The Electric State
The Russo brothers return with more sci-fi hokum, a bloated escapade blighted by visual clutter and unforgivable dialogue.
Wild robots: Millie Bobby Brown (centre) and Chris Pratt (far right)
Image courtesy of Netflix.
When you and your brother have directed the highest-grossing movie of all time, you can get away with throwing your weight around. Anthony and Joe Russo helmed Avengers: Endgame, which took the all-time box-office crown for almost two years and still remains the second biggest money-spinner in history. Meanwhile, Netflix has not proved averse to bandying around big cheques, so it might not come as a huge surprise that the streaming giant’s latest sci-fi title allegedly cost $320 million. That’s $50m more than what Disney’s Snow White cost, the latter gaining all the undesirable headlines. Well, The Electric State is a lot worse, precisely because of its rampant excess. No nuance is left unchecked, underlined or underscored with a sonic detonation. As Chris Pratt is merely a sidekick to the cluttered hardware, one wonders why the actor agreed to put his name to the project. Then one discovers that he was paid $20m. The handlebar moustache and curly blonde fright wig came free. His co-star Millie Bobby Brown got an extra $5m (and top-billing), so maybe we should forgive her as well.
The Electric State is a loose adaptation of the graphic novel of the same name by Simon Stålenhag and it probably looked a lot better on paper. Its one original note is that it’s set in 1994 “after the war,” when mankind has managed to conquer the forces of rebellious mechanical forces. So, it’s a case of rewriting history, when Bill Clinton, God bless him, drew up a truce with the robots and had them incarcerated in a giant compound in the New Mexico desert. The President was largely aided by corporate smarmy Ethan Skate (Stanley Tucci doing his thing), who enabled human soldiers to upload their minds into militant drone robots and thus were able to defeat their mechanical rivals. But what Bill Clinton doesn’t know is that Skate was illegally harnessing the brain power of a child prodigy, exploiting the algorithmic virtuosity of the kid against the latter’s wishers. However, the boy, Christopher (Woody Norman), has a sister, Michelle (Bobby Brown), who refuses to embrace the new technological revolution and declines to wear interactive VR headsets in class, getting herself into no end of trouble. She prefers the real world, unlike everybody else around her who is locked into a parallel, virtual reality not of his or her own making. Maybe the robots and technology have won after all…
This is by no means a terrible idea, albeit not wildly original. It is the tone that is so dispiriting. With all this money at their disposal, the Russo brothers have opted for an epic farce, cramming in as many idiosyncratic automatons as possible, many adopting the cartoonish forms of trendy TV figures and popular mascots. Woody Harrelson, for instance, is the voice of Mr Peanut, while young Christopher’s avatar is based on a Disneyesque cartoon character called Cosmo. Too much already. It recalls the cartoonish excess of another unwatchable mess called Toys (1992), which was far from Robin Williams’ finest hour. Here, every beat is magnified to ear-rupturing effect, when a simple flash, bang and wallop might have sufficed. In between the collisions and explosions, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely’s dialogue hardly settles the score, being of the cackhanded variety choked with limp gags. When Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ is played out over a climactic battle, we know that the Russos have no shame.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Millie Bobby Brown, Chris Pratt, Ke Huy Quan, Jason Alexander, Woody Norman, Giancarlo Esposito, Stanley Tucci, Holly Hunter, Marin Hinkle, and the voices of Woody Harrelson, Anthony Mackie, Brian Cox, Jenny Slate, Hank Azaria, Colman Domingo, Alan Tudyk.
Dir Anthony Russo and Joe Russo, Pro Russell Ackerman, Chris Castaldi, Mike Larocca, Patrick Newall, Anthony Russo and Joe Russo, Screenplay Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, Ph Stephen F. Windon, Pro Des Dennis Gassner and Richard L. Johnson, Ed Jeffrey Ford, Music Alan Silvestri, Costumes Judianna Makovsky, Sound Cameron Barker, Samson Neslund and Shannon Mills.
AGBO/Double Dream/Skybound Entertainment-Netflix.
128 mins. USA. 2025. UK and US Rel: 14 March 2025. Cert. 12.
