Summary

• The Borderlands film has arrived as a flop, attaining only a 9% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and failing at the box office.
• Director Eli Roth's promise of a unique approach for Borderlands fell flat, resulting in a generic knockoff of Guardians of the Galaxy.
• The movie's attempt to emulate Guardians' style backfired, showcasing the difficulty in balancing humor, action, and heart as effectively as James Gunn.

Eli Roth promised that his Borderlands film wouldn’t just rip off a classic superhero blockbuster from 10 years ago, but now that it’s here, it clearly is just a ripoff of that beloved movie. Despite being in the works for over a decade, the Borderlands movie has been widely panned by critics and bombed at the box office. It’s been met with a dismal 9% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and it finished fourth in its opening weekend. Suffice to say, this adaptation of the popular looter shooter video game franchise is a resounding failure by any metric.

When the first Borderlands trailer dropped, its portrayal of a ragtag band of quippy space adventurers was immediately compared to Guardians of the Galaxy. But director Eli Roth promised it would be different. He told Total Film, “I was very conscious of not remaking Guardians. [Audiences will] see the movie, and they’ll see it’s different.” But now that the Borderlands movie has been released, that quote hasn’t aged well. Audiences have seen the movie, and they’ve seen that it is, indeed, a pale imitation of Guardians of the Galaxy.

The Borderlands Movie Is A Bland Guardians Of The Galaxy Knockoff

Borderlands Is A Shallow Ripoff Of Guardians Without Any Of The Charm Or Personality

Until very recently, the mere existence of a film or TV adaptation of a popular video game was a bad sign. In the past couple of years, with the success of Fallout, The Last of Us, and The Super Mario Bros. Movie, the needle has been moving in the right direction with video game adaptations. But great video game adaptations are still the exception, not the rule, and there’s no better proof of that than Borderlands. The Borderlands movie ignored what fans love about the games in an attempt to pander to a wider audience, and ended up pleasing nobody.

Although the games draw on the grittiness and brutality of the Mad Max films, the movie adaptation is a shameless ripoff of Guardians of the Galaxy in a Mad Max-style setting. It’s all about a ragtag group of space warriors who reluctantly come together to pursue a common goal and end up becoming a sort of found family. But where Guardians of the Galaxy told that story with real love and sincerity, and packed plenty of surprises along the way, Borderlands tells it with a painful dullness, and it’s totally predictable.

Borderlands is projected to lose $20–30 million for the studio.

Why James Gunn's Guardians Of The Galaxy Style Is Harder Than It Looks

It's Not As Easy As It Looks To Get The Balance Right

James Gunn pioneered a winning formula with Guardians of the Galaxy in 2014. It has all the action and spectacle of a typical comic book movie, but with a hefty dose of heart and humor that took audiences by surprise. The Marvel Cinematic Universe started skewing more towards replicating this tone in films like Ant-Man and Thor: Ragnarok, and the rest of Hollywood eventually followed suit. While this formula has been emulated successfully by movies like Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, it’s a lot harder to pull off than it seems.

Borderlands is a prime example of just how tough it is to get the Guardians formula right.

It might look easy to do a fun sci-fi action comedy that doesn’t take itself too seriously. It seems as though all it takes to copy Guardians’ success is to inject a standard spectacle-driven actioner with some loose, improvisational-sounding banter. But it’s a lot tougher than it seems to pull this off as effectively as Gunn; it’s much harder than it looks to balance that lighthearted comedic tone with real stakes and emotional arcs. Borderlands is a prime example of just how tough it is to get the Guardians formula right.

"The issue is rather that Borderlands seems to have noticed that audiences are tired of movies being overly long and self-indulgent, and thus it course-corrected in the opposite direction. The movie is a tight hour and forty minutes, and it gets the job done, but it leaves a lot of potential gold mine material on the cutting room floor." - Tatiana Hullender - Screen Rant's Borderlands Review

Borderlands' Guardians Of The Galaxy Similarities Were Its Downfall

It's Just A Reminder Of A Much Better Movie

Ultimately, Borderlands’ similarities to Guardians of the Galaxy were its downfall: it’s impossible to watch the Borderlands movie and not see the parallels with Guardians, and it doesn’t draw a favorable comparison. These similarities just remind viewers of a much better film they’re not watching. Every time they don’t laugh at Kevin Hart’s Roland or Jack Black’s Claptrap, they’re reminded of a time they did laugh at Chris Pratt’s Peter Quill or Dave Bautista’s Drax.

Borderlands is shaping up to be one of the biggest box office bombs of the year, and one of the most critically panned films of the year. It didn’t seem like anything would come along that was terrible enough to dethrone Madame Web, but Borderlands has managed it. Borderlands is everything that Roth said it wouldn’t be: it’s a ripoff of Guardians of the Galaxy, and it’s an astoundingly bad movie. It’s not even so bad it’s good; it’s just a colossal waste of time.

Source: Total Film