★ | Brad Peyton | Out now on Netflix
Atlas is very, very similar to the game Titanfall 2 from 2016. In the latter, the player is forced to pilot a Titan, an AI-controlled mech, that doesn’t belong to them through hostile territory, while learning how to trust in the process. In Atlas, Jennifer Lopez plays an analyst forced into piloting an AI-controlled mech through hostile territory while learning to trust at the same time.
One of these is an inventive, emotional thrill-ride that plays to the strengths of the genre’s archetypes while still delivering a satisfying story of friendship and sacrifice. The other is Atlas.
Lopez plays Atlas Shepherd, a traumatized analyst who spends her days rejecting society decades after an AI-uprising nearly wiped out humanity. When she receives word that Harlan (Simu Liu), the android her family built, and the leader of the uprising, has resurfaced on a distant planet, Atlas joins the hunting party in hopes of making amends. Naturally, things go astray, and the AI-fearing Atlas is paired with Smith, a combat mech with a snarky personality. If either of them hope to survive the hostile planet and overwhelming odds, they have to learn the power of friendship along the way.
None of this is new ground, and not one iota of it is novel. That shouldn’t matter. Better movies have come out of less. Yet Atlas is so determined to not even try that watching it becomes a chore. Every cliché is met with open arms; every trite bit of dialogue emphasized to the point of exasperation. The banter between Atlas and Smith is particularly dire. Lopez sounds like she’s rehearsing with a stand-in, which might not be far from the truth. The homework is visible in every frame. You get what director Peyton is going for, which makes the result that much more disappointing.
The action, effects, and set pieces are similarly ho-hum. They’re not spectacular enough to make up for the deficiencies elsewhere, yet none are so outright bad the film would leap into true B-movie territory. Instead, it plays out like a direct-to-video throwback of the 90s. Back when studios had little faith in a cobbled together hanger-on. For every Mission to Mars, there was a Red Planet. Atlas has the energy of a meal ticket made because there was an empty slot in the release schedule.
It’s an easy film to watch, because so much of it is inconsequential. It’s an even easier film to forget.
Toisto 