Memorial Day weekend has long been a vital, lucrative calendar date in Hollywood, a three-day stretch that’s birthed blockbusters such as Mission: Impossible, The Lost World and Top Gun: Maverick. As George Miller’s bombastic Mad Max prequel Furiosa urges those to the big screen, Netflix has something for the majority staying home – the sci-fi adventure Atlas, and it’s the kind of big, dumb, irony-free schlock that would have premiered theatrically on this very date two decades prior. And perhaps that’s the best way to view it, as knowing nostalgia bait, designed to appeal to those who prefer to look back rather than forward, an exercise in early ’00s immersion.
If only that’s how those involved with Atlas actually saw it, then maybe there’d be more fun to be had. But as with many of the streamer’s other mockbusters – its more naked attempts to compete with the biggest of boys – it’s all too synthetic and serious to possess anything close to self-awareness.
