THE ELECTRIC STATE (2025)
An orphaned teen hits the road with a mysterious robot to find her long-lost brother, teaming up with a smuggler and his wisecracking sidekick.
Simon Stålenhag’s 2018 illustrated novel The Electric State won widespread acclaim and felt like the perfect blueprint for a big-budget Spielbergian movie. The film rights had already been acquired by directors Anthony and Joe Russo a year before its publication, and after completing their double-whammy of Avengers: Infinity War (2018) and Avengers: Endgame (2019), it slowly made its way to the screen. Only, not the big one. The Electric State may be a huge movie in terms of its budget (a gargantuan $320M), but it’s another of those Netflix Original films that comes and goes over a weekend.
In an alternate 1990s, after a time when theme park-style robots gained sentience and started a war against humanity (stay with me…), The Electric State focuses on teenager Michelle (Millie Bobby Brown), who was orphaned after a car accident claimed the lives of her parents and super-genius brother Christopher (Woody Norman). But when a globe-headed “bot” claiming to be her dead sibling arrives on her doorstep years later, Michelle is pulled into an adventure across a dystopian America, where she meets former soldier Keats (Chris Pratt) and discovers the truth of what happened to Christopher is tied to nefarious businessman Ethan Skate (Stanley Tucci), whose invention allowing people to transfer their consciousness into mechanical soldiers ended the robot uprising.
It sounds like a juicy concept and Stålenhag’s original artwork painted a vivid picture of how cool a feature-length movie version of this idea could look. Still, The Electric State is ultimately an empty spectacle. It soon becomes apparent that the characters and the storyline aren’t interesting or especially original. We’ve seen countless variations of the “robot uprising” story (most recently 2023’s The Creator), and the only notable difference in Electric State is the aesthetic and personalities of the warmongering machines being so incongruous. They’re all anthropomorphic animatronics like Five Nights at Freddy’s, robotic sports mascots, or retro fairground attractions, often with unnerving painted grins and enormous anime-style eyes.
Written to be a quippy adventure by screenwriters Christopher Markus and Simon McFeely, The Electric State is surprisingly devoid of humour that lands. Chris Pratt is adept at playing snarky rogues, most notably as Peter “Star-Lord” Quill in the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy, but his turn as Keats is oddly lifeless. It doesn’t help that he has no chemistry with Millie Bobby Brown, perhaps down to the fact their dynamic is a pseudo-father-daughter one and Pratt seems to work best with actors from his own generation or romantic co-stars. Whatever the reason, both give it their best shot, but the film never comes alive based on what you’re seeing its flesh-and-blood actors do together.
Frankly, there’s so much VFX crammed into every scene that it’s continually pulling your attention away from the performances and even the story. But not in the sense that it’s an irresistible showcase for what CGI is capable of today, as it’s flawlessly done but not noticeably next-gen compared to what we’ve grown accustomed to over the past decade. Even the mechanical drones that humans upload themselves to, most notably a bounty hunter type called Marshall Bradbury (Giancarlo Esposito), are militaristic Chappie-style designs and about as well-realised as that divisive robot was back in 2015. We can just put dozens of those robots into a single frame these days, for almost the entire two-hours, when even a single Chappie used to cost $50M.
The sense of wonderment from what’s possible with CGI has sadly dissipated over time, and it doesn’t help that longer sequences or visuals that rely on scale aren’t done any favours on your TV screen. As ever with these “cinematic” movies Netflix streamed directly into our front room, it can’t escape feeling like a ridiculously expensive pilot for a TV show just because of the domestic medium it’s being delivered to.
It doesn’t help that two high-concept ideas are jostling for prominence here; the post-war aftermath of a time when humans fought machines that came to life, and the Pacific Rim (2013)-flavoured idea of a device that enables humans to control machines as avatars of themselves. Indeed, it’s revealed you can split your consciousness and effectively be in two places at once, which brings to mind the existential possibilities being explored on Apple TV’s Severance series. Sadly, this film has no interest in exploring its technological ideas and the repercussions for mankind with any depth. It just throws in moments where working-class people are slumped on their sofas, or on their porches, all hooked up to a Ready Player One (2018)-style fantasy world through whistle-shaped VR headsets.
With a villain straight from Doctor Who in Stanley Tucci’s megalomaniacal CEO, hoping to use his technology to extend human life spans, The Electric State is trapped in an awkward position: it’s narratively weak and predictable, full of archetypal characters, not interested in exploring any of ideas competing ideas to good effect, and therefore leans heavily on the visual appeal of its many fantastical metal creatures. And there’s certainly some fun in their designs and peculiar appearances — I especially enjoyed ‘Mr Peanut’ (the leader of the robots), who’s an anthropomorphic peanut with a top hat, monocle, and cain. He’s a genuine mascot for a US snack food company too, but that fact is lost on foreign audiences unaware of him. Possibly a lot of the robots are more recognisable to North Americans, so as a Brit I’m missing some of the enjoyment of seeing famous brand ambassadors come to life.
The Electric State isn’t unwatchable. The concept and the abundance of VFX at least keep it humming along— if those are things you’re engaged by — but without a truly involving storyline and characters we can latch onto and enjoy beyond the fanciful CGI, it soon becomes clear this movie has failed to do much beyond bring Stålenhag artwork to life in a different medium. But you can wait for a YouTube supercut of Electric State’s best visuals to satisfy that itch. Or buy the book and imagine your own version.
USA | 2025 | 128 MINUTES | 2.39:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH
Cast & Crew
directors: Anthony Russo & Joe Russo.
writers: Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely (based on the illustrated novel by Simon Stålenhag).
starring: Millie Bobby Brown, Chris Pratt, Ke Huy Quan, Jason Alexander, Woody Harrelson (voice), Anthony Mackie (voice), Brian Cox (voice), Jenny Slate (voice), Alan Tudyk (voice), Hank Azaria (voice), Colman Domingo, Michael Trucco, Giancarlo Esposito & Stanley Tucci.
