Atlas (2024)
The future of humanity is in her hands.
Got a fresh new one for everyone tonight. This year’s charity stuff is themed around mechs - you know, those wonderful giant robots piloted by folks made famous by such known franchises as Gundam and Mechwarrior. Given that fact, it only makes sense to me that when a new giant robot movie comes out I have to get up on it quick. This one seems to be a bit of a wiffle-waffle at the bat when it comes to reviews, so let’s see what I think about it. Tonight we find out if the world is on it’s shoulders, tonight we watch Atlas.
Atlas is a movie named after it’s main character, Atlas. She’s a super smart lady with some baggage in a world that’s already experienced the AI uprising and is now chasing down it’s first AI terrorist. Our human side manages to grab one of his right hands, and call in the local lady to examine him and find out the location - which of course she does, because she’s way smarter than most of us are and quite focused on a bit of a vendetta towards the main bad. We won’t find out the details of it until later into the movie, but she’s got some solid reasons - solid enough to convince the soldiers going in to bag the baddie that she should come along. Sadly for all of them though, it doesn’t take long for everything to go south, and now leading lady Atlas needs to entrust a AI-driven mech suit to keep her safe as they try to escape.
The actors here get to do a good job with what they have. I will say that perhaps a good number of them are a bit limited by the role they have - you don’t get to do a ton of fantastic acting when the acting you are doing is to be an emotionless robot. I mean, he does a great job of it, but on the other hand it doesn’t feel as impressive as it probably actually is. Similar things happen with the mech AI - it has some good lines and all of that, but when you effectively have Microsoft Sam robo-dictating, some folks might not be latching on to it as being great. Our lead Ranger guy has fun with his role of scene-chewing soldier type, and our leading lady spends a good deal of the movie acting her pants off effectively against nothing. All of that said, it’s not always going to feel like great acting, and you’ll probably more often than not get the feeling that things are being either over-reacted or under-reacted, so there is that to keep in mind. Still further, I will make a note here that if nothing else, I personally enjoyed the bantering between the AI and the lead. Yeah some of those jokes were dumb, but that just makes them my kind of joke.
Characters are about as done. Our main lead and villain both have a history that gets fleshed out that guides their motivations. Our lead gets to do some developing as she has to get over her hating AI, and most all the other characters get to - well, they get to exist. Most the story takes place with the lead lady and her AI mech going back and forth, and the AI can be pretty endearing while playing off the more rigid character of the lead. Pretty near everyone else doesn’t end up having enough time on the screen to really get much outside of a surface level hoo-rah, and when it really comes down to it I can see where people wouldn’t be super impressed with it. I’ll get a little bit into that later on, but lets say the character’s aren’t horrible but they aren’t going to really stand out at all.
Head in a box.
The biggest thing i expect is people to have a semi-hollow feeling of “been there done that” with this movie. An AI whose sentience makes it want to wipe out all humanity? Sounds a tad like Terminator. The entire opening arc where we get introduced to the rangers and their scene chewing leader before things go south? Awful lot of Aliens going on there. It’s certainly not a hundred percent clone of these things, but for a modern audience I’m sure it’s close enough (given how quickly people discared Valerian for being too samey). Heck, some folks are even (most likely) comparing the mechs to Titanfall (or maybe the Matrix, given they look a bit like a cross between the mechs in that and Avatar. I’ve always held that something doesn’t need to be entirely unique in order to still be good - so none of this is a deal breaker for me, but some aren’t nearly as forgiving of that.
All of that aside, the movie looks great, so even if you aren’t loving the story side you can at least enjoy that. It doesn’t have as much action as you would expect out of something like a “summer blockbuster”, but it does feel like it’s got the budget. Costumes look a bit futuristic without being too over the top. The same applies to most of the props like weapons or ships - it’s noticeably science fiction, but at the same time still not too outlandish with anything you are seeing. The effects work plays off nicely, and although at times you’ll get the feeling it might be on par with some video games it’s never to the level where it’s atrocious. If I had to have one complaint, it’s that most the AI baddies are very much just normal folks instead of leaning heavy into them being robotic., and that we don’t really get any mech-v-mech fights. Minor complaints really.
Audio works, and is balanced well. As always I don’t remember any music afterwards, but it does help with the scenes as they play out. Actors do a good job delivering their lines, and background noises help keep things feeling fancy and livened up. Beyond that, we have your typical thought paths for the folks that like that sort of thing. Yeah, it’s kind of all been done before at this point, and I don’t really feel like it brings anything new to the table. You want that human bonds with an AI movie? Terminator 2 did it better in my opinion - but T2 didn’t have a mech in it. It also diluted it some with time travel, which we don’t have to worry about here. Still, judging stuff by it’s cover, human-computer relation, AI in general, being overconfident, overcoming prejudices and all of that are things that people could latch onto.
I want a big robo-friend.
I enjoy this movie, but I wouldn’t call it the best movei ever. That said, I would call it pretty fun. it has moments where it could probably do better - the story feels a bit basic and whatnot - but it’s not all bad. Where the movie really ends up shining is the interactions between our leading lady and the mech AI. It’s fun enough for a low expectations popcorn flick, and I think folks might end up liking it more than they expected if they go in like that.