There are giant mechas, and then there are giant mechas. Giant Pacific Rim mechas/jaegers: yes, please. Giant whatever is happening in Atlas? Less so. The latest goofy-looking Netflix action movie stars Jennifer Lopez as a woman who just has to learn to trust an AI. Just has to! For the future of humanity.
Here’s the synopsis:
Atlas Shepherd (Lopez), a brilliant but misanthropic data analyst with a deep distrust of artificial intelligence, joins a mission to capture a renegade robot with whom she shares a mysterious past. But when plans go awry, her only hope of saving the future of humanity from AI is to trust it.
They had me at “misanthropic data analyst with a deep distrust of artificial intelligence,” but the rest of this … not so much. If the teaser were appealing, that would be one thing, but it’s a choppy mix of standard-issue dialogue, robot disaster chaos, and absolute lack of plot. It’s just 90-ish seconds of Jennifer Lopez Has a Very Bad Time in a Big Robot, which may or may not be to your liking, of course.
Atlas is written by Leo Sardarian (StartUp) and Aron Eli Coleite (Heroes) and directed by Brad Peyton, who is responsible for both San Andreas and Rampage. The cast also includes Simu Liu, Sterling K. Brown, Lana Parrilla, and Mark Strong, some of whom play heroes, and some of whom play androids.
Atlas crash-lands on Netflix on May 24th.
