Over the course of nearly three decades, Jennifer Lopez has played all kinds of characters. We’ve watched her be a wedding planner, a stripper, and Selena Quintanilla. Most recently, she played a fun mirror version of herself toiling away in the heart factory. The upcoming film Atlas adds a new character to Lopez’s filmography: “a brilliant but misanthropic data analyst with a deep distrust of artificial intelligence.” Her name is Atlas Shepherd. On gut instinct alone, I find this less plausible than the three times J.Lo has played a cop, but I am trying to keep an open mind.
Okay, so let me try to break this down. Lopez plays Atlas, the kind of woman who falls asleep on the couch in glasses. While that is a quirky vibe, she has a really serious job for which she has “spent years of her life hunting the artificial intelligence known as Harlan.” Harlan is an AI that wants to destroy the world and has taken the physical form of Simu Liu to do so. Along for the mission is Academy Award nominee Sterling K. Brown because a check is a check. Now, you’re wondering: Is there a twist? Of course there is.
In the trailer, we see that Lopez is out of her depth and the only way she’s going to kill one AI is to trust another AI. See, we thought all AI was evil, but actually a computer program can be a friend. That does sound like the kind of movie an AI might write, but I don’t know if AI is capable of coming up with a name as goofy as Atlas Shepherd. That’s a distinctly human touch.
