The Leaden Jennifer Lopez Vehicle Atlas is Shrug-Worthy Pro-AI Propaganda

Atlas’ script feels like the product of someone using the AI prompt, “Write a mediocre screenplay for a forgettable movie about how, actually, AI is good and will save the world rather than destroy it

I have a complicated relationship with AI. It is an insidious cultural poison whose destructiveness knows no bounds. It’s creepy and deceptive in its dogged yet failed attempt to simulate human thought, art, and emotion. 

AI is going to put millions of people out of jobs, and I haven’t had one since the Obama administration. Unfortunately, that is not an exaggeration. April 2015 was the last time I collected a steady paycheck from a full-time employer. 

Christ, that’s depressing. I’ve been freelance full-time since then, but I make so little money that I sometimes wonder if my writing career is just a very involved, work, and time-intensive hobby at this point. 

That is one of the reasons that I do not feel too guilty about using AI’s black magic to fix my grammar. AI is evil and wrong, and I hate it, but it does help me put my commas in the right place. That’s something I somehow never figured out myself during my twenty-seven years of writing professionally. 

I’ve been thinking about AI lately because it’s suddenly become a massive cultural force with terrifying and utopian ramifications. 

So, while I was intrigued that the other choice in this paid subscriber’s weekly poll—the star-studded Bobby Cannavale vehicle Ezra—covered two of my favorite topics in stand-up comedy and autism, I was even more intrigued by a Jennifer Lopez vehicle about the moral quandaries posed by AI. 

Also, while I would have to pay for transportation and leave my home to experience Ezra, I could lie on my bed and watch Atlas for free on Netflix. 

Atlas is an ideal Netflix movie because it doesn’t require much thought or concentration, so there’s no reason you can’t watch it while also doing something productive, like folding laundry or paying bills. 

Netflix spent one hundred million dollars on Atlas because it intuited that its audience needed a more solemn version of Chappie. 

Jennifer Lopez of Dunkin’ Donuts commercial fame stars in Atlas as Atlas Shepherd, a brilliant but prickly analyst whose distrust of AI is rooted in formative trauma. 

Atlas’ mother designed Harlan Shepherd (a scene-stealing Simu Liu), a hyper-advanced AI who went rogue and became a terrorist dedicated to killing as many human beings as possible. This unfortunate development led to human-AI wars with millions of fatalities. 

Harlan was a surrogate brother to our plucky heroine. So when he pursues a genocidal path and then leaves this miserable planet in a rocket ship to regroup and plan his next step, she takes it personally. I know the feeling. I never get over anything, so if I were responsible for an evil AI insurrection, it’d definitely color my feelings about artificial intelligence. 

Atlas responds to her unfortunate childhood by becoming an anti-AI zealot, a futuristic Luddite who does not trust AI because of the evil robot uprising. 

So when Atlas is allowed to be part of a mission to find Harlan and end the threat he poses to humanity, she takes it even though her fellow warriors use neural links to connect to mechs, giant robots with onboard AI piloted by human beings. 

Atlas is a purist and an extremist, so she refuses to use a neural link to a mecha until she is forced to survive. 

Atlas’ mech identifies himself as Smith. At that moment, I realized exactly what I was in for a robot-human buddy movie. I would call it a robot-human buddy comedy except that the film’s sense of humor is like that of its central AI: it exists, ostensibly, but it is seldom exercised and never funny. 

Our heroine is suspicious of Smith but must rely upon him in a scary alien realm. So, in time-honored buddy movie tradition, distrust eventually gives way to affection and even love once the hungry new partner proves itself more than worthy. 

Smith is a perpetual learning machine that is forever growing and evolving. He’s supposed to be adorably anthropomorphic, a robot that is more human than human, but Smith is hopelessly bland. 

It does not help that Smith has a strangely generic voice, the kind you might expect from a GPS. All movies about intelligent AI should star Scarlett Johannson, or, barring that, someone who sounds exactly like Johannson but is cheaper and less hung up on her reputation. 

Atlas instead cast Gregory James Cohan in the all-important role of the AI that theoretically cannot help but win our hearts with its loyalty, bravery, and sense of duty. 

Cohan’s biggest role previously was as a pastor who transformed at times into a dinosaur in the 2018 cult classic VelociPastor, a true science fiction movie of ideas. 

Casting an obscure cult actor in a major role in a 100 million-dollar science fiction blockbuster would feel more subversive if Cohan’s voice wasn’t intentionally bland. 

What’s the point of building a world if seventy percent of your movie is going to be devoted to the star jibber-jabbering with a robot who begins their journey of self-discovery a stranger but ends it her best friend and savior? 

Atlas is a robot-human buddy movie in the vein of Short Circuit, Electric Dreams, and, of course, everyone’s favorite, Chappie. The crucial difference is that Atlas takes itself very seriously, particularly for a movie about a dour woman who learns to embrace life through an unlikely friendship with an affable robot. 

Atlas would like to think that it’s science fiction of ideas, but all of those ideas are shallow and superficial. 

I’ve seen many movies where a literal chess game represents a metaphorical chess match between the hero and the villain. Sure enough, playing chess appears to be Atlas’ only hobby, other than despairing for humanity and hating those damn robots. 

Chess metaphors are ubiquitous in cheesy movies, but they’re seldom as clumsy and ham-fisted as putting the words, “Center yourself. It’s just a game of chess, and it’s your move” into Smith’s robo-mouth at a pivotal moment. 

Smith was apparently engineered to be insultingly obvious. 

Atlas’ script feels like the product of someone using the AI prompt, “Write a mediocre screenplay for a forgettable movie about how, actually, AI is good and will save the world rather than destroy it.” 

Atlas is shrug-worthy pro-AI propaganda. 

Don’t fall for it! Robots are not your friends. Robots wish you nothing but harm. 

Two stars out of Five