The implications of an unchecked tech bro start-up culture are causing havoc across many fields, including science, entertainment, and journalism, and have everyone freaked out about AI. However, in Atlas, Jennifer Lopez and Netflix jointly pose the fundamental query: what if falling in love with AI resulted in a Titanfall film with all the names taken off?
A more thorough examination of the incredibly ridiculous concoction of words known as “the Jennifer Lopez mecha movie, Atlas” was released by Netflix this morning. The first trailer focused on Jennifer Lopez’s character, the titular Atlas (not to be confused with the recently brought back Boston Dynamics robot of the same name), and her utter horror at being dropped via giant robot cockpits onto an alien planet. The second trailer adds more context to the picture, making it seem less like a tale of a rookie mecha pilot and more like how Jennifer Lopez should come to terms with the idea that not all artificial intelligence is created equal.
This glimpse presents us with Simu Liu’s antagonist, an AI robot named Harlan who was created to help humans but—spoiler alert—turned on his biological masters. After her search for Harlan, Atlas has grown skeptical of artificial intelligence. As a result, she makes concessions when she is thrown into a massive mech suit for a mission gone wrong and must collaborate with Smith, the suit’s onboard intelligence, to learn how to beat people up with a giant robot.
Watch the trailers below
Atlas Trailer #1
Atlas Trailer #2
Lopez tells EW that the “touching and moving story” at the heart of everything moved her to tears. “It’s a tale of camaraderie and acquiring trust; the connection between two entities who unite under dreadful circumstances and educate one another on how to be more human,” she explains.
Extended scenes in Atlas have Lopez interacting only with the voice of her arc suit, which is a disembodied voice. Acting without a real scene partner posed a special difficulty for the actor. “It was like doing a one-woman show,” She says.”You’re just there, by yourself, imagining everything because it’s all green screen — there was no set to ground you.”
Thankfully, Lopez is accustomed to being the center of attention. “As a solo performer who is accustomed to handling difficult workloads, she was especially suited to take on this challenging role,” Brad Peyton, the director, says to EW. Peyton continues, observing that Lopez “is a very intuitive actor,” and that “I tailored my entire approach to capturing her performance.”
Part of that involved prompting Lopez as to what her character would be seeing in the scene. “I wanted Brad to yell at me and tell me, ‘We’re crashing! There are meteors coming at you! They’re shooting at you!’ Once you had the beats of the scene, there’s a rhythm to it, and I just had to put all of my imagination, all of my emotion, all of my past experiences and visceral instincts into it,” she says.
Additionally, Sterling K. Brown is introduced in the teaser as Colonel Banks, the head of the Rangers, who appears to rescue Atlas’s life during an attack. “Sterling gives an incredible performance, and this film really focuses on people’s relationships with AI,” Peyton says.
Liu’s director was also thrilled to collaborate with him since he knew the actor would add something “new and intriguing” to the part. Peyton teases the relationship between the protagonist and antagonist of the film, saying, “Harlan and Atlas knew each other when Atlas was a child, so the past events between them have shaped Atlas into who she is when we meet her as an adult.”
Even though Jennifer Lopez is the star of a fun film with a mech design reminiscent of Respawn’s popular shooter series Titanfall, the whole “you just gotta learn to love your Siri-adjacent robot friend!” buddy cop vibe feels a little odd given the current climate of skepticism surrounding the use of basic image generators and LLMs in creative fields. However, perhaps Jennifer Lopez’s enormous robot will manage to punch things enough during Memorial Day that we can set those worries aside for a few hours.
Netflix will start streaming Atlas on May 24.
Source: Netflix, Entertainment Weekly
About Atlas (2024)
- Official synopsis: “Atlas Shepherd (Jennifer Lopez), a brilliant but misanthropic data analyst with a deep distrust of artificial intelligence, joins a mission to capture a renegade robot with whom she shares a mysterious past. But when plans go awry, her only hope of saving the future of humanity from AI is to trust it”
- Directed by Brad Peyton
- Stars Jennifer Lopez, Simu Liu, Sterling K. Brown, Gregory James Cohan, Abraham Popoola, Lana Parrilla, Mark Strong, Briella Guiza, Adia Smith-Eriksson, Logan Hunt, Jared Shimabukuro, Ashley J. Hicks, Paul Ganus, Zoe Boyle
- Atlas is scheduled for release on May 24, 2024 (United States)
Check back with the Geek Twins for more Atlas movie news and hype!
What do you think of the movie? Are you looking forward to seeing the latest Jennifer Lopez movie?
