How To Watch Borderlands, The Biggest Bomb Of The Year, At Home

As of this writing, Eli Roth's new action-comedy "Borderlands," based on the popular video game series, has grossed just over $24 million at the box office. This is an abysmal number, given that the film cost an estimated $120 million to make. It's a little too early to call it one of the biggest box office bombs of all time, but it's certainly one of the biggest bombs of the year. Given that it was based on a beloved video game property, the failure of "Borderlands" was particularly visible to a mass audience, playing into a long held prejudice against game adaptations. There are only scant great films to have been based on video games, and "Borderlands" certainly isn't one of them.

"Borderlands" received terrible notices, boasting a mere 10% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 151 reviews. /Film's own Bill Bria praised the film's candy-colored visuals, and enjoyed watching cast members Cate Blanchett and Jamie Lee Curtis play badass sci-fi warriors, but pointed out that "Borderlands" has no personality and that its humor is lackluster. Carlos Aguilar, writing for the Los Angeles Times, called it "An insipid mishmash of trite genre tropes," and Brian Tallerico, writing for RogerEbert.com, gave it one star, writing that the film was an "ugly, boring, truly inept piece of filmmaking, a movie that was mostly shot years ago and should have been shelved even longer. Like, maybe forever." 

"Borderlands" opened on August 9, 2024. Perhaps to cover the fact that the film opened and closed so quickly, one will be able to rent or purchase "Borderlands" on August 30. That's only three weeks from its theatrical debut to its home video release. The windows between theaters and streaming has been shrinking for years, but this reeks of a rush job.

"Borderlands" takes place in the distant future on a planet called Pandora. This Pandora, however, is the opposite of the Edenic Pandora from "Avatar," strewn with garbage and pockmarked with damage done by plunderers. Lilith (Blanchett) is hired to find and retrieve Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt), the daughter of rich muckitymuck Deukalian Atlas (Edgar Ramírez). She teams up with an old, clanky robot called Claptrap (Jack Black), and will eventually fall into league with the badass soldier Roland (Kevin Hart), Tina's masked bodyguard Krieg (Florian Munteanu), and the jaded scientist Dr. Tannis (Curtis). The ragtag group of misfits will fight aliens and seek treasure on Pandora. 

According to a press release, "Borderlands" will be available for digital purchase for $24.99, starting on August 30. One can also rent it for $19.99 for a typical a 48-hour period. It will be available on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Google Play, Fandango at Home, "and more." Note that "Borderlands" is still playing in some theaters. 

The making of "Borderlands" was a bit of a clustercuss. Eli Roth filmed "Borderlands" in 2021, but reshoots had to be handed over to "Deadpool" director Tim Miller, as Roth was already working on his next feature, "Thanksgiving." New script pages were written for the reshoots as well, and the film's original writer, Craig Mazin, had his name removed from the credits. After all the reshoots and delays, "Borderlands" wasn't released until this year. "Thanksgiving" came out in 2023. 

One may want to see "Borderlands" to see what all the fuss (or lack thereof) was about. One of the biggest bombs of the year will certainly have an interesting story behind it. At the very least, it will be fun for audiences to perform their own autopsies.