Atlas – Another Forgettable Sci-Fi Vehicle (Early Review)

Atlas is Netflix’s latest original blockbuster starring one of their most reliable and consistent stars, Jennifer Lopez. Set in the distant future, Atlas Shepherd (Lopez), a brilliant but misanthropic data analyst with a deep distrust of artificial intelligence, joins a mission to capture Harlan (Liu), a renegade robot with whom she shared a mysterious past. When plans go awry, Atlas is left on her own and her only hope of stopping Harlan and saving humanity from AI is by trusting it. The film has generated a lot of negative buzz online ever since the first trailer dropped for a myriad of different reasons, mainly due to how artificial everything in it looked and unfortunately, it’s just that. While it certainly isn’t a contender for the worst film of the year, it is not a good sign when that’s about as positive one can be regarding a film that likely cost a fortune to make and release.

For the most part, Atlas feels like it was written and made by artificial intelligence, and it never feels like there were actual human beings behind the camera making many of the creative decisions. The film lacks just about everything that makes a great science fiction action adventure, and its attempts at heart, emotion or even comedy fall completely flat and feel incredibly forced. For a sci-fi as grand and epic in scale as this aspires to be, it feels surprisingly small scale. While the world is interesting, it barely builds it out and when it does, it’s done through big exposition dumps or elements pulled from much better films. Most of its visual effects range from pretty good to decent, however, there are also some that are truly terrible and completely unacceptable coming from a studio as large as Netflix. Though a film like this warrants having a ton of special effects and green screen, it becomes very distracting, having to constantly look at it. Also, it’s never fun when the film is essentially consists of actors standing around near or in front of a big green screen for almost 2-hours. There’s no reason why it needed to be as long as it was considering its simple and derivative premise. Meanwhile, some second act pacing issues did not help its case either.

Lopez and Liu are good actors and have impressed in the past but they don’t fit their characters at all and feel completely miscast as Atlas and Harlan, especially Liu who arguably delivers one of the worst villainous performances in recent memory. Not only will audiences fail to take Harlan seriously at any point, he simply lacks the kind of menace or intimidation factor that the film is clearly trying to build up. He isn’t an interesting villain at all, mainly due to the writing Liu is unfortunately saddled with and how little screen time he’s actually given by the end. Not to sound hyperbolic but it’s the type of performance that could potentially torpedo his career going forward. On the other hand, Lopez admittedly fares a lot better. That being said, she just doesn’t lend herself to or truly belong in a sci-fi action film like this, and it feels like a weird career choice. Good on her for taking a role like this and testing her range even if it’ll likely and hopefully be the last sci-fi she’s ever apart of.

While this review may read as all doom and gloom, one of the biggest highlights of the film was its action sequences that were pretty decent and entertaining to watch, at least in the moment. While they are full of CGI and don’t offer any sort of stakes or tension due to how weightless everything is, they still somewhat get the job done in the moment. Another highlight is a pair of inspired supporting performances from Mark Strong (General Jake Boothe) and Sterling K. Brown (Colonel Elias Banks), both of whom should have been given much more to do and a lot more screen time.

At the end of the day, Atlas is unfortunately another overproduced, forgettable, and lifeless Netflix original that will likely be forgotten in a matter of days if not hours. Some decent action scenes aside, this film has next to nothing to offer and even the usually reliable Jennifer Lopez found herself out of her element here. All things considered, maybe it will find an audience amongst hardcore sci-fi nerds, but considering Netflix’s latest track record when it comes to creating projects with any lasting impact, those prospects seem highly unlikely.

still courtesy of Netflix

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Connor Carey

www.connorsmoviereviews.com/