What the critics say

Lionsgate The borders hits theaters on August 9, but the film’s review embargo was lifted Thursday, and early critical reactions have been disastrous.

A live-action adaptation of Gearbox Software’s popular video game series, Eli Roth’s film is set on the planet Pandora and tells the story of a band of outlaws on the fringes of society. The film stars Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Ariana Greenblatt and Jamie Lee Curtis, with Jack Black voicing a prankster robot.

On Thursday night, review aggregation sites had damning ratings for The borders. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a modest 6% rating from 45 reviews. Thankfully, the audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes is significantly higher, at 51% so far. On Metacritic, the critics’ score was 29 based on 23 reviews, and things weren’t much better on Letterboxd, where users gave The borders a rating of 2.1/5.

Below are key excerpts from some of the most notable early reviews.

In his negative review for The Hollywood Reporter, David Rooney writes that “the great mystery [with Borderlands] David focuses on what went wrong with the film, highlighting the big changes during production. “To be fair, the project that Blanchett and other big names signed on to might have looked a little different given the number of writers it went through. The most notable of these was Craig Mazin, co-creator and co-writer of The Last of Uswho reportedly chose to remove his name from the project. Screenwriting credit ultimately went to Roth and newcomer Joe Crombie, with speculation that the latter was a pseudonym.

In a zero star review in the The New York PostJohnny Oleksinski writes that The borders is a serious misstep for an actress of Cate Blanchett’s caliber. “If I were a two-time Oscar winner, I would hire a crack team to work around the clock to wipe every mention of this movie off the Internet. The movie is that embarrassing,” Oleksinski wrote. The critic was unmoved on any level, writing that “everything in The borders is terrible: the acting, the writing, the directing, the design.

Jake Kleinman, write for Reversewas just as scathing towards The borders“The motivations don’t really matter, the characters are paper thin, and the plot moves at the speed of a player rapidly clicking through dialogue to move on to the next level,” Kleinman writes. He adds, “On the other hand, you can’t cast Cate Blanchett in the lead role of an action epic without it being at least a little fun to watch; and in the age of sloppy CGI, The borders gets points for creating a vibrant post-apocalyptic setting. It’s just a shame that it all adds up Guardians of the Galaxy with worse jokes.

In his review for The Daily BeastAn exasperated Nick Schager titles his article: “Cate Blanchett, what are you doing?” After a series of…