Director Atlas said Jennifer Lopez’s dance skills were key to the machine’s work.

Director Brad Peyton, who has spent his life scouring science fiction, video games, and comic books, was given the job of a lifetime. That’s Jennifer Lopez directing an awesome mechanical suit movie. Logging in for Atlas, currently streaming on Netflix, readily agreed. With two big budget Dwayne Johnson cars under his belt, rampage and san andreas, Peyton was no stranger to the sights of A-listers. Still, the film was an intimidating prospect for anyone with a deep appreciation for mech suits, mech tanks, oversized mechs, and every configuration classification in between.

“I was very “He knew what happened before I did.” Peyton tells Polygon. The director quotes James Cameron. alien and avatar It’s an obvious but undeniable milestone in on-screen mechanical technology. He knew that the Titanfall games would put pressure on new live-action endeavors by providing a complete immersion into the mech combat experience. But when he started imagining how to rethink machines, he returned to the first piece of mecha media that really surprised him: the work of Stuart Gordon. Robot Jox.

Peyton can’t quite explain why. robot jox It was his holy grail, but as I spoke with him, this became clear: Like Gordon’s incredible vision of a future where Earth’s conflicts are resolved through colorful mechanical duels, Atlas We needed a clear, well-defined logic to base our world-building on, but we could also tear up the action department in a way that would please our inner child. And in the end, he had to be original.

“The biggest thing for me was the need to detach from everything,” Peyton says. “I wasn’t interested in repeating myself. I said it, Park Lim.(machine) is this big. in avatarthey this big. in titanfall, they this big. so it will be mine this big. These can be square and chunky, so mine will be round. I come from an animation background. So most of my work started with sketching silhouettes and thinking about how to make them unique and different.”

Atlas It takes place in a relatively bright future that still exists in the shadow of an impending apocalypse. Decades ago, a rogue artificial intelligence named Harlan (ShangchiSimu Liu) left Earth for an alien planet with the intention of one day returning to lay waste to humanity. As scientists discover Harlan’s whereabouts, the Terran military embarks on a mission that brings the battle to the robot army’s doorstep. In charge: Atlas Shepherd (Lopez), a data analyst brought in to put Jack Ryan up Harlan’s ass. Of course, the attack doesn’t go as smoothly as the Earthlings hope, and Atlas must reluctantly click into an AI-powered machine suit to survive on an alien planet full of androids who want him dead.

grounded futurism AtlasEarth led Peyton and his creative team to extrapolate current military technology to design the machines. The rounded corners and exhaust pipes are lifted from an F-18 airplane. The internal control panel is intended for theoretical functionality.

“We had to understand all the technology from the inside out,” says Peyton. “Because of my experience san andreas, I had to understand how the helicopter worked closely to tell Dwayne which buttons to press and which not to press. At least when he listens to me! — With that experience, I wanted to give (Lopez) a similar experience. We explained with the art department why there were screens in certain places and holograms in other places. And that day I give her a little wire to say, ‘This is what the screen is like.’ That’s where the screen is.’ So we got it through the block and pulled it out, and he had to remember where it was.”

Image: Netflix

Drawings and schematics were only half the equation. After drafting his design, Peyton set out to bring his vision to life. Coming from an animation background meant animating different walk cycles to make sure the bipedal machine could move in the right direction.

“When we animated it to see how it worked — very basic animations, walk, run, walk, jog, run cycle — the first few designs looked so clunky and terrible,” Peyton said. The animation team sought that feeling while clarifying the dynamic between humans and machines. “(The machine) is an intuitive device. The concept I came up with was that the soldier is the brain. He doesn’t need to be very strong. He’s not a whiner. It’s the sound of a machine grumbling. He is an emotional cognitive device that is in sync with this. So you have to be as flexible as a trained person.”

Atlas traverses the biomes of Harlan’s base planet, from snowy tundras to swamps inspired by Peyton’s love. return of the jedi — The film’s protagonist relaxes from a “no AI” stance and forms a cognitive connection with the robot’s digital interface. In a twist on a buddy cop movie, the two bond for survival in a more fluid mechanical motion. Initially, Atlas may be hovering around a rock cliff. By the end, she’s kicking away, stomping, and hitting her robot attackers with her mechanical fuss. Early walk cycle testing helped lead to a dramatic evolution, which Peyton was able to program into a massive sound stage gimbal rig that replaced the mechanical suit. Lopez was surprisingly well suited to the machine choreography requirements.

“Her background as a dancer allowed her to measure it quickly,” Peyton says. “She (her machine) is walking her as much as she appears to be walking, and she has to react as if she were walking. So her training as a dancer allowed her to jump right into that.”

Image: Netflix

It also helps that Lopez regularly performs to thousands of people on arena stages alone. Peyton says Atlas This turned out to be one of the most demanding shoots of his career. Over the course of six to seven weeks, Lopez performed solo on a gimbal rig, completely peppered with plate shots, VFX environments and other action. Sequences filmed elsewhere. Occasionally, voice actor Gregory James Cohan would call in to act out dialogue for her AI companion, Smith.

Peyton says all the prep work needed to create a machine with the ability to perform live action and click on the stars to control it served to wow the audience. When we see a machine in action for the first time, it is not an act of bravery. They were ambushed during their flight. The transport sinks and so does the Atlas aboard the rig. As the completed sequence shows, Peyton’s imagination swirled with possibilities. “(The machine) will tip over, spin and hit debris. What would it be like to be trapped in that can? What does it sound like? What does it feel like? And after that experience, how can you increase your investment? Well, what if I fall into a black cloud and basically end up in a World War II dogfight, but with machines and drones? (…) It’s only 20 seconds, the first of a two-minute sequence.

“That’s the way I design,” he says. “I want to surprise you. “I want to give you something you can’t find anywhere else.”

Atlas Now streaming on Netflix.