Atlas Movie Review

  

Atlas

Synopsis: A bleak sounding future where an AI soldier is determined to end humanity.

Director: Brad Peyton
Stars: Jennifer Lopez, Simu Liu, Sterling K. Brown & Mark Strong
Runtime: 1 hour 58 mins
Genre: Sci Fi Action Adventure
 
Atlas is the third picture in the multi-project production deal between Lopez's Nuyorican Productions and Netflix. Directed by Brad Peyton (Rampage, San Andreas) this movie serves as the first foray into sci-fi for the 54-year old singer, actress and dancer. 

As for the movie, it's been five years in the making, so did it pay off? Let's break it down..
 
Story and Plot

Atlas Shepherd (Lopez) is a brilliant agent with a deep distrust of A.I. After crash landing whilst on a mission to track down Harlan Shepherd (Liu) a rogue robot, she has to trust the friendly AI in her mech-suit called an "ark" in order to survive and complete her mission.
 
My overall thoughts...

Atlas which the director himself has called "Cast Away in space" is about as far away from the classic Robert Zemeckis 2000 movie as you can get. In concept perhaps, but certainly not in execution. 

Atlas (which I nearly stopped watching several times) is a truly awful movie.

There is a kernel of a good idea somewhere, but what we get is a piss poor video game of a movie with phoned in performances, terrible VFX (Some of the CGI is okay), predictable story with a clunky script. This movie is all about A.I and it feels like it was written by A.I as well.
I didn't buy the story, the world and the characters, nothing felt real and it left me unengaged on many levels. 

My expectations were low and they were met. 
 
Cast

Whilst Lopez needn't trouble herself with writing an Oscars acceptance speech, she has always been a very committed performer. Whether that be dancing, singing or even acting. Sorry to say but Lopez's roles in the last five years have been nothing but vanity projects. 
Whilst I enjoyed her in Hustlers, recent years have seen such duds and misfires as Marry Me, Shotgun Wedding and The Mother. For me Lopez is primarily a dancer who can sing and likes to act, she is not an actor who happens to be able to dance and sing. 

In Atlas, Lopez reportedly spent eight weeks in a huge gimble on a empty soundstage and turns out her performance was as empty as that soundstage. She was really bad. It may have been the turgid script by Leo Sardarian & Aron Eli Coleite but it just felt like she was playing dress up. Another vanity project allowing her to tick off sci-fi as another genre. I didn't buy her in the role at all.

Simu Liu (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings) as Harlan Shepherd play's a poor mans T-1000 from T2. I found I was thinking of Rick Yune's character in the equally forgettable last entry for Pierce Brosnan's 007 in Die Another Day. Liu's once promising career seems to be hitting the skids and this movie will do nothing to help him.

The rest of the cast is fleshed out by the ever dependable Sterling K. Brown (No mess operative in command of the mech's) and Mark Strong (An understanding military general) but their considerable talent is squandered in roles that amount to nothing more than glorified cameos as they try to add some gravitas to the proceedings. 
 
Sound and Spectacle

Atlas is a straight up video game. The planet Atlas travels too is literally JLO inserted into the popular video game title Titanfall. As Slant Magazine put it "Atlas feels best experienced with a controller in hand."

 
Pandora in Avatar, Arrakis in Dune, these are living breathing alien worlds. Okay so I know the budget on this movie would have been a lot less than those giants but the original Star Wars movies had Dagobah, Hoth, Bespin and Tatooine to name but a few planets and those movies were made on a fraction of the budget of this one but their worlds felt real.

I read that this movie was shot on location in New Zealand, but personally I found the movie's planet (GR-39) to be a wholly CGI created world that felt as believable as the rest of the movie.

The poor VFX also took me out the movie (which as I was not enjoying it, can be counted as a good thing?) Obvious use of green screen (With characters talking in the foreground to mechs walking around in clearly CGI created interior shots in the background). Even more egregious was the future-fying of Los Angeles with what was clearly 2nd unit photography of present day LA with CGI tacked on to make it resemble some Blade Runner-esque futuristic landscape. 
 
On screen Action

As with any bad movie if the story and character's are not there, action is just noise, and there is a lot of "noise" in this movie. Generic space battles, and a mech battling it out on an alien planet fighting A.I (If you're tired of reading this, believe me I'm tired of typing it). There is nothing you haven't seen before.

 

Music and Score

Andrew Lockington provides the score which is there but I was so unbelievably bored by the movie the music didn't even register.   

 

It's another miss for Netflix & vanity project for Lopez. A piss poor video game of a movie with not an ounce of originality. More Throw Away than Cast Away.

Verdict  - One to Miss