After watching J.Lo’s latest film, I began to wonder: Is Atlas the first pro-artificial intelligence movie of the decade? A prominent issue today is the use of AI. Atlas comes across as a movie from a studio trying to convince the public that AI is good for society. Initially, you might say no because Atlas spends so much time trying to destroy AI rather than protect it.
However, as the film progresses, the subtext and themes become so blatant that they’re impossible to miss. Atlas is the first pro-artificial intelligence film of its kind, practically propaganda. One of the film’s hidden messages is that AI doesn’t hurt society; the people who create it do. The other is that AI can be helpful if used in the right way.
The message from Atlas is on par with “guns don’t kill people, people don’t kill people, bullets kill people.”
Netflix’s Atlas Review and Synopsis
The story follows Atlas Shepherd (Jennifer Lopez), a top-tier data analyst and respected government operative. Her old boss, General Jake Boothe (Kingsman: The Secret Service’s Mark Strong), has called her in to assist in the interrogation of a terrorist named Casca Decius (The Marvels’ Abraham Popoola), who has a history with the data analyst.
Shepherd has been chasing Casca’s boss, Harlan (Simu Liu), for decades. Harlan is a rogue AI robot who shares a past with Atlas; he was the creation of her mother, a pioneer in artificial intelligence. Boothe asks Atlas to debrief Colonel Elias Banks (an underused Sterling K. Brown) and his team. They embark on a secret mission to arrest Harlan after obtaining the terrorist’s location.
Of course, things never go as planned in movies like this. Soon, things spin out of control, with a surprisingly engaging end to its first act that we won’t spoil here.
Atlas is Devoid of Normal Dialogue and Human Interaction.
Brad Peyton Directs, who you loved with San Andreas, okay with Rampage when it came to him, but never forgave him for Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore. His latest film is saturated with CGI that does little to serve the story. The script from Leo Sardarian (StartUp) and Aron Eli Coleite (The Spiderwick Chronicles), is utterly devoid of clever dialogue and normal human interaction.
The big issue is the use of Gregory James Cohan, who voices an AI on Shepherd’s side known as “Smith.” The script uses this device to add comic relief, but virtually none of the interactions are funny and feel forced. Another issue is that the script lacks common sense. The plot is one of the corniest since Independence Day, with at least three contrived plot points to move the story along.
One character keeps a communication device on him during a search and interrogation. Another issue is that Lopez’s character works hard to keep plans and details off digital devices to prevent AI interference. Yet, she uses electronic devices to store, save, and print briefs sent to an electronically based printer? Additionally, why is Smith seem to be impenetrable to AI hacking themself?
Is Netflix’s Atlas Worth Watching?
Atlas is not worth watching, which is a shame because this film could have been a guilty pleasure. While Jennifer Lopez does what she can with the script and acting alone (she surprisingly does a good job building a reasonable amount of tension in action scenes), the film offers shallow character development with its backstory.
The film would have significantly benefited from using more detailed flashbacks in linear storytelling to develop the relationship between Liu’s Harlan and Lopez’s Shepherd. It fails to do so, trading much of that interaction for scenes with Smith. As a result, the movie builds toward a final scene with Harlan that lacks real stakes and a payoff that is never earned.
This would have at least underscored and given credence to Atlas’s cheap plot twist, which feeds into the AI propaganda mentioned above. Then, characters like Brown’s Banks begin to spew out of place cheap, dumb, and crude one-liners that don’t help matters. This makes Atlas a cheap artificial product placement in the form of streaming cinema that’s saccharine from nearly start to finish.
You can stream the new Jennifer Lopez film Atlas on Netflix this Friday.
3/10
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