The Electric State (dir. Joe and Anthony Russo)

By: Lara Matariyeh 

It’s unfortunate that the Russo Brothers seem to be entirely uninspired after Avengers: Endgame (2019), aiming to make films with large productions and even larger budgets while the rest of the film is bland and shallow. The Russo Brothers’ Netflix adaptation of the dystopian novel The Electric State fails to break this cycle. A failed attempt at a nostalgic 90s adventure, The Electric State focuses on Michelle (Millie Bobby Brown), who goes on a search for her brother with two robots and smuggler Keats (Chris Pratt). 

Throughout the film, it’s difficult to develop any sort of connection to the world or characters— whether they’re robot or human— as everything is uninteresting and underdeveloped. The characters have no real depth and barely any memorable traits besides the actor that portrayed them. The movie is star-studded yet each member of the cast gives unremarkable performances, despite having numerous Academy Award nominated actors that have proven themselves to be beyond talented in other projects. Everyone is tragically underused, given poor dialogue and barely any sort of emotional complexity to work with in order to provide a performance audiences actually care about. 

Besides the dry characters and their bland backstories, the actual setting itself is a problem of its own. Taking place in a 1990s dystopian society where robots are executed due to a war between humans and technology, it would be expected that the Russo Brothers might have thought to delve deeper into what transformed the world into such a state— but that would be incorrect. There is no sufficient world-building that intrigues audiences enough to desire more insight into this civilization, with a brief mention of a previous war that the entire dystopia is based on. Where there was a chance to create a meaningful, impactful film with a message worth hearing, the Russo Brothers converted it into an unfunny, surface-level action-comedy with nothing of any real substance. The oppression and inequality of these robots could have been an issue the film centered more on but instead falls completely flat, watered down by something weak and lifeless. Rather than fixating more on anything that might have mattered, there is an odd sort of emphasis on the fact that this takes place in the 90s, but every reference to the 90s is basic and cliché, from the soundtrack down to the costumes. 

Predictable and bland, The Electric State appears to be a project with the ridiculous budget that Joe and Anthony Russo had, the production is at least one of the few redeemable factors of the film. Given the whopping $320 million dollar budget assigned to create this movie, it’s upsetting that practically only the production value and fight sequences were well-done.  While there is no denying the Russo Brothers acumen when it comes to action sequence production, audiences will only wish this level of detail could be applied to the entirety of the film.  

Target Score 3/10 Unimaginative and bland, Netflix’s massively budgeted The Electric State lacks any sort of stand out quality that evokes a genuine emotional response. The Russo Brothers achieve nothing significant; any promise is let down by the utter plainness of the project