The Electric State is the latest endeavor by directing duo Joe and Anthony Russo to move beyond their Marvel tenure and truly establish themselves with a wholly original project. Well technically, it’s based on a graphic novel, but still. While their other recent directorial efforts, such as The Gray Man, failed to make a positive impression, Electric State felt like it could be something special given its ambitious premise, all-star cast, and the $320 million they were given to bring the film to life.
Sadly, that is not the case. While The Electric State isn’t a terrible movie and it definitely has its moments throughout, I can’t in good conscience say that it’s a good movie either. An ambitious but ultimately disappointing mess that frequently confuses muddled storytelling and contradictory ideas with nuance and depth constantly on the verge of becoming better but never quite getting there.
The plot
In an alternate universe version of the 1990s, sentient, mascot-esque robots have been exiled to a walled-off Exclusion Zone following a failed uprising. And the only advanced technology that remains are mechanized, human-like drones piloted via specialized helmets called Neuracasters that allow a user’s consciousness to operate independently from their physical body. And seemingly the only person who doesn’t regularly wear a Neuracaster is our protagonist, rebellious teenager Michelle, played by Millie Bobby Brown.
She’s simply trying to get through life with her abusive foster father Ted, played by Jason Alexander, following the tragic death of her parents and her genius younger brother Christopher. However, everything changes when a robot resembling Kid Cosmo, Christopher’s favorite cartoon character, wanders into Michelle’s house under the apparent control of the late prodigy.
Desperate to reunite with her brother, Michelle teams up with a black-market smuggler named Keats, played by Chris Pratt, and his robot companion Herman, voiced by Anthony Mackie, to force their way into the Exclusion Zone, find Christopher’s body, and uncover the truth behind the Neuracasters and the post-uprising world as a whole.
The review
The biggest problem with The Electric State is that there is entirely too much going on. Machine sentience and artificial intelligence, man vs. machine, post-apocalyptic dystopia, humanity’s disconnection from reality, the foster care system, found family, war, existentialism, big tech, the criminal underground, Mr. Peanut as the leader of the revolution for some reason. If they had zeroed in on one or two, maybe three of these ideas, and refined them, this could’ve been great. Instead, the movie throws every one of them and then some into a blender and the end result is a sloppy mush with only a few good bits that can be pulled out.
Yet at the same time, many plot elements that feel like they should be important are never explored. Michelle’s family explicitly didn’t die in the war, but how did they feel about it? Never addressed. What exactly did Michelle do to get an ankle monitor put on her at the beginning of the movie? Never explained. Was there any specific significance about Kid Cosmo that made it speak to Christopher and Michelle? Never explored. The movie spends so much time on its shockingly convoluted backstory and worldbuilding that it frequently leaves its characters by the wayside.
Which is a shame because, in spite of that, the character work and performances are by far the best part of the film. Chris Pratt and Anthony Mackie have a great rapport as Keats and Herman, Giancarlo Esposito delivers an excellent villain performance as to be expected, Ke Huy Quan does a fun “reluctant scientist” turn here, Stanley Tucci has a perfect love-to-hate energy as Ethan Skate if he is mostly just an evil version of Tony Stark in the beginning of Captain America: Civil War, and for as bizarre as the concept is, Woody Harrelson does do a remarkable job of selling Robot Mr. Peanut as a charismatic and effective revolutionary.
As for Millie Bobby Brown herself, while the script isn’t giving her a lot to work with, she does an admirable job and her interactions with the Kid Cosmo robot work really well. Cosmo can only communicate with physicality and stock catchphrases so much of the emotion of their relationship falls to Brown and it does work fairly well. This is aided of course by the movie’s other major positive: the VFX work.
Obviously, there are a lot of robots in The Electric State and basically all of them have unique designs that move and interact with the world in unique ways that somehow always feels convincing and cohesive. Every one of them feels like they belong in this world no matter how different they look. It’s a shame that the aforementioned cohesiveness in the design work didn’t carry over to the film’s themes and narrative.
The Electric State wants to be a movie about found family and humanity’s relationship with technology, but neither theme ends up working individually or coming together as a whole. While Keat/Herman and Michelle/Cosmo work, the four of them never really come together as a unit in a way that feels earned. And while the film gestures at how tech corporations put profit over people and how technology can disconnect us from reality, most of it feels ripped wholesale from other, better movies and it rings fairly hollow when the solution to “stop using technology to avoid real life” is “make friends with robots.”
Also, this is probably nitpicking, but the soundtrack sucks. Normally, I love Alan Silvestri but his score for this feels like the same three or four generic orchestral tracks played over and over again mixed with random needle drops that have little to no bearing on the story or characters. And apparently, the human race nearly losing a war to sentient robots didn’t stop Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch from getting a hit single out of “Good Vibrations” in 1991 and I don’t know how to feel about that.
Is The Electric State worth watching?
I wish I liked The Electric State more than I did. It’s got a great cast, the effects and design work are fantastic, and it’s exploring a lot of fascinating concepts. But the end result sadly doesn’t work. The themes are muddled, the story is at once overly complicated and overly simplistic, and I simply could not bring myself to care about whether or not any of these characters lived or died. It’s not the worst thing in the world and it definitely has its bright spots, but it could’ve been so much better.
The Electric State streams exclusively on Netflix March 14.
The Electric State Review – A $320 Million Massively Mediocre Mechanized Mess
