After the box office success of Avengers: Endgame in 2019, The Russo Brothers were on top of the world. They reaped billions of dollars, galvanized the last form of movie monoculture before COVID shuttered movie theaters, and achieved the decade-long plan of Marvel’s three-phase strategy.
At the same time, Martin Scorsese made comments that compared Marvel films to being “theme parks.” “It isn’t the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being.” It sparked a massive firestorm of conversation that divided Marvel fans and cinephiles as to what cinema is, especially since at the time he was promoting The Irishman, a film backed by the streaming giant, Netflix, that would not occupy even one-hundredth of the theaters’ Endgame occupied. Joe Russo would later respond, “We define cinema as a film that can bring people together to have a shared, emotional experience…”
Cut to six years later, the Russo Brothers find themselves in the same Netflix sandbox Scorsese was in, where their latest film, The Electric State, hopes to achieve the credo they attributed cinema to being: bringing people together. The only shared emotional experience will be the depressing morale we find ourselves in, as streaming has become ubiquitous but fractured, where not even a three-hundred-million-dollar (reportedly) science-fiction spectacle can bring people together. The Electric State is a calamitously messy mishmash of cinematic influences and ideas synthesized into a lethargic experience about robots and humans coexisting that makes you wonder if we’re already asleep in the Matrix and the machines aren’t harvesting our energies. Perhaps in this reality, we can substitute “machines” with “tech executives.”
The film imagines an alternate reality where robots have become omnipresent as servants. Taking place in the 90s, robots have been programmed to do menial jobs and amusement for humans, until they become sentient and recognize their right to self-fulfillment. A longstanding war ensues between robots and humans until a peace treaty is signed by the robot leader, a peanut-shaped mascot called Mr. Peanut (Woody Harrelson), and Ethan Skate (Stanley Tucci), the CEO of a tech conglomerate, Sentre, who helped humans win the war with the creation of the Neurocaster, a headset allowing humans to upload their consciousness into drone robots. This way they can act out their actions in a drone while isolated from the battlefield.
All of this is told in newsreel exposition footage to establish the pretext for the main narrative revolving around a teenager, Michelle (Millie Bobby Brown). She is dealing with the tragic death of her intelligent brother, Chris (Woody Norman) alongside her parents in a car crash (because car crashes are the most recycled cinematic forms to kill off loved ones of a main character). Four years pass and she has a disdain for robots. While kids in her class receive lessons through Sentre’s Neurocaster (now adopted by humans for mass consumption and daily living), Michelle chooses to live in the real world, dealing with her sadness under her Neurocaster-addicted foster dad.
One night she encounters a sentient robot—Cosmo, a wide-grinning mascot from Chris’s favorite cartoon that speaks in obnoxious pre-recorded catchphrases that are meant to be sweet but become overbearing. Michelle realizes this may be her supposedly dead brother, and someone is keeping his body captive while his mind is linked to this creepy-looking mascot-bot. Together they embark on an adventure that snags along Keats (Chris Pratt), a snarky arms smuggling trucker, and his pipsqueak robot sidekick, Herman (Anthony Mackie), as they all head to a walled-off exclusion zone where all remaining mechas are left to waste away. Together, they will uncover the nefarious actions of Ethan’s vision of a technology-addicted world of humans stuck at home in a disconnected living.
Adapted from Simon Stålenhag’s illustrative novel, for as grand and epic all that plot sounds, the Russo Brothers do a masterful job at making the dullest narrative involving robots, as the plot continues to become more convoluted and ridiculous, as Tucci’s tech billionaire devolves into more villainy macabre, and more robot characters are introduced to distract the viewer from the bore that is this plot.
Brian Cox shows up as a baseball player robot that talks in baseball catchphrases; Jenny Slate is a mail-woman robot that will know the address of a character for Michelle to locate; Giancarlo Esposito is a mercenary operating a drone in pursuit of Cosmo. (Will someone please save Esposito from the scraps of villain roles he’s been encumbered with?)
As the film devolves with musings of robot sentience and the worthwhileness of listening to Mr. Peanut advocate for robot rights, one can’t help but feel how a film manufactured by the biggest tech giant in entertainment is positioning itself to where we all will align ourselves to being addicted to A.I. and virtual reality. All of us will be zoned out, numbed of our senses and the closest relationship we’ll have is not with each other, but the Netflix logo. It would be an easy jab to say The Electric State was made by an algorithm, yet that’s an insult to algorithms, as they’re created by humans. Electric State is a remnant (hopefully the last) of the Scott Stuber era of film production, where the streamer believed they could concoct franchise films that could act as content farms by burning as much money as possible. Electric State is the tattered dreams of executives and shareholders desperate to replicate blockbusters for a streaming service.
I’m reminded of the comments by former Netflix CEO Reed Hastings on who their biggest rival is. “We’re competing with sleep, on the margin. And so, it’s a very large pool of time.” That’s what Netflix is great at when it comes to their two-hundred-million Red Notice, The Russo Brothers’ two-hundred-million Gray Man, and Electric State: wasting time and money. Between all three budgets, Netflix has invested more than seven hundred million dollars and what has that netted but more bloat and gluttony for how entertainment has decayed.
This isn’t a direct criticism of the film but a lamentation of the state of the film industry. Directors and movie stars have shredded hundreds of millions and what do they have to show for it? Only those time metrics on Netflix where they tell you (unverified) how many minutes a movie or show has racked up. If a two-hundred-million dollar blockbuster premieres on a streaming service (skipping theatrical exhibition), does it make a sound? In this instance, it’s a murmur reverberating in a digital void.
Is Millie Bobby Brown the queen of Netflix? Ushering the streamer as the iconic Eleven in Stranger Things, Brown seems focused on becoming a mainstay on your interface, as her outings with the Elona Homes (2020) films, Damsel (2024) have resulted in a limited range that leaves so much to be desired. Brown is capable of shedding the waterworks when required and endearing a smile during a tender moment with Cosmo watching old cartoons. Yet, watching her doesn’t inspire much vigor for how many dimensions Michelle has. She’s sad her brother is gone and is motivated to find him, but who is she? She hates robots but finds herself as an ally alongside the celebrity-voiced cavalcade of bots–she might as well be a robot due to her rote, substandard ark.
Pratt is no better, regurgitating his slickster rebel bad-boy he did so well in the Guardians trilogy. It feels like Pratt knows he doesn’t have to try too hard for a film with minimal shelf life. The peak happens when he exclaims loudly that he will not die listening to Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. (Because you remember the hit song, “Good Vibrations,” as it plays in the scene.) His performance leaves about as big of an impact as a one-sentence factoid on his Wiki page saying he played the character of Keats in The Electric State.
The special effects are remarkably realistic, as the robots feel like practical mechanical beings moving and interacting with the real world proving an immersive quality. Scenes, where robots lurk in the shadows or live in squalid conditions of their environment, are great to look at, as their tactile look blends well in scenes where they can rely on their expressive actions and voice work. As the film climaxes to a big-scale battle between robots and Sentre’s drones, and a taco-shaped bot is playing “Ride of the Valkyries” on the piano (because you remember the iconic scene of Apocalypse Now), it devolves into sparks and clangs, where the greyish environment blends with the metallic look of most robots on display.
I don’t know what cinema is anymore. As movie theaters struggle to remain open and streaming services spend billions to make content to keep people subscribed, it seems cinema has been mutilated. It’s been misshapen and contorted to meet the needs of tech moguls and engagement metrics. Filmmakers like Scorsese are squeezed out of the studio creative pipeline, and the ones who will pick up the mantle are the Russo Brothers—men who have no perspective or spark of imagination; foot soldiers to keep the merry-go-round of content spinning until it breaks down from exhaustion.
They infuse their film with Amblin-like touches to harken back to Spielberg nostalgia, where a kid finds an unlikely non-human companion. Zany characters pop in the background, action sequences break up the tediousness of false emotional catharsis, and incessant needle drops clue the viewer what emotion they should feel. “I Fought the Law” is sung by Herman while the characters are…fighting the law.
Nothing is efficient in their storytelling, except for how fast scenes can transition to the next and sloppily move the narrative forward in a technical manner akin to an instructional manual of storytelling 101.
The Electric State may have had hundreds of millions thrown at it yet it has left no cultural footprint other than being number-one on the most-watched banner on the Netflix homepage (unverified by a third-party source). In a matter of days, it will mesh with the endless titles in the “Netflix Originals” or “In Case You Missed It” sections. The whole meaning of cinema (as far as Netflix is concerned) begins and ends by being crammed between the poster frames for the latest Meghan Markle special and a leftover theatrical movie (say any new Sony or Illumination movie) part of a movie studio’s licensing deal.
Review Courtesy of Amritpal Rai
Image Courtesy of Netflix via ScreenRant