There is a profound, if obscure difference between those films that are passionate about good ideas, and those who merely recognize them. The former will carefully parse and dissect these ideas in ways that are tactfully thoughtful, if not innovative. The latter, meanwhile, will pat themselves on the back merely for acknowledging the possibility of nuance without actually employing any, and call it a day.
Atlas is the current baton-carrier of Netflix’s lackluster sci-fi movie streak, and a culprit of the latter category. Indeed, Atlas had all the pieces it needed to succeed within its reach — and the fact that one can still recognize that about the film is not something that should be entirely downplayed. Unfortunately, “recognize” is the word of the moment here, and Atlas‘ script was all too happy to recognize a promising concept, only to cheaply waterlog it over the course of the film’s two-hour runtime.
Atlas stars Jennifer Lopez as Atlas Shepherd, a groundbreaking data analyst who hates humans and hates robots. She is recruited to help capture Harlan, a highly advanced AI terrorist who’s hellbent on waging a cataclysmic war against humanity, and with whom Atlas shares a personal history. When a pre-emptive strike by Harlan leaves Atlas stranded in enemy territory, she must form a reluctant partnership (and neural link-up) with Smith, an AI-powered mechsuit that may prove to be Atlas’ last hope, in more ways than one.
To put it bluntly, Atlas is not a good protagonist, partially because Atlas seems confused as to how her character arc fits with its more thematic aspects. In the fringes of lazy character exposition and clumsily describing the action of the film with its dialogue, the story of Atlas is one where she must learn how to trust others. Ideally, Atlas would have used this starting point as a springboard to expand upon the idea of how we relate to each other, and invite a deeper examination of transhumanism as the next evolutionary stage of humanity, which Atlas’ set dressing of an AI-abundant future could play with immaculately.
That’s just one direction it could have gone; the problem is that Atlas doesn’t really go in much of a direction at all. Beyond the fact that we’re introduced to Atlas so unnaturally, the film doesn’t spend enough meaningful time with her to make her arc feel cohesive, or earn any of its emotional beats; any moment so much as graced with a hint of philosophical or thematic weight is quickly pushed aside in favor of a sarcastic back-and-forth, or a lazy joke about how our current, real-life technology is ancient to them. Tantalizingly, the question of whether AI counts as “life” is one that Atlas and Smith discuss, but just when it’s starting to sound like something other than a Facebook comments section, we move on from it. All that to say that Lopez can only do so much here, but insofar as there’s a good way to portray Atlas, she pulls her weight.
The case of Sterling K. Brown is a different sort of misfire, however; there’s no denying the Academy Award nominee’s talent, which makes it all the more curious that he was wasted on a character like Colonel Elias Banks, who leads the campaign against Harlan. Banks never dramatically owns a space, nor is he ever the conduit through which we can engage with the film empathetically, nor does he get to have any particularly good back and forth with another character; three things that have long proven to be Brown’s bread and butter. Maybe he just did Atlas for fun, but the film nevertheless fails to serve him, and he does little to serve the film in turn.
Simu Liu, on the other hand, who portrays Harlan, holds Atlas‘ villain together quite well. Unfortunately, the biggest boon for Liu’s performance is that he doesn’t get enough screentime to fall victim to the film’s meek writing; as an idea, Harlan is a very interesting, but in practice, he’s a budget Ultron. In a better version of Atlas, Harlan could have been a the crux for some fascinating tension in the realm of “transhumanism may be the next step of human evolution, but we very clearly haven’t fully conquered the current step that we’re on.” That same version probably would have had Atlas embody that philosophical humility, which would subsequently deepen the disconnect that also happens to be motivating Harlan’s genocidal tendencies.
And even if all Atlas wanted was to be a big, loud, action-packed sci-fi blockbuster, that potential is still squandered almost entirely. Shortly after the film begins are we introduced to Harlan’s henchman, Casca Vix (played by Abraham Popoola); an imposing, bulletproof robot who takes down military personnel—using mostly his bare hands—in a shoddily-shot combat scene. One might hope for his distinct physical might and combat approach to be explored a bit more cleverly as the film goes on, but Atlas‘ action is mostly resigned to generic sci-fi firefights where a few creative kills are balanced out by visual effects that are, at best, aggressively tolerable (although, Harlan’s preferred form of combat is admittedly kind of neat).
In summary, despite being named after the Greek Titan who holds up the sky, Atlas is unceremoniously crushed under the weight of its script, which manages a storytelling no-no hat trick; explaining who the protagonist is rather than letting her be a protagonist, relieving oneself of any intellectual responsibility by telling unfunny jokes, and trying to fire the pathos gun without making sure the proverbial (but also not so proverbial) safety was off.
Moreover, it’s regrettably clear that Atlas was far more interested in giving the illusion that it was participating in deep, timely conversation rather than actually participating in it, and considering the very legitimate mileage its story could have had in this space, it’s a unique disappointment indeed.
