The first impressions about the Borderlands film are out. They include words like 'disaster,' and 'visually repellent dud.'

After the social media embargo was lifted, a first batch of people watched the Borderlands film and shared their opinions. The majority of them said that it was pretty bad. Critics and early fans from a fan-event are being blunt and very honest: They didn't like it very much. We hear words like "lifeless", "obnoxious", and "baffling". The praise is scarce and faint among the first responses. Only a few people give short, positive summaries.

I hope this reaction is not surprising. If it was, they would have missed the countless numbers of people who drank this movie up after the first, second, and final trailers were released. A wacky, big-budget videogame adaptation that is being roundly panned seems to be a fait accompli.

Matthew Simpson, a reporter for GamesRadar, said that he "really wanted to like" the game. He went on to describe it as having an "uninspired storyline" and "several phony performances."

The Borderlands film is an action comedy directed and starring Eli Roth. It stars Jack Black, Kevin Hart, Ariana Greenblatt and Jamie Lee Curtis as characters from the original game, including Claptrap, Roland, Lilith and others, who embark on an adventure in order to rob a secret vault full of ancient treasures.

Cate Blanchett said that she was probably only in the movie because of "a touch of covid madness," after being cooped at home with nothing else but gardening for too many years.

Bitesize Break's Adriano Caporusso stated that it "swaps out the mayhem and the imagination of the games in favor of a lifeless and unfunny dud."

People who are clearly fans of genres or games were more likely to give positive reviews. They liked Borderlands because of its pedigree, rather than just as a movie. The majority of the reviews praised the "exceptional detail for those who played the video games," or called the film a "hell-of-a-film" as an "addition to the Borderlands Universe."

This is good news for Borderlands fans but not so much for the general public. We'll find out when the movie premieres in just a few short days, on August 9th. You can find more reactions on Twitter by searching #BorderlandsMovie.