Summary

Borderlands
has received a 50% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.
This score quintuples the movie’s 10% critic score, but it still isn’t Fresh.

Borderlands
‘ audience reaction is comparable to many similar video game adaptations.

Borderlands’ debut Rotten Tomatoes audience score is a massive improvement, but still not enough for it to be Fresh. The new Eli Roth movie is an adaptation of the video game franchise of the same name, featuring a star-studded cast that includes Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Edgar Ramírez, Ariana Greenblatt, Florian Munteanu, Gina Gershon, and Jamie Lee Curtis. The Borderlands release was preceded by the movie receiving a grim Rotten Tomatoes score of just 10% from nearly 100 different critics’ reviews, marking it as substantially Rotten.

Now that Borderlands is playing in theaters, users have been able to share their rating for the movie on Rotten Tomatoes. At the time of writing, this has resulted in an audience score of 50%. While this could fluctuate as more reviews are added, it is currently five times higher than the movie’s Tomatometer score, revealing the fact that audiences have significantly kinder thoughts toward the movie than critics. However, it is still 10% below the 60% threshold, past which a movie can be considered Fresh on the review aggregator platform.

How Borderlands’ Audience Score Compares To Similar Video Game Adaptations
Audiences Tend To React Better Than Critics To Video Game Titles

While the Borderlands reviews have been particularly negative, this doesn’t necessarily place it out of step with other similar genre-based video game adaptations. Especially when it comes to sci-fi, action, or horror games with robust fanbases, general audiences tend to appreciate what adaptations bring to the table more than the average critic. Below, see how the movie’s audience score compares to other recent video game adaptations with low to middling critic scores on Rotten Tomatoes:

Title Critic Score Audience Score Difference Borderlands (2024) 10% 50% 40% Assassin’s Creed (2018) 18% 42% 24% Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021) 30% 65% 35% Five Nights at Freddy’s (2023) 32% 87% 55% Uncharted (2022) 40% 90% 50% Monster Hunter (2020) 44% 70% 26% Tomb Raider (2018) 52% 55% 3% Mortal Kombat (2021) 55% 86% 31% Twisted Metal season 1 (2023) 67% 94% 33%

With the exception of 2018’s Tomb Raider, on which critics and audiences seemed to agree, it is not uncommon for audiences to give Rotten video game movies scores between 30% and 50% higher than the scores doled out by critics. The 40% difference in the audience score of the Borderlands movie gives it one of the highest percentage boosts of the bunch, in fact, but that could only carry the movie so far considering how low the score started in the first place.

It remains to be seen if the Borderlands audience score ever improves, helping the movie become a word-of-mouth success in the long run. However, this may not come to pass, as the movie is currently turning out a D+ CinemaScore in its opening weekend and its user score on Metacritic is a similarly middling 2.8 out of 5. The fact that the movie is hitting the middle of online user ratings is perhaps the best it can hope for, considering how low the scores are plunging elsewhere.

Source: Rotten Tomatoes

Borderlands 3.5 Based on the video game franchise, Borderlands is a sci-fi action-comedy film that follows Cate Blanchett as Lilith, a treasure hunter who returns to her home planet, Pandora, to find a tycoon’s missing daughter. Together with a group of unlikely allies, such as a soldier, a teenaged demolitions expert, a wise-cracking robot, and an eccentric scientist, the group will work together to save the girl – all while learning to deal with each other’s unyielding quirks.Director Eli Roth Release Date August 9, 2024 Studio(s) Arad Productions , Picturestart Distributor(s) Lionsgate Writers Eli Roth , Joe Crombie Runtime 102 Minutes Expand