Kevin Hart, Ariana Greenblatt and Jamie Lee Curtis also star in this fight to survive on the lawless planet Pandora, with Jack Black providing the voice of a wisecracking robot.

In the distended field of movies and TV spun out of video games, there are blockbusters like Sonic the Hedgehog and The Super Mario Bros. Movie, long-running franchises like Resident Evil and lauded viewer favorites like The Last of Us. Many of them gain commercial traction — even a critically savaged dud like Assassin’s Creed did respectable business internationally. But there are just as many that probably should have been left on the console, like the role-playing first-person shooter game, Borderlands. Humor hasn’t generally been director Eli Roth’s strong suit, but neither is the constant bang-kapow of gunfire, explosions and violence in this stale and stubbornly unexciting sci-fi action comedy.

To be fair, the project for which Blanchett and other major names signed on possibly looked a little different given the number of screenwriting hands it passed through. The most notable of those belonged to Craig Mazin, a co-creator and co-writer of The Last of Us, who reportedly chose to remove his name from the project. The script credit ultimately went to Roth and first-timer Joe Crombie, with speculation that the latter is a pseudonym.

According to a prophecy, a daughter of Pandora would one day open the vault and restore order to the planet, which has been decimated by mining corporation wars. It’s now a scorched land of industrial debris and toxic chemical waste, inhabited by lowlife scavengers, thugs, bandit gangs, vault hunters and the oppressive Crimson Lance militia. Pandora is also home to the deadly thresher species, ferocious monsters that look like the tentacled offspring of Godzilla and a Dune sandworm.

Blanchett plays Lilith, a cool-as-a-cucumber bounty hunter with killer cheekbones, a bright red flip (think Run Lola Run with a comb) and a quick trigger finger prone to the swift dispatch of any nuisance. Against her better judgment she’s coerced by shady corporate overlord Atlas (Edgar Ramirez), or a glitchy hologram of him, into traveling to Pandora. Her task is to retrieve Atlas’ missing preteen daughter, Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt, pre-Barbie), whom he claims was kidnapped by a member of his security force.

“It’s a shithole,” says Lilith on arrival. “I should know. I was born here.” That means lots of bad associations and unresolved issues, not that anyone should expect psychological depth or genuine human feeling from this script.

Tiny Tina is less irritating than Claptrap, though she mostly made me miss Chloë Grace Moretz in Kick-Ass. She has teamed up with rogue soldier Roland (Kevin Hart) and Krieg (Florian Munteanu), a semi-literate hulk in a gas mask who serves as her protector. Once they stop trying to kill Lilith, the band of misfits flee together from Commander Knox (Janina Gavankar) and her Crimson Lance goon squad.

They get intel on a contact from Moxxi, the proprietor of a Sanctuary City bar whose style cue seems to be “sexy Mad Hatter’s tea party.” There’s some moderate fun watching Gina Gershon channel Mae West in the role, spiced with a dash of Cristal Connors.

Next to join the band is eccentric xenoarcheologist Tannis (Jamie Lee Curtis), who thereafter functions mainly to warn everyone any time bad shit is about to go down. But she serves a purpose by showing Lilith a painting the bounty hunter did as a child of the Firehawk, a flame-winged Eridian goddess virtually announced as a coming attraction for the final showdown.