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| Images courtesy of Netflix |
The Russo Bros. return with their latest Netflix entry, The Electric State. The film which is the streaming giant's highest budget production at over $320 million dollars is a creatively bankrupt visual spectacle that abandons the talents of Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt and trades them in for baseline entertainment that really lacks any semblance of heart.
Attempting to cash in on the '80s sci-fi vibe, The Electric State is a watchable bit of late Saturday night escapism, but shirks any good will that the Russos had left over from their Marvel entries. They've fully traded in storytelling for great looking effects and production values. This is exactly why The Electric State doesn't work. It has no soul and no connection to its audience, one which will see right through its ineptitude.
In an alternate 1994, the world has become a dystopian one where a robot war has fragmented society, banning the electric beings to The Ex, their own wasteland of sorts where they're building a new society away from those pesky humans. There is now a truce between humans and the robots, which of course will be broken over the course of the film. Borrowing elements from far bigger and greater movies, The Electric State would have worked much better as a video game. If it had stuck closer to the original text which it's based on, it may have had some luster. Unfortunately, this is a jumbled mess that plays like it was written in cahoots by an algorithm, AI, and non-creative executives with too much budget to spare.
Perhaps the biggest issues with the movie lie in the facts that Millie Bobby Brown has talent to spare, but she's just wasted here. They give her no room to believably emote. The scenes which are meant to tug at our hearts continuously fall flat because we don't have much character to grasp on to. And the little bit of backstory is so ham fisted and underutilized that it becomes needless to pay any attention to. The connection between Brown's Michelle and her long-lost brother Christopher never has any dynamic. And when it does, it falls flat because another amazing looking robot gets in the way. Honestly, this probably would have worked way better as an animated feature. The balance between tech and human here is noticeable. It's so unbalanced that it needed to be flattened a bit.
Despite all its shortcomings, The Electric State is very nice to look at. The robots and the world they've created is something to behold. The droid designs and special effects are extremely pretty. And the sound design is next level for a Netflix release. This is like a hybrid of Mad Max, Ready Player One, Fallout, The Iron Giant and Bumblebee all smashed together into one giant amalgamated platter of Netflix goo awaiting its next victim. Sadly enough, all of those aforementioned titles had something to say. The Russos are in a cyclic rut that they can't escape from. The Electric State is definitely a movie. I'll leave it at that.
Sometimes bigger is not better.
-CG