Atlas review

Jennifer Lopez takes aim at a sci-fi hat-trick with her latest film, Atlas. There’s some Terminator 2, Gravity and a heavy dose of Aliens in this sleepy, slog.

Instead of xenomorphs, the unstoppable enemy force is Artificial Intelligence led by Harlan (Simu Liu, Barbie). Harlan was created by scientist Val Shepherd (Lana Parrilla, 24), who was inspired by her young daughter, Atlas.

Naturally, the AI forces want to wipe out humanity prompting world leaders to unite. This global army is up to the challenge of averting extinction. Harlan flees the planet laying low for 28 years.

While that makes for an eventful opening act, it does lead to a slew of questions. What kind of basic programming does an AI have that it can’t come up with a new attack plan in nearly three decades? And there is exactly no chance a global peacekeeping force would stay vigilant for 28 years. Some governments can’t remember events that happened three years ago.

This does allow for the now adult Atlas (Lopez, Mother) to become obsessed with tracking down Harlan. She’s flamed out on becoming a ranger though General Boothe (a wasted Mark Strong) still believes in her. When Harlan’s number one henchman Casca (Abraham Popoola, Andor) pops up, it’s Atlas who immediately cracks the code to determine Harlan’s location.

Col. Elias Banks (Sterling K. Brown, American Fiction) is torn on Atlas’ ability to help the mission. Especially as she seems very reluctant to embrace the squad’s use of syncing up with AI mechs. This mirrors the confusion of screenwriters Aron Eli Coleite and Leo Sardarian who are torn on how capable they want to make Atlas.

They explain she’s a next level strategist as she defeats her computer chess program 71 straight times. But she’s clearly at a disadvantage not wanting to utilize the mechs…or simply being a soldier.

The mission to take down Harlan immediately goes south in an explosive sequence that Director Brad Peyton (Rampage) effectively mines for full chaos.

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It makes absolutely no sense that of this trained military force Atlas would be one of the survivors. As Atlas herself states, she’s an analyst and hardly a ranger. Ripley had experience battling a xenomorph so it made sense that she would quickly respond when the Colonial Marines got in trouble.

This leads to a sharp change in tone as Atlas is forced to partner with her AI mech, Smith (Gregory James Cohan, VelociPastor). At this point, the violent sci-fi adventure turns into The Iron Giant. Shifting to a sci-fi buddy comedy was a weird choice and the attempts to give Atlas some personal depth and growth moments feel forced.

As an action star, Lopez makes for a very solid rom com performer. This role is outside of Lopez’s wheelhouse as game as she might be to provide a nuanced, dramatic performance. At times it’s hard to distinguish her laughing from anguished crying. In some ways this is an isolated role much like Sandra Bullock’s Oscar nominated performance in Gravity. Bullock actually would have been excellent in this role.

Liu has a frustrating role that handcuffs all the charisma he brought to every scene in Barbie. But hey, playing a robot with a bladed arm worked well for Robert Patrick in Terminator 2 so why not give it a shot?

Brown gets to do more in his glorified cameo. It’s becoming an annoying trope in J-Lo action films that she’s paired with a likable black actor whose role simply seems to be to help Lopez’s character cross the finish line.

Peyton cobbles together one massive CGI-background of varying quality after another but fails to generate much excitement or thrills after the first big action sequence.

Will Atlas learn to trust Smith in order to be the ultimate fighting machine? You probably don’t need a fancy computer program to give you that answer. And you can probably find more creative ways to spend two hours this weekend too.

Rating: 4 out of 10

Atlas is now streaming on Netflix.

Photo Credit: Netflix