Jennifer Lopez, Simu Liu, and Director Brad Peyton Talk About The Rise Of A.I. in Netflix’s Atlas
It seems like A.I. is taking over! In Netflix’s new film Atlas, we follow Atlas Shepherd as she embarks on a dangerous mission to take down Harlan, a threatening A.I. In order to do so, she must put aside her feelings about A.I. to save humanity. Jennifer Lopez, Simu Liu, and director Brad Peyton sat down together in Mexico City to discuss what viewers can expect from Atlas.
Among all the iconic sci-fi female characters, Lopez recalls two inspirations behind her character Atlas. “Terminator 2 with Linda Hamilton. For me, she was the baddest of the baddest b****es ever. I just remember being in the theater, watching it, in New York like, ‘Oh my god, I want to be her so bad.’ I’m going to be an actress and that’s what I’m going to do,” she said. “The other character that I really loved and that Brad and I spoke about was Ripley in Alien. Sigourney Weaver. Those two for me were the most iconic kind of sci-fi action movie characters.”
For channeling Liu’s character, he looked back on other A.I. figures in film. “There's a lot of blueprints out there. I think starting from [Stanley] Kubrick in 2001, like the voice of Hal, who is so even keeled and chilling,” he said. “I was a huge Star Trek fan growing up so I loved Brent Spiner’s Data. I thought it was phenomenal. Those are all friendly A.I.’s, but I tried to take that voice and friendliness disposition, and warp it in a way to make it unsettling and terrifying.” Adding onto Harlan’s haunting appearance, Peyton pointed out a funny moment from the set where Liu could not see anything while wearing the blue contacts for Harlan. “So that’s why you’re staring through me and everybody,” the director joked.
As a producer on the film, Lopez notes that the rise of A.I. is an imminent issue and that the film explores a unique relationship between technology and humans. “Technology is advancing all the time and there's a lot of it that makes me nervous. Even this movie itself does a good job of showing both sides of the story, which is what could really go right with A.I. and use them to be a greater version of ourselves in a way and how it could go really wrong with Simu’s character where they can destroy and take over and obliterate humanity,” she said. “So, I think right now for me, when I think about it, it’s a big question. There’s an idea of like we have to have a lot of respect when it comes to artificial intelligence. It’s just like any technology. You just have to really be open to the fact that there’s going to be changes all the time [that] some people can predict and some people just can’t foresee because we get so stuck in our own reality. I think it’s about respecting it and not letting it take over in any way, but using it to aid us in the best way that it can.”
While the film centers around A.I., Peyton believes the heart of the film is trust. “In all honesty, I didn’t set up to make a movie about A.I. What attracted me to this, besides working with Jen and Simu and Sterling K. Brown, was the theme of trust. I believe most of our meaningful relationships in our lives are built up on respect and trust. You can earn someone’s respect relatively easily, but trust is something that I’ve found difficult to earn with people and also to have them earn from me,” he said. “So, I was fascinated with this idea of this woman who just didn’t trust and for valid reason. She has childhood trauma she has to overcome, but that’s what pulled me in. The complexity of it. The fact that she had been sort of, you know, abused by this AI and then was stuck in a machine that was run by A.I. The irony of that made me smile when I read the concept, I was like, ‘Oh that’s really neat.’ I can have explosions, I can have alien ships, and I can have giant Mech suits, but there’s a super human element and theme in the movie and that’s really what pulled me in.”
Speaking of Mech suits, Lopez explained the challenges of being in the suit and filming by herself for most of the film. “I remember hearing somebody was saying that Jodie Foster, when she did Contact, said that was the hardest acting that she ever had to do because she just had to do it by herself and she had to use her whole imagination and that’s just what it was. I remember thinking when I read the script: ‘This is going to be an easy job for me. It’s going to be by myself. I don’t have to wait for anybody. I can show up, do my thing, couple of takes, go home,’” she said. “It was so exhausting to stay at this level of adrenaline of like, ‘Your life is over. You have to save the planet. You’re in a life and death situation,’ the whole entire time. At the end of the day, I would just be so exhausted. Not emotionally, but physically from just throwing my body and throwing myself this way and that way and doing all these things and trying to concentrate and seeing things that weren’t there and all these kinds of stuff. I would walk home every day with what I would call the ‘tired limp.’”
Atlas is set in a futuristic world where everyone uses A.I. in their daily lives. When asked if they use A.I in their personal lives, Liu admits to using ChatGPT for vacation itineraries, but highlights how A.I. threatens creativity. “I’m not like divulging my deepest darkest secrets, but I think we’re on the precipice of quite a revolutionary moment when it comes to A.I. I think we all feel it. A lot of us in the entertainment industry, a lot of us in the arts feel it. I think scary is a great word. I think it’s imperative to me that we keep in mind humanity always comes first. I think Harlan is the perfect example of why A.I. should never be used for decision-making,” he explained. “We should never let algorithms and data be the decision-making leaders. I mean, we should use those things to enhance, but never to lead. I don’t want to work in an industry where every single creative decision is made by data or an algorithm. I want these decisions to be made by passion and human emotion. You know, there’s a filmmaker who loves to tell a story. This is the story they want to tell. That’s the movie that we should make and, if the story is true, and the emotionality is there and the character is good, then people will watch it. Those things can’t be quantified by data.”
To encapsulate a futuristic world, Peyton hired some futurists to understand what technology would realistically look like in the future. “I worked with a couple futurist before we made the movie and it was to do everything. [To] talk about weapon systems, propulsion systems, ecology. I didn’t wanna show Los Angeles in the beginning of the movie like you’ve seen it with Mad Max or something where it’s all sand dunes. He had a really interesting thing that he said to me about A.I. and it was my true north for making the movie. It was very much in line with what I wanted to do intuitively. He said, ‘A.I. is a tool. It’s like a hammer. A hammer can do a lot of harm and a hammer can do a lot of good. You could build a house with a hammer and save lives,’” shared Peyton. “When he said that to me, I realized that’s exactly what I wanna do. I wanna show that A.I. is something that’s basically here today now, but it doesn’t excuse us people from being responsible. We are the responsible entities of it. It is a tool. We have to take […] full responsibility for how we use it. This movie shows the full good of it and how humanity can grow and expand and go way beyond itself, and then it shows how nasty Simu can be and try to kill everybody.”
Nevertheless, as much as the film explores A.I. thoroughly for viewers to dissect their own reservations about the emerging technology, it also showcases the struggles Lopez’ character goes through to be heard and understood. “I think Atlas is a great character because of all of the toughness that she shows initially and all of the fearlessness about going against the powers that be, which is what you have to be, to be a woman. That’s what it is. To be a woman, you have to go against the grain, you have to fight harder, you have to do these things, but also for her tremendous vulnerability and her tremendous pain that she carries. I feel that as women that is a big part of our journey as well. She represents both sides of that in a really beautiful way,” Lopez stated. “Where she gets to at the end, you know, having started where she started and Smith chipping away at her, getting inside that hard exterior that she’s had to have her whole life because everybody thinks she’s crazy. Nobody wants to listen to her.”
Lopez continued: “This is an experience that women have all the time. I can understand and relate to that and I know a lot of other women can too, especially in my own business. You know, you’re criticized, you’re put down, you're laughed at when you don’t succeed and then when you succeed, they want to tear it down. There’s always this thing as a woman, and especially as a Latina, in this business to be taken seriously, to be working at the highest echelons of your industry and what that comes with. I think Atlas really represents all of the greatest parts of women. Their vulnerability, their strength, and courage.”
Atlas is out now on Netflix.
