Now, I have a series of simple questions for anyone reading this: Does Atlas feel like a "global phenomenon" to you? Have you watched it? Has anyone you know watched it? Have you come across people talking about it in a public setting? Hell, have you even seen a fucking tweet, TikTok or any other form of social media post about it that wasn't sponsored by Netflix? My best guess is that the answer to all of the above questions for most of the people reading this is no.
Adding another layer of comedy to this ad hyping up Atlas' anecdotal success comes on the heels of Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos making comments in a New York Times profile where he claimed that last summer's biggest films Barbie and Oppenheimer would've enjoyed the same level of success if they had debuted on Netflix. While I fully understand that CEO's have to pimp their product to a hyperbolic degree every time they talk to their shareholders or give an interview, Sarandos sounds like he's not living in the same reality as the rest of the world with these comments.
Ted, did people get dressed up with their friends or spouse to watch Damsel? Did the servers crash when the Rebel Moon movies dropped because the demand was so high? Are millions of people around the globe currently in the midst of planning A Family Affair/Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F double feature for early July? Of course not, and if Sarandos were capable of being honest with himself for even a half a second, he would admit that.
The movie side of Netflix exists for two reasons: to make shit that's designed to be background noise while the viewer scrolls through their phone or engages in some kind of household chore and to chase Oscars come Awards Season. When it comes to the former category, the actual quality of the products they're releasing isn't top of mind and pretty frequently, the complete lack of care put into their films is glaringly apparent. Atlas is as good of an example as you'll find as to the kind of movies that Netflix is primarily interested in making.
In short, they hired a faceless journeyman Hollywood director in Brad Peyton (San Andreas, Rampage) to make a sci-fi action blockbuster that features a few stars with name recognition (Jennifer Lopez, Simu Liu, Sterling K. Brown) and bears a resemblance to a wide range of past cinematic winners from The Terminator to Pacific Rim to I, Robot. Or to put it in a way that would make the Netflix boardroom erupt into an enthusiastic nodding fit, it's a glossy piece of "content" designed to feed the almighty algorithm that serves as the service's guiding light. The end results of this idea conceived by Netflix's bean counters who let meaningless data drive the decision-making for their artistic enterprise is wait for it, a soulless shitfest of a movie that would probably have a similar approval rating as the top 3 candidates in this year's United States presidential election if they polled the people who actually sat through it until the end.
Atlas manages to be both completely artless and devoid of entertainment value as it plods through perhaps the most lifeless human vs. robot war plot ever depicted on screen. Lopez's turn as the titular data analyst turned solider who spends most of the film stuck in a mech suit talking to a computer system (voiced by Gregory James Cohan) after the bad robot villain (Liu) ambushes the soldiers that came to find him on a distant planet after he disappeared without a trace 28 years prior is shockingly shaky for someone whose been acting for as long as she has. And to top it all off, it ends up embracing a garbage pro-AI message that only corporate bozos in the tech industry and entertainment world would applaud. What makes the failure of Atlas even sadder is that the internet won't even bother to take the time to give it the roast/meme treatment like the one the already notorious misfire Madame Web received earlier this year because the number of engaged eyeballs that laid eyes upon it pale in comparison to those that watched Sony's failed Spider-Man spinoff-which ironically is also currently among Netflix's Top 10 most watched movies (chalk up another victory for the Tudum gang!).
Atlas being among the cornerstone entries of Netflix's Summer 2024 slate says all you need to know about who they are as a company. As much as they try to look and feel like a true major studio, their cheap imitation status can't be masked. For a company that is eager for theaters to die, the quality of the bulk of their "biggest" movies is among the strongest arguments to make for the importance of preserving the theatrical experience along with the studios that are committed to making movies for those venues. Maybe the recent hiring of veteran producer Dan Lin to head up their film division will lead to them to becoming something more than Hollywood's answer to the Great Value! brand, but as long as Sarandos remains in charge of their operation, it's impossible to be optimistic that they'll pivot away from their stubborn dedication to making artless high-priced trash like Atlas that nobody who isn't on the company payroll actually gives a shit about.
Grade: D
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