Russo Folly
Joe and Anthony Russo occupy the spot in film culture that belonged to Michael Bay and Brett Ratner, 10 or so years ago: The guys who make movies that’re financially successful, but who lack respect, while also carrying public personas that rankle even more than their movies do.
Bay has somewhat redeemed himself of late, with some well-received later-career movies, while Ratner hasn’t. But the Russos, who made the last two Avengers movies but have done little but high-budget streaming service slop ever since, have a well-earned reputation as modern film’s Great Satan.
That reputation isn’t likely to improve with The Electric State, their new movie that’s gone straight to Netflix. It’s got the Russo Touch: An uninteresting visual style, a waste of a talented cast, banter that’s never funny, and a plot that engages with some philosophical questions and has nothing to say about any of them. And that’s all for the low price of just $300-320 million! The last time the Russos made an unwatchable Netflix movie, 2022’s The Gray Man, it cost a mere $200 million, so I guess inflation’s out of control.
(Note: The $320 million budget figure for this film has been bandied about throughout the media, and I see no solid source for it, aside from a Puck story from last year stating that the film, “which would have been budgeted at less than $200 million at a traditional studio, can end up costing closer to $300 million at Netflix.” I don’t know the real number, but whatever it is, it could’ve been put to better use on just about any other project, or more likely, 10 to 15 of them.)
Based on a graphic novel by Simon Stålenhag, The Electric State is set in an alternate reality version of the 1990s in which there’s been a civil war between humans and robots, one introduced by a deep-faked Bill Clinton giving a speech threatening the robots. The movie’s main plot, naturally, has the humans and robots joining forces against an evil corporation (led by Stanley Tucci). The heroine is Michelle (Stranger Things’ Millie Bobby Brown), an orphan who eventually befriends a group of robots, along with a military veteran.
He’s played by Chris Pratt, made up for some reason to look more like Seann William Scott. The rule of Pratt in a movie is, you have to let him be funny and charming. The Guardians movies did that, the Jurassic World movies didn’t, and The Electric State emulates the latter.
The film wastes a lot of talented actors, both in human and voice-over robot roles; Woody Harrelson, as a robotic Mr. Peanut, is especially a lowlight. Giancarlo Esposito isn’t wasted as badly as he was in the recent Captain America: Brave New World, but it’s close. Jason Alexander is laughably miscast as Michelle’s abusive stepfather. We’re also introduced to many robot characters—each one more irritating than the last—and treated to an emotional reunion between Michelle and a loved one.
The film is devoid of emotional connections or payoffs, or of having anything to say about what is to be human, or a robot, or the possibly exploitative relations therein. Sci-fi authors, from Isaac Asimov and Philip K. Dick on down, have frequently dealt with these questions; this film doesn’t’ about any of that. The idea of setting the film in an alternate version of the Clinton era should have potential, but the filmmakers do nothing interesting with that, either.
And it’s not all The Electric State gets wrong—the dialogue is forced and unfunny, there are musical needle drops everywhere that don’t tend to fit the moment.