But whereas Lopez throws herself into the position of Atlas, everybody round her visibly struggles to keep up a straight face. They embrace Simu Liu (Marvel’s Shang-Chi) as evil robotic overlord Harlan – a mash-up of Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator and a wise speaker in your espresso desk.
Harlan was created by Atlas’s mom (Lana Parrilla), a naive scientist who, having apparently by no means watched a science fiction film or performed a online game, didn’t anticipate the machines rising up in opposition to their creators. In fact, Harlan did exactly that and led his fellow AI in a struggle in opposition to humankind.
A long time later, Harlan has been tracked to a planet lightyears from Earth. Having recognized the unhealthy bot since her childhood, Atlas agrees to accompany the marine squad despatched to take him out. These sequences with the marines (whose chief is performed with palpable reluctance by Sterling Ok Brown) are a shameless homage to James Cameron’s Aliens. Right here, Lopez inherits the Sigourney Weaver position of the shell-shocked veteran who is aware of they’re all going to die.
As she anticipated, issues don’t go in accordance with plan, and the story descends into a loud prolonged motion scene. The CGI is iffy, the plot twists absurd. The dialogue, in the meantime, incorporates extra cardboard than a recycling centre. “Atlas, I admit that I underestimated you – however it doesn’t matter,” certainly one of Harlan’s minions.
Nonetheless, the complete affair is powered by a B-movie air of tacky enjoyable, and Lopez makes for a convincing high-kicking heroine when she buddies up with the mech robotic snappily voiced by Gregory James Cohan. It’s an motion movie an AI may have scripted however you’d should have a circuit free to not get caught up within the high-octane silliness.
PG-13 1hr 58min; streaming on Netflix now
