Netflix’s ‘Atlas’ Stars On Humanity

Netflix’s latest sci-fi film Atlas might have a huge focus on technology and robots, but the film’s stars, Sterling K. Brown, Jennifer Lopez and Simu Liu, who chatted with Blavity/Shadow and Act’s Managing Editor Trey Mangum, say that the film is really about humanity.

“I think it’s about trust between people and learning to let people in so we can understand each other better and coexist better,” said Lopez, who plays the film’s heroine, Atlas Shepherd. “I think it’s about technology and learning to trust that, but also being careful.”

“It really is metaphorically letting somebody in and being brave to do that which I think all of us struggle with,” she continued. “We’re all kind of afraid and we have our trauma…and the hardest thing to do is let another person see you completely and know that you’re still going to be loved.”

“I feel like as a human being, we live in this idea of…the myth of separation, that we’re all separate distinct entities and that we’re sort of like vying against and for finite resources,” Brown said, who plays Colonel Elias Banks. “I personally don’t buy into it–I believe in the law of interconnectivity, like if we all take a minute and sit in our stillness and quiet, you recognize we are one. I think a lot conflict resolves when you see the world that way rather than something you have to compete against, but something you can cooperate with.”

Liu, who plays the A.I. soldier Harlan, said that he didn’t want to be “predictable” with his portrayal of a robot-gone-wrong.

“…I really gravitated to him in the beginning of the script…of being like a kid, when he’s this new artificial intelligence, he’s a newborn,” he said. “He’s so curious and he’s looking around at people and connecting with his family, and what happens, I think, is he stops being curious when he’s exposed to whatever he’s exposed to and he starts thinking, ‘I know what humanity needs–it’s to destroy it.'”