As the Borderlands movie crashes and burns as a box office megaflop, The Crow reboot says hold my beer, outflopping it so hard that it gets branded 'a cynical cash grab' by the original film's director and annihilated by critics
Here at PC Gamer I think it fair to say that we really, really didn't like the Borderlands movie, calling it 'an irredeemable mess' that had us 'longing for 1993's Super Mario Bros' film. Yes, it really is that bad. In fact, the Borderlands movie is so bad that someone has made a 3-minute song just from the bad reviews. Needless to say, the film, which reportedly cost $120 million to make, has been a box office megaflop, recouping so far just $25 million worldwide.
However, just when it looked like another video game movie adaptation was about to take the top spot for biggest flop of the year, as reported by Variety the reboot of gothic superhero film The Crow has somehow gone and outflopped Borderlands, generating just $4.6 million over its opening weekend on a budget of $50 million. In contrast, the Borderlands movie raked in $8.6 million over its opening weekend.
The reaction to The Crow reboot's release has been supremely negative among both critics and the director of the cult classic original 1994 adaptation of The Crow, Alex Proyas, who swiftly took to social media site Facebook after seeing the movie and watching it flop to state that, “I thought the remake was a cynical cash-grab. Not much cash to grab it seems”.
Meanwhile, in terms of reviews, the Guardian film critic Benjamin Lee has called The Crow reboot 'one of 2024’s most atrocious films', while Empire called the movie 'a turkey in crow’s clothing'. Both publications gave the movie the lowest rating they offer, one out of five stars.
Things haven't been any better for The Crow in terms of audience rating, either. Over on movie review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a certified rotten rating of just 20%, with viewers stating that it 'is a thematically sluggish and visually sludgy experience', as well as 'tepid, unconvincing, overlong and genuinely draining'. One reviewer concludes, 'The Crow is devoid of spirit and has no feeling to lose.'
What's interesting, though, is that while The Crow may be on its way to taking the crown as 2024's biggest financial and critical flop, right now the Borderlands movie still far outflops it on Rotten Tomatoes in terms of audience rating, with the video game movie adaption sitting on a jaw-droppingly low rotten rating of just 10%. The Crow reboot, meanwhile, is currently rated at 20%. Clearly, gamers really have made their voices heard on this one.
Now, if we can just have, you know, even a few half-decent videogame movie adaptations come out then I think gamers across the world will be very happy indeed. The trend for terrible flops, Sonic and Pokémon movies aside, has to end sometime, right? What's that, Hideo Kojima is planning a Death Stranding cinematic universe? Ah, damn it, maybe not then.