The history of science fiction films is fascinating and spans several decades. The genre emerged during the silent film era, with early attempts like Georges Méliès’ groundbreaking 1902 film “A Trip to the Moon.” This short film depicted a spacecraft launched to the moon in a large cannon, drawing inspiration from Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. Over time, science fiction films evolved, incorporating special effects technology and social commentary. Notably, Fritz Lang’s 1927 film “Metropolis” set in 2026, featured an autonomous robot, a dystopian society, and elaborate futuristic sets. Fast forward to the present day, and Netflix’s most recent sci-fi film, “Atlas,” stars Jennifer Lopez as a brilliant data analyst with a deep distrust of artificial intelligence.

Atlas

Jennifer Lopez plays the role of Atlas Shepard, a military intelligence officer who has spent years pursuing the intergalactic terrorist who murdered her family. Now, she finds herself in space overseeing a mission to capture him at his remote planet hideout.

Atlas Review

Netflix’s Atlas is a mishmash of elements from sci-fi games, movies, and more that feels like a one-on-one tabletop role-playing campaign played by kids who’ve only seen women on TV over the last ten years.

J Lo’s uninspired and overdone performance is only matched by her juxtapositionally overdeveloped yet uninteresting character. However, in fairness, she’s not helped by an equally bland and overlong script that runs out of ideas a third of the way in and wouldn’t exist were it not for epic levels of sloppy, ill-considered techno-MacGuffins that hold the film together like chewing gum.

The film’s not all bad; Gregory James Cohan, who voices Jenny’s mech suit, Smith, does the impossible with such an inept script and brings his robotic character to life, making it not only the only sympathetic character but the only interesting one. Secondly, director Brad Peyton manages to keep the pacing lively despite the script’s many many weaknesses.

As mediocre as Atlas is, it’s still better than Rebel Moon. It might even be worth turning on for background noise.

WOKE REPORT

Pronouns

• One of the sentient mech suits corrects Lopez’s character when she refers to it as “it.” The suit says, “My pronouns are she and her, not it.”
• J Lo corrects someone who refers to her as a “clever girl” with a “clever woman.”

Virtue Signaling Casting

• The cast looks like a Target commercial, algorithmically chosen to maximize the filmmaker’s sense of pride in themselves.

We’d Like To Teach The World To Sing

• The entire reason that the villain wishes to kill most of humanity is to “heal” it from mankind’s inability to live in peace with the world (i.e., we eat animals and abuse natural resources, etc.)