Overview
A brilliant counterterrorism analyst with a deep distrust of AI discovers it might be her only hope when a mission to capture a renegade robot goes awry.
Produced and starring Jennifer Lopez, Atlas is a new Netflix sci-fi event movie that touches on some interesting ideas, but then fumbles the whole thing with a lacklustre and inconsistent plotting that feel all too familiar.
Lopez plays Atlas Shepherd, an analyst with a deep distrust of artificial intelligence, who is called up to help the military track down the rogue AI terrorist Harlan (Simu Liu). Harlan, 28 years earlier, had led a machine revolution against humanity that led to millions dead before an international coalition sent Harlan fleeing into the void of space, vowing to return one day. Atlas finds that she needs to bond with an AI controlled power suit in order to capture Harlan, leading to internal conflict as old memories and past guilt come to the surface. Can Atlas learn to love again in order to….sorry, I mean can Atlas learn to trust the AI in order to save mankind?
So, a little bit of Terminator, a touch of Aliens, and a huge dollop of rom-com drama combine to deliver a film that looks good at times, but never really seems to know what it is doing. With director Brad Peyton in charge, who has delivered such films as Rampage, San Andreas, and Journey 2, you can kind of see why the end result is just a flashy, generic mess of ideas that never feel fully formed.
Right from the early parts, when we find out that Atlas distrusts AI, I found myself puzzled as to why she lives in a home that is run by an alexa style of AI system. In addition, humanity was at threat from an AI revolution, yet seemingly then spread the use of AI even further in the aftermath because, well, reasons – the only fob off excuse being that this new AI is somehow “better” and so won’t go rogue. Dismissive elements like that didn’t wash with me, and left me simply puzzled instead.
Lopez is great, that is worth saying, and the slow building romance…. I mean trust between her and the AI who controls her power suit, Smith (voiced well enough by Gregory James Cohan) plays well in a similar manner to buddy cop films of the past decades, and indeed Alien Nation which had a similar distrust aspect. But the film around this just feels under-thought and under-developed, resulting in just your typical run-of-the-mill Netflix offering that outstayed its welcome just past the halfway point.
If you want a film that feels like it could have tackled some grand ideas, but drops the ball multiple times, but does boast some decent performances and a few thrilling set pieces, this might just about appease.