Cate Blanchett’s Hollywood blockbuster bombs with critics as it races toward box office disaster

Australian born Hollywood superstar Cate Blanchett seems to be heading for a box office disaster with her latest film Borderlands.

The public appears to be staying away in droves from the big-budget film, which has copped a drubbing from critics.

Based on the video game of the same name, the Eli Roth directed sci fi action comedy cost a reputed $182million (AU) but has only returned a paltry $13.3million (AU) after opening in the U.S. over the weekend on more than 3,000 screens. 

And critics have not held back in putting the boot into the film in which 55-year-old Blanchett plays a futuristic ‘bounty hunter’.

On the aggregator site Metacritic the film has scored a pathetic rating of 27 out of 100, based on 30 reviews from some of America’s top critics.

Meanwhile, on Rotten Tomatoes, the film achieved a score of 9 per cent based on a global survey of 99 critics.

‘There are still many cinema turkeys headed our way before the year closes,’ wrote one critic of the Toronto Star.

‘But this sci-fi gobbler mixes inept directing, terrible writing, indifferent acting and gawdawful CGI into such stupefying boredom, it feels like nothing could top it for badness.’

David Fear of Rolling Stone did not hold back either, telling readers: ‘It’s not a movie for critics, as the saying goes. Nor is it suitable for consumption by most gamers, film lovers, or 99 percent of carbon-based life forms.’

Still, some critics found that Blanchett’s performance was a bright spot in the box office dud.

‘In her chameleonic career, Cate Blanchett has donned many guises,’ wrote the movie trade paper Screen International.

‘But never before has she had the chance to be a gun-toting, ass-kicking action star. Sadly, Borderlands is an unworthy vehicle for her swaggering performance.’

Blanchett, who has won two Oscars in her thirty-year career co-stars in the film alongside famed American comedian Kevin Hart and Hollywood veteran Jamie Lee Curtis.

According to Box Office Mojo, Borderlands will struggle to return its hefty budget.

According to Rotten Tomatoes, the film achieved a score of 9 per cent based on a global survey of 99 critics. Pictured: A scene from the film

The film recorded a paltry screen average of U.S. $656 ($951 AU) across 3,125 theatres in the U.S. on Sunday.

Meanwhile, Blanchett has racked up thousands of rave reviews over the last 27 years after worked tirelessly across dozens of projects in theatre, film and TV. 

A regular on the global awards circuit, Blanchett has received major prizes from all over the world, including two Oscars, three BAFTAs, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, an Order of Australia, and in France a Chevalier, for her contribution to the arts.

Born in Melbourne, Cate started her movie career in Australia but quickly made an international breakthrough in 1998 with one of her first films, the historical drama Elizabeth.

By the early 2000s, global audiences knew her from the blockbuster Lord of the Rings series. She later appeared in the Hobbit trilogy.

She won great praise and a best supporting Oscar for playing Hollywood great Kate Hepburn in Martin Scorsese’s Howard Hughes biopic The Aviator in 2005.

In 2013, she won her first best actress Academy Award in the Woody Allen film Blue Jasmine.

In 2013, Blanchett won a Best Actress Oscar for the Woody Allen film Blue Jasmine