Atlas Shepherd (Jennifer Lopez), 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. But when plans go awry, her only hope of saving the future of humanity from AI is to trust it.
In last year’s The Mother, Jennifer Lopez fought her demons deep in the Alaskan wilderness. Now, she’s launching into orbit to face her foe. In her new film Atlas, the multi-hyphenate performer plays the titular character, a government analyst who’s hurled to a distant world on a quest to defeat her oldest enemy: the robot warrior who upended her life.
“Atlas is someone who has basically shut out the world around her,” Lopez told Netflix. “She doesn’t trust anybody and doesn’t want anything to do with AI.” Unfortunately, on her mission in the far reaches of space, Atlas won’t have much of a choice — stranded in a high-powered armor suit, she’s forced to confront her fear of technology by allying herself with it. Set in a high-tech world, Atlas is a galaxy-spanning adventure written by Leo Sardarian and Aron Eli Coleite and directed by Brad Peyton, who previously helmed San Andreas and Rampage.
Read on for more information about Atlas’ desperate mission, now streaming on Netflix.
What is Atlas about?
Atlas Shepherd (Lopez), 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. But when plans go awry, her only hope of saving the future of humanity from AI is to trust it.
“The heart of Atlas is really about trust and how difficult it is to trust people,” Peyton told Netflix. “Atlas is told through the lens of a woman who’s learning to trust after undergoing a trauma that’s upended her life. It’s a reminder of how we have to have deep, meaningful relationships in our lives, in one way, shape, or form. That you can’t do everything by yourself; you have to choose to trust people at a certain point and let them in.”
For Lopez, the film’s story is as simple as they come. “I loved that this is a big sci-fi action movie, but at its core, it’s a story of friendship — and a love story, in a way,” she said. “I always see everything as a love story, but this is a different kind of love between two beings who connect in disastrous circumstances, and teach each other how to be more human.”
CAST
Jennifer Lopez, Simu Liu, Sterling K. Brown, Gregory James Cohan, Abraham Popoola, Lana Parrilla, Mark Strong
DIRECTOR
Brad Peyton
