Tesla

Title says it all. This was a movie that didn't need to be made, so they "re-imagined" history to make it more compelling. Only it wasn't more compelling, it simply was irritating.

It's a random girl telling you how many searches "Tesla" or "Edison" has on Google. Then a silent Ethan Hawke staring at lightening for the rest of the movie

This biopic was one of my most anticipated of 2020. Sadly, it is as dull as a Wikipedia entry... sprinkled with two scenes of anachronistic music and a secondary character reciting Google search statistics. Yes, you read that correctly. Ethan Hawke is as reliable as they come... but even his talents are insufficient in bringing this dead script to life. No Spark Whatsoever.

The film is very confusing. I can't really follow the story, because it has a lot of seemingly irrelevant shots or fantasy shots - I can't really tell. I was genuinely bored by "Tesla". "The Current War" is a way better film. Watch that one instead.

I looked forward to learning a little about Nikola Tesla, the inventor moved into the shadows of people like Edison and Westinghouse by history. Instead, I got a pretentious muddle of history and fantasy given in an underlit and murky tableau that's as dull as the narrative.

Ethan Hawke plays Tesla (sans accent) as if sleepwalking. But it doesn'r matter because the story has nothing to tell us anyway. We get disjointed scenes that depict this and that, some historical and some made up. They add up to not much of anything. The "device" of throwing in anachronistic touches (Google, cell phone, Coca Cola, etc) backfire. But the major atrocity is when Hawke's Tesla picks up a microphone and starts a karaoke session of "Everybody Wants to Rule the Word."

Avoid this garbage and spend your time reading the Wikipedia article on Tesla.