Another year, another J-Lo Netflix movie. She’s still kicking tail in this one, and she still has a lot of baggage like she did in The Mother, but things have to warm up first. At least she has a real name this time around.
Atlas has grown up with an AI android named Harlan, who was her mother’s creation, but she’s not keen on AI and doesn’t trust them as far as she can throw them. Well, at least that’s what she says. Having an Alexa-like AI in her house comes in handy for chess games and waking her up in the morning, not to mention making her a good Americano. She seems a little frazzled and traumatized by something, but won’t share what.
Then Atlas finds out Harlan plans on destroying the human race and has a base on a planet in the Andromeda Galaxy. Naturally Atlas has to come along on the mission to take him out, because even though she’s a data analyst and not a soldier, she knows Harlan better than anyone else.
When they get to the planet, though, everything falls completely apart. Harlan’s forces attack the vessel, which carries a whole fleet of mechs, and everyone has to evacuate in them, including Atlas, who doesn’t want anything to do with the mechs and doesn’t even know how to operate them.
That all changes very quickly when Atlas doesn’t have any choice but to bond with her mech, and the success of the mission depends on how fast she can do it. Her mech is named Smith, and he wants to know everything, from whether or not Atlas prefers pie or cake to what she loves most in life. Atlas is extremely reluctant, but she also wants to take out Harlan, who thinks nothing of probing people’s brains for whatever he wants.
Atlas is definitely a mixed bag. The title character can be annoyingly neurotic, but then again, she has an emotional journey to take. Smith is a pretty understanding mech, but he’s also persistent, and there are a lot of exposition scenes between he and Atlas. It’s necessary, but it can also slow the story down.
There are a ton of nods to The Matrix and Avatar, including an agent named Casca who can’t seem to stay dead. I know he’s supposed to be like Agent Smith but it doesn’t work. He’s just kinda there. And as tempting as it is, there are no scenes of Smith malfunctioning and telling Atlas he can’t open the pod doors like a certain other AI entity we could mention. Smith is faithful to a fault and never blames Atlas for any of his mechanical troubles. Oh well.
A lot of the movie feels a little bit claustrophobic, because Atlas spends about two-thirds of the movie in Smith’s cockpit. Apparently it’s easy to move around freely in there, although it doesn’t look like it from the outside. Smith has even got a food dispensary that issues cubes of macrobiotic sustenance. They taste terrible and look like little brown lollipops.
The scenery on the Andromeda planet looks pretty spectacular, with lots of glowy vegetation right out of Tron, although some of the flowers look like those pictures of the Coronavirus we’re all so familiar with, and those are the flowers everyone gushes over the most.
All in all, I came out of the movie feeling sort of “meh.” It could definitely be worse, but it’s too full of sci-fi retread to be much fun and it definitely drags. Still, it’s not a completely terrible popcorn flick.
Atlas is currently streaming on Netflix. Rated PG-13.
My grade: C
Principal Cast: Jennifer Lopez, Simu Liu, Sterling K. Brown, Gregory James Cohan, Abraham Popoola, Lana Parrilla, Mark Strong, Briella Guiza, Adia Smith Eriksson, Logan Hunt, Jared Shimabukuro, Ashley J. Hicks, Paul Ganus, Zoe Boyle, Howland Wilson, Justin Walker White, Michaelangelo Hyeon, Gloria Cole
Directed by Brad Peyton.
Written by Leo Sardarian and Aron Eli Coleite.