Atlas (2024)
4 min read
When it comes to the handful of names who are defiantly keeping the idea of super-stardom alive, JLo is a name that you will hear this year, just take a look at some of the projects she’s been involved in the last few years as producer, actor, and of course singer rom-coms “Marry Me” and “Shotgun wedding” (2022), the intimate action-thriller “The Mother” (2023), a self-funded project about her life journey titled “This is Me … Now” (2024) and a Superbowl halftime show appearance in 2020, among others. She is trying her utmost to keep pumping out the content good or otherwise no matter what. These wont win any oscars we dont think but at least its new content in a time of scarcity.
It sometimes feels like those cheesy lines are the film’s second greatest asset (after, of course, Lopez). Which is why the film’s straight-to-streaming release feels especially unfortunate—aren’t knowingly hokey rulings like “Eat Shit!” from the lips of the recent Oscar nominee Sterling K Brown before he blows up an entire AI-ruled settlement and “Let’s go, bitch!” delivered by Lopez herself best enjoyed among a rowdy crowd? But you’ll have to settle with the pleasure of your own company instead of following the brilliant data analyst Atlas Shepherd (Lopez), first across the poorly rendered Los Angeles of the distant future (or at least they say distant but if you would believe others this might not be too far off) and, later, outer space.
This new timeline is AI dominated, where there are special devissions of the government that try to regulate and police it. And a renegade robot, Harlan (Simu Liu) with a pair of distracting blue contact lenses to make you refer to him as an android fled the planet 28 years ago but is still feared b many. What would happen if he ever returned what would he be able to do to the world….
With shades of Will Smith in i,Robot, we start with Atlas here in full hatred against AI, with a strong preference for things that are traditional and analog (despite the opening shots of her home being pretty full on tech ridden to give the designers and coders something extra to do). But when a recent mission sends her to an unstable and inhospitable planet called GR39 under Colonel Elias Banks’ (K. Brown) leadership, she has no choice but to trust the very robotic powers she detests. Her hatred of AI is tested, of course immediately when an attack on the ship sends her into a AI controlled battle suit, no one saw that coming at all.. really! But can the ever-cynical and sarcastic Atlas learn to trust Simon her suit AI and allow it to synch up with her brain completely?
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