Atlas is one of the perks of being Jennifer Lopez. After betting on herself creatively with her extended music videos earlier this year, she can recoup some of the monetary hit by convincing Netflix to let her star in one of their new films. And even though Atlas isn’t very good, JLo’s involvement ensures it’ll bring viewers to the streamer, allowing Lopez more opportunities to creatively cook in the future. One mediocre sci-fi film for a fascinating album creative expression? Fair trade, everytime.
In a theme that’s going to become omnipresent very soon in the movie landscape, artificial intelligence has become mankind’s greatest threat. AI Harlan Shepherd (Simu Liu) has killed almost a billion people…until human forces drove him off planet. 28 years later, AI spies have started showing up on earth again. Atlas (JLo), who’s the top Harlan specialist on Earth, finds his location somewhere in the Andromeda Galaxy. She convinces General Boothe (Mark Strong) and Colonel Elias Banks (Sterling K. Brown) to go with them on the mission to take out Harlan once and for all. I’m sure you’ll all be surprised that the AI distrusting Atlas is forced into a machine with an AI named Smith (voiced by Gregory Cohan) she needs to partner with in order to take Harlan out and get back to Earth safely.
Despite the trendy AI trappings, the movie’s titled Atlas for a reason. This is a Jennifer Lopez vehicle first and foremost. At this point I’ve watched a lot of mediocre JLo movies, but this time it’s not really her fault. I guess she just needed to be acting alone all the time? I don’t know what that means, but I want to see more of it from the talented Lopez. The best part of the movie is where Atlas is trapped in an armored suit on Harlan’s planet with Smith the AI, and the two slowly have to learn to trust each other. It’s not Earth shattering character development, but there are worse ways to spend time than just being zoomed in on Jennifer Lopez’s face for like an hour, with her abrasive sarcasm confusing the hell out of an AI that doesn’t understand it. In Atlas, small and silly works best.
Because when Brad Peyton’s movie goes big, the movie stays silly, despite trying to be deadly serious; the unintentional comedy is off the charts. Sterling K. Brown is an incredible actor…I wish the movie new that, because he’s in approximately 4 minutes of this film as a plot device, great use for the guy who brought us to tears in This Is Us. Poor Simu Liu get’s nothing to play other than generically maniacal and cold: his backstory says more about JLo than anything significant about sentience of AI. The movie comes to the conclusion that all self-aware AI’s would want to convert themselves into human form, in order to…what exactly? Peyton clearly doesn’t trust the audience to follow along Jennifer Lopez fighting computers/robots, but in overly humanizing AI’s reveals that he has put no thought into how an AI would try to preserve itself. The action setpieces were so dark and disjointed I just picked up my phone and listened to JLo to tell me when they were over, or for some funny (intentional or not) fight between Atlas and Smith to keep my attention, me laughing hardest when they immediately explain what just happened after the fight to everyone who wasn’t paying attention during it.
A couple final notes on Atlas. Peace to the fallen is a great line: I also would have repeated it 5 or 6 times. Also, I think the sneaky MVP is Gregory Cohan, the voice of the AI Smith. None of you may have heard of him before, understandable. However, if you really want to see the range of this guy, check out his incredible work as the VelociPastor, one of the few joys I had during the pandemic in 2020. I mean come on, where else can you get characters as incredibly written as Frankie Mermaid?