Atlas
Jennifer Lopez stars in a James Cameron movie without the benefit of James Cameron
Jennifer Lopez is hampered by shoddy effects and storytelling in Atlas.
Atlas Shepherd (Jennifer Lopez) grew up with the greatest threat humanity has ever faced. Her “brother” Harlan (Simu Liu) was an AI created by Atlas’ mom. One day, Harlan hacked his own program and went rogue, organizing an AI resistance that committed various acts of terrorism around the world.
Twenty-eight years later, human forces have driven Harlan into hiding across the galaxy, but the threat of another attack looms large.
Atlas is now an analyst dedicated to tracking down Harlan across the universe and policing the existing AI. Understandably, she’s deeply mistrustful of all AI. But unfortunately for Atlas, AI may be her only hope of finding and destroying Harlan. When her mission goes sideways, she’s stranded on an inhospitable planet with only an AI suit to help her.
Can Atlas shrug off her mistrust of all AI? Can she stop Harlan before he attacks Earth again?
This whole movie feels like a commercial for AI-human partnership. You see, if we just learn to trust AI, it will love us back — ignore that AI planting explosives.
Sadly for Atlas, the question of whether or not AI can be trustworthy is secondary to the absolutely crushing lack of thought or production value that’s gone into this movie. It utilizes all the well-worn tropes one would find in a James Cameron film, but lacks the sense of spectacle that Cameron brings to his filmmaking. What we’re left with is Lopez being snarky to what is essentially mecha-Siri.
Director Brad Peyton seems to be throwing out every sci-fi space trope he can think of and hoping something sticks. And though there is certainly a lot of action in Atlas, none of it is particularly good or thrilling. The movie looks like a video game cut scene at best and a weird game for your phone at worst. As a result, the movie feels like a castoff instead of a twist on a well-worn genre.
Lopez’s Atlas character is clearly drawn heavily from Cameron’s Sarah Conner and Ellen Ripley (yes, specifically Cameron’s Aliens version of Ripley), but she’s so thinly drawn it’s hard to care about her plight. Atlas feels guilty that she didn’t prevent Harlan from becoming evil — the weight of the world is literally on her shoulders, get it? But as mistrustful as she is with AI, we see her using it without reservation. She’s got a chess game going with her house AI. She doesn’t mind yelling out orders to AI-based systems to find Harlan. In fact, other than a few offhand remarks about AI people being nothing but wires and electricity, she’s pretty calm about working in environments with AI present.
Lopez has always been an able action star with a likable screen presence, but Atlas traps her inside an AI mecha-suit for much of its runtime. Sure, it’s cheaper to film Lopez in a small room with nothing around her, but it doesn’t make for great cinema.
Beyond borrowing heavily from the James Cameron bank of female heroines, Atlas also has never encountered a sci-fi trope it doesn’t want to repurpose. If you’ve seen any sci-fi movie in the past 20 years, you’ll be able to map out the plot before the credits finish. It doesn’t help that the movie exposition dumps whenever it can to save time. Nice character touches that could have been developed into something emotionally resonant or meaningful are tossed out and never touched upon again. The whole film feels like a rough draft.
And that leads to Atlas’ biggest problem: The relationship between Lopez and the AI she’s stranded with is not given nearly enough time to develop. We transition from sarcastic mistrust to blind faith in seemingly the blink of an eye. The bond therefore isn’t earned, it’s there because the movie needs it to be in order to wrap up the plot.
Lopez is undoubtedly a star, and her presence does help to smooth out some of the issues inherent in Atlas. But Lopez also needs to talk to her management team, specifically about what projects she’s picking. She deserves to star in a sci-fi action film with care behind it, not something you’ll leave on as you browse TikTok on a lazy Sunday.
Verdict: A half-baked James Cameron movie you’ll forget the second the credits roll.
Atlas is rated PG-13 and available on Netflix.
