The Russo brothers’ Netflix epic The Electric State will be loved by no one but half-watched by all

Some 25 years ago, as I was beginning high school, I learned one of the most valuable lessons about film that one could ever learn. In a class discussion about our favourite movies, one of my peers stated that her favourite movie of all time was The Watcher, a dull serial killer thriller starring James Spader and Keanu Reeves. The Watcher is barely remembered today, and it wasn’t particularly well-regarded closer to its release date, either, and to my budding cinephile brain, its selection as someone’s favourite film of all time defied all logic. Here was a movie indistinguishable from a dozen other movies, coldly received by critics and ignored by audiences, that someone considered the very best movie they had ever seen. Though it would take me years to break out of the codified canon approach to appreciating movies, I did learn a lesson: every single movie has the potential to be someone’s absolute favourite. 

This is not something that seems to have ever crossed the Russo brothers’ minds.

Though technically some of the world’s top directors in terms of scope and box-office gross, the Russo brothers’ non-Marvel output — created exclusively for streaming services and often coming with astronomical budgets that outstrip even the average Avengers movie — has been comprised entirely of generic, unremarkable genre slop that barely if ever enters the cultural conversation. Since streamers don’t release numbers (and when they do, they’re not exactly reliable), we’re to believe that everyone on Earth has seen and loved The Gray Man, their 2022 globe-trotting spy thriller, but its algorithm-pleasing construction has ensured that it simply exists outside of such things as “audience enjoyment” and “staying awake through the whole thing.” This appears to be enough for the Russos — to make a movie that can be identified as such by a good percentage of the world’s population. Passion, on either side of the screen, has nothing to do with it.

The Electric State, their adaptation of Simon Stålenhag’s 2018 illustrated novel, comes with the highest pricetag for a Netflix production yet. Though it’s foolish to assign expectations to a budget, it does suggest a certain faith in the material that’s not necessarily backed up by the actual material. Rolling through elements of blockbuster filmmaking of the last 15 years at an alarming clip, The Electric State may not be as generic as their last Netflix production, but it’s pretty much just as dispassionate. 

The Electric State takes place in a society where animatronic robots designed in the 1950s (by Walt Disney, no less) eventually evolved into a workforce of indentured servitude; displeased with being used as miners and waiters, the robots fought back, leading to a war that was closely won by humans in the early ’90s. The world’s remaining robots have been forced into a containment zone and their interactions with the human world are considered highly illegal. To continue using robots to do menial jobs without having to deal with their pesky consciences, a tech billionaire named Ethan Skate (Stanley Tucci) has devised a sort of VR helmet that allows humans to bifurcate their conscience and live both in the real world, doing boring jobs through their robot avatars, and in a narcotic fantasy land of their own choosing.

Michelle (Millie Bobby Brown) has lived with a headset-addicted foster father (Jason Alexander) ever since her family was killed in a car accident some years prior. One night, she is visited by a robot portraying 1960s cartoon character Cosmo that purports to actually be an avatar for her deceased brother Christopher, who claims to be held by someone (or something) in the robot-prison zone. To access it, Michelle seeks out help from Keats (Chris Pratt), a former soldier turned nostalgia junk peddler and his best friend Herman (voiced by Anthony Mackie), who just so happens to be a robot. Together, with a gaggle of zany robots voiced by celebrities picked up along the way, they head into the eye of the storm to rescue Christopher.

Though silly and essentially designed to allow for maximum quadrant-pleasing mix-and-match nostalgia porn in the Ready Player One mold, The Electric State at least states its premise cleanly and without too much of the arcane bullshit that usually comes with high-concept sci-adaptations. Granted, Stålenhag’s book is more of an artbook than a comic book, and the filmmakers have had to do a lot of colouring-in to make it into the kind of leave-it-on-in-the-background, shareholder-pleasing content they now excel at. They’ve done that by pilfering ideas from sources both obvious (the Terminator and Transformers series, Guardians of the Galaxy) and less so (Brad Bird’s Tomorrowland) and smoothing them out into an easily digestible entertainment paste.

In the film’s defence, there are many things about it that, while not necessarily good and clever, aren’t a total wash. For a film filled to the brim with robot characters, its special effects have a certain heft that prevents it from feeling one level removed from Pratt and Brown yelling at tennis balls in front of a green screen. The humour doesn’t solely rely on well-trod postmodern rib-poking in the Deadpool vein, although it strikes a curious balance between being aimed squarely at kids and being of the all-quadrant Amblin variety. Even Pratt, who has essentially played Star-Lord in every movie he’s made since 2014, is a little more dialled-down than usual. To what end is unclear. 

From a well-established premise, the film nevertheless devolves into copious robotic shenanigans, plot twists half-whispered by rusted-out robot characters, obvious needledrops by the barrel-full and a general lack of personality that soon becomes the film’s driving force. Like The Gray Man before it, The Electric State ultimately feels like the product of what we used to call focus-group filmmaking but can now consider the product of the algorithm. There’s no passion behind it; all of its decisions are mechanical at best. Though it takes the hard work of hundreds upon hundreds of people to make a movie, The Electric State makes it look like they can just sort of start existing out of thin air.

Back when my fellow student expounded on her love of The Watcher (it turns out her main reason for loving it was that she thought Keanu Reeves was hot, which is a fair point but not one that The Watcher has exclusivity on), movies that cost as much money as The Electric State had a certain cachet. They often failed at the box office and were seen as runaway disasters based on decisions the filmmakers made — to shoot Waterworld on the water, for example, or to turn 1960s TV shows into colourful steampunk nonsense. They were the result of someone with too much passion (misguided as it might be) butting heads against the people with the money. What I wouldn’t give to see a little of that misguided passion somewhere in The Electric State, a film seemingly conceived to be loved by no one but half-watched by all. ■

The Electric State is streaming now on Netflix.

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