One of the privileges of being a film critic is having each of your reviews being a pop culture time capsule. Two years ago, when I reviewed Dark Shadows, Johnny Depp’s only box office failure was The Tourist, while 14 months later, The Lone Ranger showed that playing a native American had gone about as well as his role playing a vampire in the 70’s. Now, in 2014, Johnny Depp’s latest vehicle Transcendence is a last stand of sorts; while the forthcoming Alice In Wonderland 2 will restore some of his luster, this current failure is just another dud in his massive resume.

Directing your first movie is always a difficult task, but Wally Pfister has been a vital part of Christopher Nolan’s films for quite some time now, meaning he’s had plenty of experience with big-budget adventures. You’d think his exposure to The Dark Knightand Inception would make his freshman directorial effort somewhat interesting, but the whole venture is instead unmemorable, pedestrian, and most surprisingly, dull. That dullness comes mainly courtesy of Johnny Depp in the lead as Will Caster channeling Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey to dismal results. Meanwhile Rebecca Hall and Paul Bettany’s characters deal with their inconsistent personalities that seem to vary scene by scene depending on what the lackluster script calls for.

There’s so much potential here in the story to do something smart, or even fun, perhaps even make a sci-fi tale about technology that would make Michael Crichton proud. But they can never quite decide what exactly they’re trying to accomplish with all the various ideas being tossed around. By the time it all escalates to include Johnny Depp controlling superhumans (because of course it does), it just becomes a Roger Corman flick without out the the B-movie charm. There’s some good stuff in here somewhere and occasionally some of that sporadically bubbles to the surface but it’s the kind of bland fare that Johnny Depp, and even previous films Wall Pfister was involved in, used to subvert instead of support.