The Electric State (2025)

March 14, 2025 8:37 PM

An orphaned teen (Millie Bobby Brown) hits the road with a mysterious robot to find her long-lost brother, teaming up with a smuggler (Chris Pratt) and his wisecracking sidekick (Anthony Mackie). [Trailer]

Loosely based on the darker and more melancholy 2018 graphic novel by Simon Stålenhag and boasting a fairly stacked cast, this Russo Bros.-directed Netflix adaptation is altogether more goofy and Marvel-esque (though it doesn't strike me as quite as terrible as the reviews make it out to be).

posted by Rhaomi (7 comments total)

It was fine. Perfectly serviceable. Tonally a little uneven in places when it didn't seem to know whether it was going for Amblin nostalgia or not. Visually the robots are great as I expected.

Pratt reprising Peter from GotG essentially. Brown didn't blow my mind but she seemed to hit the emotional notes required. Quan's character was weirdly placed as a good guy when his actual actions were pretty horrific. Esposito took on a sort of weird heel-face turn, I didn't think they sold it all that well but it's better than him being given a 1-dimensional bounty hunter bad guy role, I suppose. Peanut's Lincolnian air was a little bit undercut by the choice of Harrelson to voice him (he sounds like, well, Woody Harrelson!).

The ending speech should probably have been cut.
posted by axiom at 9:08 PM on March 14

I wonder how much of the critical backlash is due to the perversion of the source material. Every review mentions how completely tonally off this thing is, but Ican't help but feel like if it were the exact same film as an original IP, it would be getting middling scores across the board, rather than being called one of the worst movies of the year.

(Btw, this thing cost $320 million. Dune 2, by contrast, cost $190 million.)
posted by Rhaomi at 12:02 PM on March 15 [3 favorites]

Btw, this thing cost $320 million

What the... how...? According to this, it's because there are lots of robots and they all move differently, so each one is a special snowflake of animator effort. That makes sense, but $320 million still seems astronomical. At least the robots were the best part.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 2:43 PM on March 15

I just spent an hour looking at Stalenhag's wonderful, achingly beautiful artwork before watching the trailer to this film.

I wish I had never clicked the link to the trailer.
posted by SoberHighland at 8:56 AM on March 16

I clicked the Netflix thumbnail, saw Chris Pratt and the Russo Brothers, said "oooff," and clicked away immediately.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 10:11 AM on March 16 [1 favorite]

I also came in via familiarity with the source material, and made it exactly 9 minutes in. Astoundingly trite and terrible nonstop expositional dialog for an opening scene, followed by ANOTHER five minute expository newsreel jank, and in comparison to Stalenhag's work, everything just looked so... stupid. Just deeply dumb. The VR setup of 'what if Severance, but also Ready Player One' made me shut this off entirely.
posted by FatherDagon at 8:57 AM on March 18

A. It was fine; a kid movie

B. I turned to my partner halfway through and said "Is this just a really long and complicated Planter's commercial?" And nothing that happened after that disproved it.
posted by emjaybee at 6:58 PM on March 18