The first impressions of the Borderlands movie are about as negative as you’d expect

A first crop of people have now watched the Borderlands movie, and following the lifting of a social media embargo have shared their opinions, which are mostly that it is pretty bad. Critics and early viewers from a fan event are being very blunt and very frank: They did not like it much. We’re seeing words like “lifeless” and “obnoxious” and “baffling.” Praise is pretty thin on the ground among these first responses, and faint when it does appear—with an exceptional few giving short, relatively positive summaries.

I hope that nobody is surprised by this reaction: That would mean they missed the copious quantities of people dunking on this movie after the first, then second, then final trailers debuted. A wacky big-budget adaptation of a videogame franchise being roundly panned is almost a fait accompli—especially one that has little to immediately recommend it aside from star power and budget.