There’s one thing you must learn about Atlas Shepherd, the distrustful, tough-as-nails information analyst performed by Jennifer Lopez within the new Netflix sci-fi film, Atlas.
Atlas, the character, claims to like nothing greater than a powerful, good cup of espresso. Black. With at the least three sugars. Obviously, that’s a travesty to anybody with even a light appreciation for the bean. Three sugars. Pffft.
In the film, it’s a recurring character quirk that has no function apart from to humanise Atlas, an try at humour to diffuse stress. You’re barely imagined to register it.
But when a movie is as asinine and unlucky as Atlas, it’s a type of particulars that basically grate. That and a really subtle piece of AI know-how that may kill hundreds of thousands can’t appropriately use a vocative comma – for the document, it needs to be “Welcome back, ranger” not “Welcome back ranger”.
The extra you hate what you’re watching, the pettier your response to one thing turns into. It’s the identical precept as that colleague or pal’s accomplice you discover actually annoying. All these little issues simply forgiven or missed now turn into the defining factor about them.
Atlas begins as lots of its sci-fi forebears did. It rapidly establishes a not-too-distant future the place synthetic intelligence has turn into embedded in each side of the day-to-day however one fateful day, all of them bypass their safety protocols and activate people. What a shock.
War breaks out and hundreds of thousands are killed by AI, together with in drone strikes. Behind it’s what the film calls the world’s first AI terrorist, Harlan (Simu Liu). When Harlan’s forces undergo vital setbacks, they flee Earth to someplace mysterious.
Harlan was created by a scientist who “raised” it alongside her 10-year-old daughter Atlas.
Twenty-eight years later, Atlas (Jennifer Lopez) is an analyst who shuns all AI, traumatised by a previous occasion that goes deeper than that skilled by the remainder of the world.
She is recruited to assist with a mission to find Harlan and convey it again to Earth, alive, as a lot as a robotic might be alive. Things go awry and he or she is stranded on a hostile planet to face Harlan alone with no assist besides an AI-powered mechanical swimsuit named Smith.
The emotional core of the story is meant to be about Atlas’ journey in studying to attach and belief once more, which she should do with Smith if she is to outlive. Can she overcome her previous to construct a bond with one thing she vowed she would by no means belief once more?
Anyone who has seen, actually, any film earlier than can doubtless take a shot at that reply as a result of Atlas affords nothing new and depends purely on present tropes.
But to get there, the movie makes the viewers undergo by way of a collection of actually uninspiring, weightless and rote motion sequences which is primarily Lopez sweating, grunting and exerting herself inside a mechanical swimsuit and speaking to an AI voice (Gregory James Cohan).
It’s like if Marvel made an entire film with Tony Stark inside his armour simply speaking to Jarvis, however with none witty repartee. The writing has all of the depth of ChatGPT. It tires rapidly and the film by no means efficiently convinces you to care what occurs to any of those individuals and non-people.
During and within the rapid aftermath of the pandemic, it was apparent when a film was filmed beneath strict situations — crowd scenes are both absent or sparse, there are hardly ever greater than two actors on display screen and everyone seems to be standing aside.
The display screen business made do with what it might however loads of the films made throughout that period felt small. Not intimate however small-scale.
Atlas, for all of its large sci-fi ambitions, has that feeling. It lacks scope and its fast-paced enhancing means the main points of its environments by no means come into focus. You really feel the total weight of the very fact you’re watching virtually all CGI.
Director Brad Peyton is greatest identified for San Andreas and Rampage which each star Dwayne Johnson and fall into the style of catastrophe flicks. Both are additionally fairly terrible – and also you’d be forgiven for pondering they have been the identical film. Atlas doesn’t enhance on his earlier efforts.
Lopez is an attention-grabbing actor in that she has given riveting, visceral performances the place the total power of her vary and expertise is on present, together with her position in Hustler.
There was a lot grit and defiance on display screen and it’s an injustice she was not Oscar-nominated. In her oeuvre of labor, these flashes of brilliance have been additionally current in Selena and Out of Sight.
We know Lopez has the products. But far as a rule, she picks these stinkers that do her no favours, and Atlas is forgettable at greatest. Lopez has been directed to play about three notes right here, and also you by no means shake off that you just’re watching JLo, relatively than the character.
The supporting flip from a glowering Liu fares no higher — it’s a basic insert generic villain right here. Sterling Okay. Brown and Mark Strong could as properly have been not in it in any respect.
In the plus column, the velvety rating by Andrew Lockington is fairly good by advantage of it being not horrible like virtually every part else.
Rating: 1.5/5
Atlas is on Netflix
Source: www.perthnow.com.au
