Atlas (2024 film)

Atlas
Release poster
Directed by	Brad Peyton
Written by	Leo Sardarian Aron Eli Coleite
Produced by	Brad Peyton Jeff Fierson Joby Harold Tory Tunnell Jennifer Lopez Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas Benny Medina Greg Berlanti Sarah Schechter
Starring	Jennifer Lopez Simu Liu Sterling K. Brown Mark Strong
Cinematography	John Schwartzman
Edited by	Bob Ducsay
Music by	Andrew Lockington
Production companies	ASAP Entertainment Safehouse Pictures Nuyorican Productions Berlanti-Schechter Films
Distributed by	Netflix
Release date	May 24, 2024 (2024-05-24)
Running time	120 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

Atlas is a 2024 American science fiction action film directed by Brad Peyton and written by Leo Sardarian and Aron Eli Coleite. The film stars Jennifer Lopez, Simu Liu, Sterling K. Brown, and Mark Strong.

A co-production of ASAP Entertainment, Safehouse Pictures, Nuyorican Productions and Berlanti-Schechter Films, Atlas was released by Netflix on May 24, 2024.

Plot

Atlas Shepherd, 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. When plans go awry, her only hope of saving the future of humanity from AI is to trust it.

Details: On earth, in a somewhat distant future, 28 years after an AI assault against humanity, which killed 3 million humans, led by a once docile AI being-turned terrorist named Harlan who was created by the mom of a woman named Atlas, and who fled earth 28 years ago, Atlas, who is apparently a bit of a mal adjusted person, who deeply distrusts AI, in adulthood, as well as a military analyst, is recruited into a military operation aimed at finding and dealing with Harlan amidst the military’s continued fight on earth against the still hostile AI beings, aka techno-sapiens.

She is able to determine Harlan’s location from a newly captured TS that she very deftly interrogates before going off world with a team of soldiers tasked with capturing Harlan alive so that his code can be examined and it can be determined exactly how he broke his programming.

Before the mission can launch from orbit above the planet Harlan is on, the ship carrying the soldiers and the mech suits called ARCs that they are each neural linked to is attacked, and atlas is forced to enter a mech suit, which then falls to the planet as the ship is destroyed, in order to survive the attack.

After she then survives the trip down through a crazy above planet battle, she acclimates herself to her mech, the AI named Smith aboard which she bristles against despite its attempts to emotionally bond with her and soon arrives on foot to the rangers’ drop zone to find them all dead, except the colonel in charge, seemingly by Harlans hand, where she is attacked by six TS soldiers, one of whom is a clone of the TS named Casca that she interrogated and destroyed earlier.

She ends up killing 5 of the soldiers by use of an ion bomb aboard the mech which causes the formation of a sinkhole into which she falls along with the cloned TS, breaking her leg which is painfully repaired by Smith.

Realizing that she has no choice if she wants to survive, she relents and uses the neuro link aboard Smith which attempts to synch her with him for optimal tactical performance.

Harlan meanwhile forcefully extracts something from the captured colonel via his eye.

Atlas and Smith struggle to synch because of Atlas’ psychoemotional issues stemming from her difficult past but as Atlas’ trust of Smith grows, so does their level of psynch as they try to make their way to a rescue pod while pursued by Casca whom Atlas is able to destroy by crushing his still functioning head after blowing him apart with mines she’d left behind her.

She then convinces Smith to allow her to use him to walk to Harlan’s base, after its location is determined, instead of to the rescue pod, so it can be tagged for long range bombs that can be launched at it from space.

After placing a beacon at the base, she is discovered by Harlan’s soldiers and attacked by another Casca clone along with other TSes after Smith is hacked, at which point she is captured and brought to Harlan who plans to destroy most of humanity so as to reset it and give it a new chance to thrive under AI guidance. It turns out that he lured Atlas and the military to his planet so he could steal a warship and a carbon bomb which will burn earths atomosphere away.

He then extracts some needed codes from her that, with the ones he got from the colonel, will allow him to carry out his plan, and leaves her with the colonel, at which point he helps her contact Smith who causes her to disclose how it was that Harlan evolved, and it turns out to have been her fault since she allowed him to alter the neuro link to work both ways. Smith assures her that everything that happened subsequently was not her fault and she allows them to synch fully which enables them to fully cooperate to take on Harlan and his soldiers in order to stop the launch of the warship with the colonel’s help in the form of a final sacrifice, when he uses a giant gun to blow up a bunch of rocket fuel, taking down a bunch of soldiers at once.

Atlas then manages to take out the warship before it gets too far away by blasting it out of the sky, while risking igniting the atmosphere of the planet she’s on when the bomb on board explodes, but Smith is able to hack it and turn it off before she does, leading to a final fight between her inside Smith and Harlan himself, who plans to hack into her physically and get her to call another ship to come to the planet. With Smith’s help, Atlas is able to defeat Harlan and remove his CPU before having to say a tearful goodbye to Smith as he powers himself down to help her survive long enough in the inhospitable atomosphere to be rescued.

Once home she is informed by the military commander, Boothe, that Harlan’s CPU is being analyzed before test driving the newest mech, created with her suggested modifications, some of which are apparently aspects of Smith’s personality and his voice. The AI in the mech remembers Atlas' name and other details she told Smith; when Atlas asks for his name, he replies "guess", suggesting some of Smith's programming survived.

Cast

• Jennifer Lopez as Atlas Shepherd
• Simu Liu as Harlan Shepherd
• Sterling K. Brown as Colonel Elias Banks
• Gregory James Cohan as the voice of Smith
• Abraham Popoola as Casca Decius
• Lana Parrilla as Val Shepherd
• Mark Strong as General Jake Boothe

Production

The screenplay was originally written by Leo Sardarian, and Aron Eli Coleite performed rewrites. Simu Liu, Sterling K. Brown, and Abraham Popoola joined the cast in August 2022. In September 2022, it was reported that Lana Parrilla has joined the cast.

Principal photography began on August 26, 2022, in Los Angeles and New Zealand, and wrapped on November 26.

Release

Atlas was released by Netflix on May 24, 2024.

Reception

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 15% of 52 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 4.0/10. Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 38 out of 100, based on 25 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable" reviews.

External links

• Atlas on Netflix
• Atlas at IMDb