Netflix’s new sci-fi thriller, Atlas , which debuts May 24, begins when a teacher challenges Pistik to an answer, and the nerd stutters in shock about the lesson he’s read twice but hasn’t had enough energy to finish it properly. What Atlas produces in the first few minutes is poorly received educational material, as we learn from news reports and confusing, jumbled scenes that we live in a world where artificial intelligence has been unleashed, shaped, and caused catastrophic damage to humanity. In this world lives Atlas Shepard (Jennifer Lopez), a gifted analyst, who long ago tracks down the renegade android Harlan (Simu Liu), who caused millions of deaths before escaping into space.
Nowadays, with the growing fear of AI and the number of its abuses, Netflix could have come up with Atlas, but in the end, the streaming service managed to produce another production reminiscent of the trashy films of the Asylum studio, and the situation with Titanic continues to get worse almost halfway through the game.
There have been plenty of sci-fi movies in recent years that have presented the future in exciting, visually clever ways, including Winged Bounty Hunter 2049, any of the Planet of the Apes movies, or even Furiosa. Compared to these, Atlas is an eyesore at first glance, as when they first show us the future world, everything looks cluttered and cartoonish. This ridiculously colorful animation only gets worse as the new Netflix movie progresses, whether it’s the depiction of an alien planet or the uninspired final showdown. Atlas is a movie where every moment of the ugly, rebellious moon feels like a beautiful masterpiece.
If we mention the adjective ridiculous, then this word can be used not only for special effects, but also for the main character, Jennifer Lopez, who has already proven herself as one of the most terrible actresses of our time with the thriller Mother. If you can call the singer at all a person who seems to have set herself the goal of making fun of behaving as rudely as possible until 2025. As an unreliable analyst, all of Lopez's facial expressions, grimaces and indignant screams look like he was thrown from the wreckage. In addition, the writers could not develop his character properly, the more we learn about Atlas's “tragic” past, the weaker the main character becomes.
As for the cast, producer Brad Peyton made a huge mistake by wasting Shang-Chi, this time the villain Simu Liu, in this Netflix film. We barely see anything of Simu Liu’s Harlan in the first hour, and when he shows up to terrorize Atlas, there’s little acknowledgement or catharsis.
It's a bit ironic that for a movie that draws attention to the dangers of artificial intelligence and tries to be some kind of educational story, all the dialogue, all the moments and twists in the script seem as if they were written by ChatGPT.
Atlas, when it’s most interesting, is the biggest. The Netflix film reaches its worst when Jennifer Lopez’s AI-shy character begins to befriend a robotic consciousness controlling a mechanical machine. There are a joke or two that Atlas could have delivered, but unfortunately, you can’t find much more entertainment in this production with a magnifying glass, thanks to the fact that the scenes feel haphazard, there’s no coherence or introduction-negotiation-conclusion to the film’s story. And the whole mess is badly undermined by the fact that the characters being thrown at us are all paper mache.
Yes, another really bad Netflix sci-fi, but they’re making it a sport, so there’s no surprise. Even if we don’t consider Jennifer Lopez incapable of any kind of improvement when it comes to acting. Atlas really does look like the whole thing was recorded from scratch, and the director said “It’s good that way!” with an exclamation mark, leaving his uninspired performance to the protagonist. If that’s the case, at least the crew did well because they finished filming quickly.
However, viewers who were expecting some kind of miracle from Jennifer Lopez had a bad time, because we have never seen such a suffering, soulless, vulgar here and there, trying to pretend to be smart, ultimately neither exciting nor funny, nor the amazing TV “trend” of late. Dear Netflix, please give us back the two hours of our lives! Although looking at Netflix movies of the past year and a half… two hours is often what they owe us.
3/10
The Atlas can be watched with Hungarian dubbing and subtitles on Netflix.
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