK is total camp, that's the main reason it's looked somewhat fondly today compared to the other VG movies of it's era. T

          • The first 2-3 Resident Evil movies are better than Borderlands. So are the Tomb Raiders, Mortal Kombat, and Street Fighter. Hell, arguably the first Super Mario movie is a better movie than Borderlands. Even Doom is a better movie. What I'm saying is this movie sucks pretty bad. Not as bad as BloodRayne though. Postal while not a better movie is definitely a more faithful adaptation, but when you're adapting Postal...

            • Worse that Streen Fighter? That's a rough criticism.

              SMB 93 is really not that bad, it'd got really cool production design at least. Makes you wish all those set designers and effects artists got to apply that talent on a better script.

              At this point TV series seem like the far superior medium to adapt video games, at least to me. Movies just don't have the time.

              • Street Fighter had an odd corny earnestness by the other actors, coked out Van Damme, and the absolute undiluted awesomeness of Raul Julia going whole hog and chewing the scenery as best he could because his kids liked Street Fighter. Borderlands has absolutely none of these qualities.

                • Raul Julia knowing he is on deaths door and still giving it everything on the screen in such a bad film really makes you wish we had him for another 10-20 years. Big loss.

        • ...and all 37 Resident Evils just to start.

          The movies are goofy, but then again, I never get tired of looking at Milla Jovavich.

          She has aged pretty well too......MUCH better than most women her age.

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          The Last of Us is the only really decent one so far. The others were mediocre, but made money.

  • I just checked out the trailer and it stars Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, and Jack Black, and Jamie Lee Curtis is in it. Somebody spent a lot of money on this.
    • by CAIMLAS ( 41445 )

      It's not the early 2000s anymore. You'll note they don't make big budget films like Death to Spoochie or similar anymore, not really. They don't invest in the big, fun properties like they used to. These "A list" actors are not making the money they once made, they're all basically working actors now. DVDs, and then streaming, changed the industry profitability model significantly.

      The actors which make the big money now are fewer and usually attached to summer blockbusters, as I understand it.

      • These "A list" actors are not making the money they once made,

        Quick Google shows that Kevin Hart made $50m last year. Kate Blanchet $10m, can't find last year's numbers for Jack Black but as a supporting role he's still upwards of $5m for a couple of months work.

        Don't pretend they are "working" actors.

  • by roc97007 ( 608802 ) on Thursday August 08, 2024 @12:22PM (#64690522) Journal

    I wonder if it's possible that the film was made only to retain the rights to the property. I'm told it was finished two years before release. Maybe it was not intended to be released at all?

  • by nothinginparticular ( 6181282 ) on Thursday August 08, 2024 @12:24PM (#64690532)
    throw them. They're basically disney's ministry of truth. The only way a film should get a 0 is if it has no video content, because however much anyone may hate a film there's always someone who will find it entertaining. disney's recent crop of disasters being a shining example of highly rated crap.
    • To be fair checking now it's risen to a solid 3% but Metacritic is at 32 and IMDB is at a 4.9 which is pretty abysmal for a $100M+ adaptation of a popular franchise with a pretty stacked cast.

      Anecdotaly but at least in the online world I have seen zero fan support for this, everytime it's come up since the trailer has been overwhelmingly negative, this things got negative hype.

      If it's actually a good movie it will get some cult status but Eli Roth is pretty mid as a director. More people remember him for h

    • by godrik ( 1287354 )

      Not saying I trust rotten tomato. But I did see the borderland trailer. The movie does look godawful!

    • The only way a film should get a 0 is if it has no video content

      No film has a 0. The problem is very much the same as moderation on Slashdot. It varies with time. It's already up to 8% showing someone liked it. Audience score is at 67%.

      Rotten Tomatoes is not about trust, it's about understanding where the ratings come from, what critics look for in movies, and what audiences look for in movies. When you understand that you'll find RT's ratings to be perfectly on point.

      • Rotten tomatoes run off a pass/fail review system with the percentage being an aggregate of those pass/fails. The 0% isn't a true 0% but a no one has given this film over a 2-2.5 star rating or a go see recommendation(for the reviewers that don't use the star rating) yet. Which trust me, is in fact the correct decision because this film is BloodRayne levels of badness and you don't even get a smoking hot Loken in leather pants type as a consolation prize.

  • This just in: It has at least one positive review! W00T!! The backers are gonna get rich off this for sure!!!

  • Isnt 0% rotten tomatoes good? Or are rotton tomatoes a good thing and a good review is 100% rotten tomatoes?
    • by znrt ( 2424692 ) on Thursday August 08, 2024 @12:46PM (#64690594)

      i would explain but it doesn't really matter, nobody cares about rotten tomatoes anymore, they sold to big media and it went to shit just like /. but faster.

      • But the idea that slash dot sold out to big media is just ridiculous. I don't know who the parent company is this website and frankly I don't care but this website is exactly as it was 20 years ago it's just that there's a lot less of the low level tech news it feeds on so the content isn't as good because there isn't much to report on. It's not like the heyday of the '90s when they were constant new gadgets and cool things and new techs to play with. Everything is basically a rest API and/or a variation on
        • It's not like the heyday of the '90s when they were constant new gadgets and cool things and new techs to play with. Everything is basically a rest API and/or a variation on cell phones and tablets...

          while you're right that there's less of those sorts of gadgets anymore, there's still some room for improvement. r/selfhosted has lots of interesting work from programmers making self-hosted alternatives to larger SaaS offerings; Immich is a relative success story that is a pretty impressive replacement for Google Photos. It's a depressing irony to me that xda-developers used to have a front page filled with interesting projects and mods and recovery environments, but has devolved into a Temu-grade Cnet. Th

      • i would explain but it doesn't really matter, nobody cares about rotten tomatoes anymore, they sold to big media and it went to shit just like /. but faster.

        Not really. RT is just an amalgamation of critics and audience scores. They are quite reliable if you bother to understand what it is that critics and audiences look for in films.

        You may not care about RT (presumably because you don't understand how it or the minds of the people who write reviews work), but a *lot* of other people very much still do. You definitely are not speaking for a populace here.

      • Then why are you posting comments here?
        • by znrt ( 2424692 )

          to lure and piss off random internet freaks. think of it as sport and entertainment. /. has become a quite convenient place for that, with a nostalgic vibe as a bonus.

          unlike you, who comments here for "news that matter" and meaningful, productive and enriching discussions with bright people, right? right??? :o)

    • Yeah the name is counter intuitive and incomplete. One would think you would throw tomatoes (of any kind) at BAD content but the site's name is the exact opposite. It rates:

      * good content as "Fresh" and
      * bad content as "Rotten".

    • by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Thursday August 08, 2024 @01:37PM (#64690730)

      Isnt 0% rotten tomatoes good? Or are rotton tomatoes a good thing and a good review is 100% rotten tomatoes?

      It really depends on whether a tomato is classified as a fruit or a vegetable.

  • by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Thursday August 08, 2024 @12:40PM (#64690578)

    Most Marvel movies have more than 0%. That should tell you how inaccurate it is.

    • Most Marvel movies have more than 0%. That should tell you how inaccurate it is.

      It turns out you're modded +4 insightful. Unbelievable, only a few moments ago you were on your default +1. Just like this amazing revelation that things change over time it's worth noting that Borderlands does not in fact have a 0%.

      The only thing "inaccurate" is the stupid heading passing judgement on a movie not yet released based on the results of only a couple of critics who have attended a pre-screening.

      Borderlands is no doubt shit, but worth noting is that it already ranks higher than Catwoman and Fan

    • Well to be fair it's 10% now, but with a 50% user score, which is intriguing. There seems to be a disparity here.

      I like how critics complained that it's too short... as if 1 hour and 40 minutes isn't long enough. I miss a good 90-minute movie.

  • is probably a lot more fun than the movie [rottentomatoes.com]. My favourite is "it all just looks like celebrities participating in a Borderlands-themed escape room instead of an actual movie."

    The only positive review liked it because Blanchett was in it.

  • by Pseudonymous Powers ( 4097097 ) on Thursday August 08, 2024 @12:55PM (#64690606)
    I'm probably gonna drive down to the theater and shoot my gun randomly around the parking lot until somebody drops either a better gun or a better movie.
  • by GoJays ( 1793832 ) on Thursday August 08, 2024 @12:56PM (#64690612)
    I don't know anything about this movie, but I have played Borderlands 1-3, so I'm curious. Considering what is considered "fresh" these days on Rotten Tomatoes, I'm willing to give this supposed train wreak a go. I assume most film critics aren't gamers, so they are probably watching the film through a different lens. Even if it is truly horrible, who doesn't love a "good" bad movie now and then? Troll 2 anyone?
    • by suutar ( 1860506 )

      Yeah, I'll probably watch it, but I have a feeling that my ability to enjoy it is going to depend heavily on my ability to disconnect it from the games :)

    • Not having played the games and going on Fallout [imdb.com], it'll be a mass of disconnected action scenes with nothing plot-worthy happening in-between.
    • This is an intro movie, if they can't translate the concepts to the non-fans then that's probably part of the problem.

      I thought Fallout did an excellent job at that as my video-game-allergic wife and even my boomer parents were bought in after the first 1 episode. I also really enjoyed the Netflix One Piece adaptation and I personally knew nothing about it other than "that really long running manga about pirates" but they introduced the world building pretty well I thought while still leaving some mysterie

    • I played the first two Borderlands and loved them. Most movie adaptions of games usually suck ass (i.e. Warcraft) so it is natural to be hesitant.

      The "secret" to Rotten Tomatoes is to ignore the paid shills, er "Critics" score, and pay only attention to the Audience score. i.e. See my example [slashdot.org].

      I've actually ditched the dumb linear rating of movies and moved to a 2D system where the two axes are:

      * Fun
      * Quality

      Take Gran Turismo (2023). Quality was 0/5 and Fun was 1/5. Absolute garbage.
      i.e. "I'll take The dir

      • Warcraft had the worst writing I've seen in a movie in a long time but it was still fun to watch as an old school wow fan. Had I not been a early wow fan, the movie would of been horrid though.

        I'd still sit through a part 2 though. I'm still hoping the Chinese can make it since the movie did better there and maybe we'll get lucky with an English version. Maybe translating from Chinese to English subtitles will improve the movie. haha.

  • I haven't played the game, nor have I heard of the movie until this /. post but I found the headline funny so checked out Rotten Tomatoes. It's slightly up to 3% now and I think it is worth noting that the low score is entirely critic reviews, since the movie hasn't been released yet.

    It might end up being trash, it might be mediocre... but I look forward to seeing the audience reviews once it is released, as there have been a lot of movies where the critics were completely disconnected from the audience and

    • > Critics sometimes tend to be artsy fartsy film snobs who are looking at/for things that audiences aren't.

      Roger Ebert was great at being able to review things based on their target audience. He could tell you if a movie would meet or fail to meet your expectations even if it was a mind if movie he'd never have watched for personal enjoyment.

      I'm not sure I've ever read another reviewer's review where that kind of perspective was seriously attempted, never mind executed competently.

    • It's slightly up to 3% now and I think it is worth noting that the low score is entirely critic reviews

      Worse. It's a couple of critic reviews from a pre-screening. It's already at 8% now. Someone must have set typing records to get that article out the moment the first critic review came in and didn't like it.

  • Maybe we should rename it "Borderline"?

  • I just can't see these having the plot to base a movie on. Much of it is how good are your writers? Maybe if they got the writers for fallout ? if you cheap out on writing , then you are doomed to fail. Honestly would like to see a movie or video series based on Bio Shock, That might be fun,

  • made the list of all time bad but I still kind of liked it. Probably the only one I think. I liked the first one as well.

    Pretty sure I just like bad movies, so maybe this is worth seeing, though I've never played the game. I won't go to theater but free one day may be worth my time.

    Most video game movies aren't really that great anyway. To niche.

  • Good, well-made and entertaining don't necessarily go hand-in-hand and even those can apply to various components -- plot, acting, characterizations, etc... Movies can have various combinations of qualities. Depending on the mix, I'm willing to let some slide in favor of others. I look for reviews that can compartmentalize their critiques. Don't know about this film -- the trailer seems to be going for fun(ny) action/adventure -- but will probably watch it when it comes out on Amazon or network TV. I'm

  • I was worried it would be awful, especially with some of their casting, but I really hoped they'd rise above their unsuitability when lifted by good writing and make a fun movie. Now it sounds like what I was worried about has happened.
    Though I have to say that Jack Black as Claptrap I can't see going wrong.

    Sadly, I still want to see it, but I may just wait a month or two until it's on a streaming service for free.
  • The rumours from people close to the movie have been predicting an awful movie for the last little while. Originally, the script was hot: everyone wanted on board. Then the studio started messing with it, and it's gone from an R rating to PG-13, they added many other script writers to do the rewrites and the original author left the project and doesn't even want their name associated with it.
    So yeah, I expect it to be hot garbage.

  • I read the reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, and - no exaggeration - this might be the worst movie ever made.

    But, reading the reviews was itself fun and worth the time. Clever writers found various ways to express a common sentiment that the film is worthless, and each saw different details or nuances. It is as if my monthly ISP bill is a movie theater pass, and today I got my money's worth of entertainment reading the reviews.

    Also, remember the adage that there is no such thing as bad publicity - all publicity

  • Uwe Boll must be disappointed with his 1% [rottentomatoes.com]
  • by stikves ( 127823 ) on Friday August 09, 2024 @03:43AM (#64692060) Homepage

    I love these braindead writers and producers who can openly proclaim "I know better than the original authors!"

    Halo show writers "We didn’t look at the game. We didn’t talk about the game. We talked about the characters and the world"
    https://variety.com/2022/tv/fe... [variety.com]
    More than $250 million wasted talent later, the series is cancelled.

    Star Trek: X
    "According to Wikipedia, Star Trek: Nemesis cast members LeVar Burton and Marina Sirtis criticized director Jonathan Baird for not watching episodes of The Next Generation before making the movie."
    Star Trek Nemesis was so bad, they almost killed the entire beloved franchise

    And now today we have Borderland.

    They kicked the original writer who has played the games, and replaced them with someone who can nonchalantly say:
    “If you've consumed the video games you already have that story, that experience, and so we want you to get something out of this movie, something that you couldn't possibly get in a video game. And if you see the movie, we don't want you to not go play the games because you think you’ve already experienced that storyline. They’re different.”

    I cannot believe this hubris. Actually I can, but I cannot believe the studio heads haven't learned zero bit of lesson from wasting hundreds or even billions (Lord of the Rings) in the past.

  • Not high hopes given the material and the games I wasn't expecting some world shaking movie, but I was hopeful we could get an entertaining movie. Certainly there was enough material to make such a movie. Sad to see they apparently failed.

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