After a week of seeing it at the top of my Netflix home screen, I decided to dig into Atlas. On the face of it, it seemed like a really well-made sci-fi action film. But, having been burned by other direct-to-Netflix films, I went in with more than a little hesitation. Maybe I shouldn’t have.
Start with really top notch stars. Jennifer Lopez is one of the most recognizable faces on the planet, and has a solid film resume. Mark Strong and Sterling K. Brown have more than a few awards between them. Simu Liu headlined a Marvel film, for gosh sakes. The action is peppy, the visuals are flawless, and the basic plot fits in well with a lot of classic sci-fi films. There’s a lot to think about, and a ton to look at. There’s even a decent message that should hit pretty well today
So why does this film feel like just another empty, generic Netflix exercise?
Atlas takes its name from its main character, also called Atlas. Lopez plays Atlas as a tough, cynical lifelong overachiever. The planet is still recovering from an AI uprising which took place decades earlier and Atlas is dispatched to find the head of the AI terrorists. Naturally all sorts of thought-provoking things happen while Atlas is on the way to the distant planet where her nemesis Harlan is. She’s forced to re-examine her lifelong prejudice against AI and realize her role in being part of “the problem.”
That’s about all you need to know about the plot. You should mostly know that there are going to be some whiz-bang action sequences and a little bit of uncomfortable quiet. There’s not much more to learn about this film. I could certainly go into more of a plot summary, but this isn’t a plot-driven film and isn’t intended to be. It’s an action flick with a thinky message, sort of like Minority Report or Independence Day.
In 2004, this would probably have been a major summer blockbuster. We’d probably still be watching it fondly today much as we enjoy going back to Spider-Man 2, which came out that year. But, today the film seems like not much more than a momentary snack. I’ll admit that much of it was instantly forgettable in that way Netflix seems to have mastered with its other high-budget action flicks.
And, I’ll tell you that I don’t think that Netflix is really to blame. We’ve become incredibly jaded when it comes to our entertainment. We expect to see something we’ve never even imagined and have our emotions beaten out of us with crushing plot points. More than anything else, we expect a new plot that doesn’t remind us of anything else.
That’s not how cinema works. It’s not how any storytelling works. Half a millennium ago, William Shakespeare wrote plays that weren’t original stories. The best we can tell, most of his plays were just recreations of myths and stories that had been around forever. I mean, the guy wrote a play about Julius Caesar, who was killed about 600 years earlier. Talk about a story where you already know the ending!
But, if you’re one of the people who thinks Shakespeare is a godlike figure in literature, you’ll say that he took these well-worn stories and put new life into them with witty writing. He wasn’t the first and won’t be the last. About 75 years ago, Leonard Bernstein took Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and reimagined it as a street fight in the West Side of Manhattan. 30 years after that, Baz Luhrmann went back to the Shakespeare source material and used it as the basis of an LA gang war. Just a few years ago, Steven Spielberg remade the Bernstein classic West Side Story. For the most part we haven’t cared if the story was a remake or we’d heard it before. Lately it seems like we’re all so jaded that we demand originality for our $20 theater ticket.
When I say “succeed,” I mean “succeed above all rational expectations” like Star Wars, Titanic, and Avatar did. I’m going to say, it probably isn’t. I think it’s pretty much impossible for a film to rise to those heights now. There would be an inevitable comparison with something earlier and that would dim everyone’s enthusiasm. Never mind that Star Wars is a ripoff of The Hidden Fortress, Avatar is Dances with Wolves but in space, and well, we all walked into Titanic knowing the boat sinks. Today none of those films would fly as high. Want proof? The much vaunted Avatar: The Way of Water was visually spectacular, more unique than its predecessor, and yet… uninteresting.
Even after a pair of strikes left us hungry for literally any new content, we still can’t find a blockbuster like Atlas satisfying. It’s a shame really. It’s not a great movie, but it’s no worse than Total Recall, Enemy Mine, or Demolition Man. Who knows, maybe people will come around to it.
The post STREAMING SATURDAY: Netflix’s Atlas is proof that we’ll never be satisfied appeared first on The Solid Signal Blog.
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This is a movie that has everything going for it…
Start with really top notch stars. Jennifer Lopez is one of the most recognizable faces on the planet, and has a solid film resume. Mark Strong and Sterling K. Brown have more than a few awards between them. Simu Liu headlined a Marvel film, for gosh sakes. The action is peppy, the visuals are flawless, and the basic plot fits in well with a lot of classic sci-fi films. There’s a lot to think about, and a ton to look at. There’s even a decent message that should hit pretty well today
So why does this film feel like just another empty, generic Netflix exercise?
A little bit about the film
Atlas takes its name from its main character, also called Atlas. Lopez plays Atlas as a tough, cynical lifelong overachiever. The planet is still recovering from an AI uprising which took place decades earlier and Atlas is dispatched to find the head of the AI terrorists. Naturally all sorts of thought-provoking things happen while Atlas is on the way to the distant planet where her nemesis Harlan is. She’s forced to re-examine her lifelong prejudice against AI and realize her role in being part of “the problem.”
That’s about all you need to know about the plot. You should mostly know that there are going to be some whiz-bang action sequences and a little bit of uncomfortable quiet. There’s not much more to learn about this film. I could certainly go into more of a plot summary, but this isn’t a plot-driven film and isn’t intended to be. It’s an action flick with a thinky message, sort of like Minority Report or Independence Day.
If this film had come out in 2004…
In 2004, this would probably have been a major summer blockbuster. We’d probably still be watching it fondly today much as we enjoy going back to Spider-Man 2, which came out that year. But, today the film seems like not much more than a momentary snack. I’ll admit that much of it was instantly forgettable in that way Netflix seems to have mastered with its other high-budget action flicks.
And, I’ll tell you that I don’t think that Netflix is really to blame. We’ve become incredibly jaded when it comes to our entertainment. We expect to see something we’ve never even imagined and have our emotions beaten out of us with crushing plot points. More than anything else, we expect a new plot that doesn’t remind us of anything else.
Except…
That’s not how cinema works. It’s not how any storytelling works. Half a millennium ago, William Shakespeare wrote plays that weren’t original stories. The best we can tell, most of his plays were just recreations of myths and stories that had been around forever. I mean, the guy wrote a play about Julius Caesar, who was killed about 600 years earlier. Talk about a story where you already know the ending!
But, if you’re one of the people who thinks Shakespeare is a godlike figure in literature, you’ll say that he took these well-worn stories and put new life into them with witty writing. He wasn’t the first and won’t be the last. About 75 years ago, Leonard Bernstein took Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and reimagined it as a street fight in the West Side of Manhattan. 30 years after that, Baz Luhrmann went back to the Shakespeare source material and used it as the basis of an LA gang war. Just a few years ago, Steven Spielberg remade the Bernstein classic West Side Story. For the most part we haven’t cared if the story was a remake or we’d heard it before. Lately it seems like we’re all so jaded that we demand originality for our $20 theater ticket.
Is it even possible for a movie to succeed now?
When I say “succeed,” I mean “succeed above all rational expectations” like Star Wars, Titanic, and Avatar did. I’m going to say, it probably isn’t. I think it’s pretty much impossible for a film to rise to those heights now. There would be an inevitable comparison with something earlier and that would dim everyone’s enthusiasm. Never mind that Star Wars is a ripoff of The Hidden Fortress, Avatar is Dances with Wolves but in space, and well, we all walked into Titanic knowing the boat sinks. Today none of those films would fly as high. Want proof? The much vaunted Avatar: The Way of Water was visually spectacular, more unique than its predecessor, and yet… uninteresting.
Even after a pair of strikes left us hungry for literally any new content, we still can’t find a blockbuster like Atlas satisfying. It’s a shame really. It’s not a great movie, but it’s no worse than Total Recall, Enemy Mine, or Demolition Man. Who knows, maybe people will come around to it.
The post STREAMING SATURDAY: Netflix’s Atlas is proof that we’ll never be satisfied appeared first on The Solid Signal Blog.
Continue reading...
