Directors – Anthony Russo & Joe Russo, Screenplay – Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely, Based on the Book The Electric State (2017) by Simon Stålenhag, Producers – Chris Castaldi, Mike Larocca, Patrick Newall, Anthony Russo, Joe Russo & Angela Russo-Ostot, Photography – Stephen F. Windon, Music – Alan Silvestri, Visual Effects Supervisor – Matthew Butler, Visual Effects – Digital Domain (Supervisor – Joel Behrens), Industrial Light & Magic (Supervisor – Russell Earl, Animation Supervisors – Kevin Martel & Adrian Millington), Lola | VFX (Supervisor – Edson Williams) & One of Us (Supervisor – Lars Andersen), Visual Effects/Animation – Storm (Supervisor – Espen Nordahl), 2D Animation – Titmouse (Supervisor – David Vandervoort), Special Effects Supervisor – Mike Meinardus, Specialty Prop Robots – Weta Workshop, Production Design – Dennis Gassner & Richard L. Johnson. Production Company – ABGO Films.
Cast
Millie Bobby Brown (Michelle Greene), Chris Pratt (Keats), Stanley Tucci (Ethan Skate), Giancarlo Esposito (Colonel Bradbury), Woody Norman (Christopher Greene), Ke Huy Quan (Dr Clark Amherst/Voice of P.C.), Jason Alexander (Ted Finister/Wingman), Holly Hunter (Madeline Vance), Marin Hiinkle (Ms. Sablinsky)
Voices
Anthony Mackie (Herman), Woody Harrelson (Mr. Peanut), Alan Tudyk (Cosmo), Brian Cox (Popfly), Jenny Slate (Penny Pal)
Plot
Robots have been employed commercially ever since they were introduced by Walt Disney, they gradually taking over many labouring jobs. In 1990, the robots started a revolt demanding their own rights, leading to a war against humanity. Humanity eventually won after the Sentre corporation headed by Ethan Skate developed the neurocaster, which allows a person to use a VR headset to project their mind into an avatar robotic body. It is now 1994 and the war is over with the robots having been banished to an exclusion zone in the deserts of the American Southwest. Michelle Greene is an orphan after her parents and younger brother Christopher, who had a genius-level mind, were killed in a car accident. She is then contacted by a robot, which she realises contains the partial consciousness of Christopher who is still alive. The robot Cosmo guides her on a journey to find someone in the exclusion zone who can free Christopher. To break in, she needs to enlist the help of Keats, a smuggler dealing in goods obtained from inside the zone, and his robot companion Herman.
Simon Stålenhag is a Swedish artist who emerged with a series of works that depict an almost-familiar world inhabited the giant decaying bodies of robots. He has published these in so far four books Tales from the Loop (2014), Tales from the Flood (2016), The Electric State (2017) and The Labyrinth (2020). The first three of these appear to exist in the same universe. Stålenhag’s work is popular and he has been nominated for awards in the SF community. His work has also attracted Hollywood attention. There was an earlier Amazon tv series Tales from the Loop (2020), an anthology of eight episodes, and is well worthwhile viewing. This is a film adaptation of The Electric State.
The Electric State was the tenth film directed by the Russo Brothers, Joe and Anthony. The two first appeared with their self-financed film Pieces (1997), which led to their being financed to make Welcome to Collinwood (2002) and You, Me & Dupree (2006), as well as being instrumental in the comedy series Community (2009-14). This led to their first assignment for the MCU with Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) and was followed by Captain America: Civil War (2016), Avengers: Infinity War (2018) and Avengers: Endgame (2019), the latter two among the Top 10 most successful films of all time. They have made a couple of other films outside of that with the crime film Cherry (2021) and the spy film The Gray Man (2022). In addition, they have also produced the films Relic (2020), Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022), All Fun & Games (2023), and the tv series’ From (2022- ) and Citadel (2023- ). The Electric State attained a phenomenal budget of $320 million, only for Universal to decide to only give the film a token theatrical release and then sell it off to Netflix, making it possibly the most expensive film to ever be dumped straight to streaming.
Millie Bobby Brown (c) and the robots Popfly, Mr Peanut and Penny Pal. With Chris Pratt in the corner (r)
The Electric State gives us a stunning opening. After cursory scenes introducing Millie Bobby Brown and brother Woody Norman, we get a recount of the war with the machines. This becomes a full-on Alternate History with a montage that starts telling about the introduction of robots by Walt Disney, their adoption by the workforce and then their revolution – images of robots working construction, acting as ice cream dispensers and then rampaging through malls and cafes. We even get digitally retouched footage of Bill Clinton giving orders for the military to strike. It is a near flawless immersion into a unique world. Then comes Millie Bobby Brown and her meeting with and setting out with the Cosmo robot where its childlike appearance, broken voice and range of expressions, the sort of which are usually given to cartoon characters, make it cutely endearing.
The film makes a general adherence to the overall plot of Simon Stålenhag’s book about the girl and a robot on a journey across the USA, although this has been substantially expanded with the addition of a whole other plot about the machine revolution and the war with the robots that the book does not have. That said, the Russo Brothers replicate the looks of Stålenhag’s robots and rundown world of abandoned machines – there are often shots that are directly modelled on his artwork, along with many of the robot designs.
It was at this point I was starting to think that The Electric State had the potential to be a really good science-fiction film. That was until about twenty minutes in where Chris Pratt and his robot companion voiced by Anthony Mackie are introduced. The Herman robot is all smartass sarcasm and wisecracks – it is essentially the robot as annoying comedy sidekick and only one step above idiot comic robots like No 5 in Short Circuit 2 (1988) and Claptrap in Borderlands (2024). Moreover, from this point on, the film pits Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt together in a constantly bickering road movie relationship that you know is going to have the eminently predictable arc of thawing before the film’s end. It represents a great set-up crashing down in a pitch to easy audience-pleasing humour. It also falls flat – neither actor creates any spark in their sparring that makes you warm to them.
Simon Stålenhag’s artwork brought to life
It leaves you wanting to cry. There has been some fantastic work thrown at The Electric State in terms of design and especially visual effects. The entry into the Blue Sky mall with an amazing array of assorted robotic hairdressers, a piano-playing taco bot, a phone kiosk robot, walking ice cream cones, donuts and bags of popcorn, and a postie bot is quite a wondrous experience. And the big climactic battle with the ragtag army of robots going up against the drones of the Sentre corporation is a fantastic set-piece that leaves you going wow.
At the outset, I thought The Electric State promised something great, but I ended up watching that potential fritter through the Russo Brothers’ hands. At the end of the film, you sit back and wonder for all the massive expense outlaid, what it is that The Electric State had to say about robotics and the A.I. revolution. In truth, it has nothing to offer other than some broad cliches about machine rights. The robots are divided into being either cutely anthropomorphic or militarised human-powered ones with no real mid-ground between. It is also a film that seems to have done very little research into its subject matter to make anything believable beyond watching other films on the subject. I had to laugh at the idea of an entire internet (one with a bandwidth that allows reality-indistinguishable Virtual Reality capabilities and real-time control for avatar bodies) being able to be funnelled through the mind of a single adolescent boy.
