The Electric State Is A Big Misfire, Here's Why
A high-budget spectacle with amazing motion capture technique and VFX, the film is all style, but substance?
Like a half-remembered cartoon on the telly, there is something eerily familiar about Kid Cosmo, an animated series referenced heavily in the Netflix's biggest budget film, The Electric State. The neon-tinted artifact that in the first few minutes of the film feels like the nostalgic 90's MTV animation is in fact fabricated to make you remember the bygone era - your childhood, before everything becomes dystopian.
An Anthony and Joe Russo's film, The Electric State, had the biggest budget no Netflix film was offered before. It had an adorable real-life robot alongside Millie Bobby Brown (Michelle) and Chris Pratt (Keats), yet the adventure film about robot rebellion, resulting war between humans and robots in a retro-futuristic wasteland is a big misfire. Why? The storytelling.
While the film separates itself from the exposition of robots becoming sentient and conquering the world, post the Kid Cosmo theme song, we are transported to an alternate reality where robots and humans co-exist. Based on a 2018 novel with same title by Simon Stålenhag, in this alternate reality, where the power struggle is between the robots and the humans, Michelle, a ward of the state after losing her family in car crash, teams up with Keats (Chris Pratt), a low-rent smuggler, and their respective robot sidekicks Cosmo (voiced by Alan Tudyk) and Herman (voiced by Anthony Mackie), as she traverses the American West in search of her brother Christopher (Woody Norman), who she’d long believed was dead.
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For fans of sci-fi and fantasy fiction this is a great plot, but two and a half hours long The Electric State feels underdeveloped afterthought.
What Works
One of the standouts of the film is the visual elements of this Netflix sci-fi. The animation has a realistic touch to it, blending the two worlds of robots and humans really well. So much so that you feel like robots have come to life. With large number of CG characters in a wasteland, 175 to be precise, all designed, animated, and given voice overs to, is purely remarkably. Especially, the real life version of Kid Cosmo that was connected to the actor playing him for a motion-capture performance.
Moreover, each machine has a distinct personality and quirks that help them fight. Some of the comedy in the film comes from their interactions with each other and with Michelle and Keats. This adds to the sense of bonding between the characters and the audience. The relationship between Keats and Herman, his robotic companion, is one of the few exciting anchors that successfully convey a meaningful bond between robots and humans. Here the idea that the film tries to push for- technological companionship is interesting to watch.
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What Doesn't Work
The areas where The Electric State misfires is the pacing and the plot. That's where the tale falls apart. With a linear predictable plot line, the movie fails to surprise or thrill us. It feels flat to viewer and so, the 2 hours feel longer. With no emotional elements to move the audience and the refusal to linger in a scene little longer adds to the disconnect. So, we the final plugs in the movie are pulled, the audience are neither amused nor disheartened.
Also, would have loved to watch a little character arcs in the film. While Millie Bobby Brown's Michelle has a clear intent- to find her brother, there is little weight on why Keats and Herman tag along. Didn't they have things to smuggle? To put it simply, the film has great premise but fails in executing those elements of good storytelling in this one.
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A robot walks into Michelle's new home and she quickly believes that the robot has her brother's consciousness, something we are told in the beginning of the movie. I mean aren't there enough robots who won't to take over the world aka sentre or the controlling home AI system!
With a great cast, big budget, amazing technology at hand, Russo brothers' The Electric State is half as electric as it claims to be. It is a dismally soulless odyssey across the American Southwest in a retro-futuristic alternate version of the 1990s.