Everyone’s a little freaked out about AI right now—the ramifications of unregulated tech bro start up culture smashing into industries across the board, from journalism, to science, to entertainment, being turned upside down by the hot new trend. But together, Jennifer Lopez and Netflix boldly ask in Atlas the primordial question: what if learning to love AI got us a Titanfall movie with the names filed off?
This morning Netflix dropped a more in depth look at the frankly absurd combination of words that is “the Jennifer Lopez mecha movie, Atlas.” While the first trailer played up Lopez’s character, the titular Atlas—not to be confused with the recently revived Boston Dynamics robot of the same name—and her abject horror at being plummeted onto an alien world via giant robot cockpits, the second lifts a few more layers around the film… which makes it feel less like a story about a first time mecha pilot, and more about how Jennifer Lopez should realize the concept of Not All Artificial Intelligences.
This look introduces us to Simu Liu’s baddy, an AI robot named Harlan designed to aid humanity but (shock, horror) turned against his organic masters. Now deeply distrustful of any artificial intelligence after her hunt for Harlan, Atlas finds herself forced to make compromises when she is forced to get into a giant mech suit on a mission gone wrong—working with its onboard intelligence, Smith, to learn the ways of beating the crap out of people with a giant robot.
As fun as it is to see Jennifer Lopez at the center of a movie that feels very inspired by the likes of Respawn’s beloved shooter seriesTitanfall in its mech design, the whole “you’ve just gotta learn to love your Siri-adjacent robot friend!” buddy cop vibe definitely feels a little weirdly timed as we’re on the crest of a general air of skepticism about the use of rudimentary image generators and LLMs in creative fields. But hey, maybe Jennifer Lopez’s giant robot will punch things good enough this Memorial Day for us to put those concerns aside for a couple hours.
Atlas begins streaming on Netflix May 24.
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