Atlas Parent Guide

Emergent technologies inevitably have hiccups, but the issues humanity has encountered with artificial intelligence are more severe than expected. When a rogue intelligence called Harlan (Simu Liu) found a way to break his programming, he brought as many other intelligences with him as he could. Together, they butchered three million people before fleeing into space, waiting for an opportunity to return and finish the job.

Humans aren’t waiting passively to be butchered: they are ready to take the fight to the stars. Thanks to the work of intelligence analyst Atlas Shepherd (Jennifer Lopez), they have located Harlan on a remote planet blanketed by scanner-disrupting ion storms.

Finding him, as it turns out, is the easy part. As soon as Atlas and a squad of rangers in combat mechs (pods) turn up, they’re met with a brutal assault from Harlan’s forces. Everyone but Atlas is killed, and she is stuck in a combat mech she has no idea how to pilot. To be fully functional, the mech’s onboard AI, Smith (Gregory James Cohan), needs to synch with her brain but Atlas has a deep-seated distrust of AI. The seriousness of their circumstances demand that she rethink some of her feelings, but Atlas is a stubborn woman, and they’re short on time before Harlan finds and kills them.

Bland and overburdened with familiar tropes and dated visual design, Atlas struggles to hold up the weight of its two-hour runtime. The dialogue bounces between dull exposition and seeming non-sequiturs, which is so fun for the audience, and the acting doesn’t exactly draw us in either. “That’s alright”, I hear you saying, “I’m just here for the big robot mech fights”. Bad news there, as there aren’t many of those. Worse, you can really tell which scenes they tried to save money on, and the CGI varies wildly from scene to scene. Honestly, I’d prefer it if they made everything look a little bit worse. At least it would be consistent.

In fairness, I don’t suppose Atlas can afford to be “a little bit worse”, since it’s already riding the fence between “mediocre” and “aggravating” like a prize jockey. Anyone considering this sci-fi flick for family viewing is unlikely to be thrilled with the frequent (if usually bloodless) violence and regular cussing, drawbacks not exactly offset by the complete absence of sex or substance use. The problem this movie has is audience familiarity with the subject matter. Many movies have been made about the ethical issues around artificial life forms, and a number of them are excellent. It’s hard to spend two hours slogging through this when it keeps reminding you that you could click on Blade Runner instead and have a much better time.