A few years ago, if you told me we were getting a new movie from the writers and directors of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame, I would have lost my mind. But as the years have gone by, my interest has dwindled, and we now have The Electric State, a new Netflix movie that hasn’t had much of a cultural hype going into it. While Simon Stålenhag’s 2018 novel has quite a following, this movie will not be the cultural mainstay that their Marvel work has become. It’s a generic movie that surprisingly fails to impress on most fronts.
Writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely and directors Anthony and Joe Russo are an undoubtedly talented group of people. When we think about the underperformance of recent Marvel Cinematic Universe projects, we often long for the days when these writers and directors were churning out phenomenal work.
But I’m eager for the Russos to return to the MCU with the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars. Because honestly, they’ve fumbled every directorial break outside the series, with Apple TV’s Cherry and Netflix’s The Grey Man falling short with critics.
Millie Bobby Brown (of Stranger Things and Enola Holmes fame) is the star of the show as Michelle. The film starts off by establishing her close bond with her brother Christopher, played by vastly talented child actor Woody Norman, who made his star debut in C’mon C’mon. Through a series of newscasts, we learn about the setting: a war has broken out between humans and robots that has only been settled by the two forming a tight symbiotic relationship. The film is set in an alternate dystopian 1994, while tensions remain between the species, but peace exists. Michelle’s family has died, and she believes her brother has returned to her in the form of a robot.
A “girl and her robot” story set in such a distinct setting has vast amounts of potential. Firstly, the production budget for The Electric State was a whopping $320 million. You can see some of that on the screen, from the unbelievably stacked cast of A-list talent (appearing both on-screen and through voice) and the seamless visual effects. This movie has an impressive amount of VFX, and unlike many modern movies where we can see the cracks at the seams, it’s easy to forget we’re watching CGI because the world looks so convincing.
However, the tone of The Electric State is something to consider. I don’t know whether dark humor is the intention for all of this, but the leader of the robot army is a certain food mascot and the second he showed up on screen, I burst out laughing. The confusing part is that at first, the movie seems self-aware about the character’s absurdity, but by the final act, they put that character in serious conversations and I just could not take it seriously.
There’s one really fascinating idea here that surrounds a new technological development where people can split their neural networks and allow them to work and play at the same time. God knows I’ve needed this technology for a while, but this mainly manifests in what visually looks like a bunch of people spending their entire existence with their heads inside VR machines that look a lot like handheld vacuum cleaners. It’s nothing we haven’t seen before in stuff like Ready Player One, which makes the familiarity of this movie disappointing, since we have an expensive film without many novel ideas in it.
The best part of this movie? Millie Bobby Brown. She’s an excellent actress who proves once again to be a competent leading lady. The best scenes in the film by far are the ones that delve into her character. Michelle is a tragic character grappling with the death of her family, but especially her brother, with whom she had a strong bond. When the film slows down to develop their relationship, it’s absolutely beautiful. But one of the weakest aspects of this film is Chris Pratt. General audiences have generally criticized actors like Ryan Reynolds for playing the same character in all their movies. The same complaint can be applied to Pratt in recent years, once again playing a badass with a humorous edge, which he’s been doing since Guardians of the Galaxy and Jurassic World got him famous for this schtick.
Pratt’s not bad in this film, but he’s not doing anything we haven’t seen before. His relationship with Michelle isn’t particularly interesting, even though they’re two different personalities forced to team up. There’s fun to be had in this piece of vintage sci-fi, even if not much of the humor lands and the action sequences are quite forgettable. Even this movie’s final act works best when we’re following Brown and much less so during the “big battle” sequences with Pratt. You just don’t feel invested enough in our heroes and villains.
It’s especially disappointing because of the missed potential. There’s an action scene in an abandoned amusement park. That is the perfect place for action; give us a bumper car chase! Give us a merry-go-round shootout! The movie doesn’t use its settings well enough, nor does it use its character relationships as a strong source of drama. While Michelle’s relationship with her brother is strong, he’s largely offscreen. Many of the characters we follow during this story don’t have interesting relationships with each other.
The Electric State Review: Final Verdict
The Electric State proves that even if you have strong source material and excellent visuals, you can’t always rise above the stereotypes of generic Netflix blockbusters.
SCORE: 5/10
As ComingSoon’s review policy explains, a score of 5 equates to “Mediocre.” The positives and negatives wind up negating each other, making it a wash.
Disclosure: ComingSoon attended a press screening for our The Electric State review.
