Atlas: A Sci-Fi Actioner with a Lot of Heart

Just when you crave mindless pyrotechnics on screen, the universe answers with Atlas. Brad Peyton, who kept us deliriously amused with San Andreas and Rampage, returns with this lovely sci-fi actioner, which pretends to be discussing deep and meaningful things like whether AI has a soul in its trillion lines of code, when it actually just wants to have fun blowing things up. And blow things it does in jolly spectacular style.

Robot fighting

In the future, AI becomes self-aware and led by Harlan (Simu Liu) turns on human beings. After several attacks, including one on Bengaluru that leaves over 500,000 killed in an AI-controlled drone strike, Harlan flees to a planet, GR-39, in the Andromeda galaxy.

The International Coalition of Nations (ICN) is formed to fight the threat and Harlan is declared public enemy no 1, the first AI terrorist.

28 years later, a grumpy counter-terrorism analyst working for the ICN, Atlas (Jennifer Lopez), is woken up by her smart home - she had fallen asleep playing chess with it. That she is brainy is obvious from her winning streak in chess of 71, and her genius-level IQ is indicated by her glamourously wild Einstein hair.

Jennifer Lopez as Atlas

General Boothe (Mark Strong), who refuses to abandon Atlas “because she is not user-friendly”, has an assignment for her. Casca (Abraham Popoola), Harlan’s fearsome AI soldier, has been captured and Boothe wants Atlas to interrogate him.

Atlas, whose scientist mum Val Shepherd (Lana Parrilla) created Harlan, tricks Casca into revealing where Harlan is holed up and the ICN decide to send out a mission led by Colonel Banks (Sterling K. Brown) to capture Harlan or rather his CPU.

GR-39 planet

There are nicely-visualised explosions, GR-39 is interestingly visualised, and the final battle is vaguely reminiscent of Terminator with Harlan’s single glowing eye. Lopez’s considerable star power cauterises any plot holes while Strong and Brown do their thing - the former being the wise mentor and the latter the wise-cracking tough guy. Liu does not have much to do apart from look menacing, which he does with aplomb and nice clothes.

Final battle

In conclusion, Atlas is a fun sci-fi actioner that delivers on its promise of mindless pyrotechnics. With Jennifer Lopez carrying the film on her shapely shoulders, it’s a wild ride that’s worth taking.

Jennifer Lopez