With local schools out for the summer and a holiday weekend in mind, I decided to check out Netflix’s “Atlas” film that dropped last Friday.
Even while writing this review Monday morning, the movie is ranked at #1 on the streaming website and I’m shocked.
If you’re someone that enjoys science fiction films for the sake of them then you’re going to enjoy this.
Even with its fairly solid cast, the storyline leverages the same tropes we’ve seen done better before by other films like the “Terminator” series, “Wall-E” (2008), “I, Robot” (2004), and the original Matrix trilogy.
I’m not even going to touch how shoddy the CGI renders in some sections of the film, but suffice to say that this isn’t a movie I’m giving high marks.
Atlas is a 2024 American science fiction action film directed by Brad Peyton and written by Leo Sardarian and Aron Eli Coleite.
The film stars Jennifer Lopez, Simu Liu, Sterling K. Brown, Lana Parrilla, Gregory James Cohan, and Mark Strong.
While it clocks in at two hours long, the movie is rated PG-13 for strong sci-fi violence, action, bloody images, and strong language.
International Coalition of Nations (ICN) Analyst Atlas Shepherd (Lopez) searches for fugitive AI terrorist Harlan (Liu).
Harlan led an AI rebellion 28 years prior that left 3 million humans dead before newly formed ICN military forces sent him fleeing into outer space.
After one of Harlan’s agents is captured and interrogated, Atlas discovers that Harlan has escaped to a planet in the Andromeda Galaxy, and insists that she accompanies the military mission to find and capture it.
Moments before the mech-equipped ICN Rangers descend to the planet, Harlan’s drones attack their orbiting ship.
In order to survive, Atlas is forced to enter a mech herself and falls to the planet as the ship is destroyed.
Atlas manages to gain basic control of the mech despite her distrust of the onboard AI, who introduces itself as Smith (Cohan).
Atlas orders Smith to head to the planned drop point, where she finds the rest of the rangers dead.
She reluctantly agrees to directly interface her mind with Smith, allowing for greater control of the mech.
As they journey towards a rescue pod, Atlas and Smith begin to bond, and she reveals to it that her mother (Parrilla) was the one who created Harlan.
Although running low on power, Atlas convinces Smith to head to Harlan’s base in order to tag it for a long-range strike.
However, after placing a beacon at the base, Smith is hacked and quickly disabled.
Atlas is captured and brought to Harlan, who plans to destroy most of humanity and give the chosen survivors a chance to thrive under AI guidance.
To do so, Harlan had lured the military to the planet in order to steal the ship – and its carbon bombs, which would burn Earth’s atmosphere and render humanity nearly extinct.
With a predictable storyline and so much whining from Atlas, this movie clearly shows why it’s gone straight to streaming instead of a cinema debut.
Overall, I found the movie to be a weird slog of used-up tropes and only slightly chuckle-inducing banter – it’s a fail for me.
All I can say is that if you don’t have Netflix, you dodged this dud!
