The Electric State Review: When $320M Railed This Movie into a Bad State

 Copyright © Netflix, Skybound Entertainment, AGBO, Double Dream

Title: The Electric State
Director: Anthony and Joe Russo

Based on: The Electric State by Simon Stålenhag

Release Date: March 14, 2025

    They finally did it. Netflix made their most expensive movie ever, if not one of the most expensive movies of all time. Did the Russo brothers make good direction this time without the involvement of Marvel? This movie is called The Electric State, Netflix's astoundingly expensive movie based on the book of the same name. Even after their successes with Squid Game and Stranger Things, the movie gained negative reviews from critics, but also mixed reviews from audiences. Its hate had to do with the cost, just like other expensive movies in recent years, like Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker and Snow White (2024). On Rotten Tomatoes, the movie holds a Tomatometer of 15%, while holding a Popcornmeter of 70%. Its IMDb score is 5.9/10 from both sides together. Finally, on Metacritic, it has a 30 Metascore from critics, and a 4.3 User Score from audiences, which shows that a big budget will not always lead to a good movie. Thanks to its budget allocated more to the visuals and celebrities, The Electric State is nothing more than an overpriced slop filled with inaccuracy and nonsense.

Summary

   In the retro-futuristic 1990s, an orphaned teenage girl, Michelle (Millie Bobby Brown), must save her long-lost brother. She befriends a mysterious robot, Cosmo (Alan Tudyk), and teams up with John (Chris Pratt) and Herman (Anthony Mackie), in order to save him from the robots.

Reasons

    The Electric State's biggest errors are the disrespect for the book, the acting, and the nonsensical plot points. To get the giant robot out of the room, the movie changes the book from a dramatic dystopian adventure to a Marvel-esque buddy action story, which shows how this movie is just sticking to the Hollywood formula. I get it. The book is hard to adapt because it is a loose story with an implied ending, but that does not mean that there should be so many creative liberties as possible. An adaptation of the book might need more time to develop, and transforming it into this will not work. Because of its A-list cast, the acting is so hollow. Millie Bobby Brown's acting had no personality, and Chris Pratt was just there for the sake of it. Heck, even the voice acting is better than the real live-action acting. Because it is just sticking to the Hollywood formula, there are nonsensical plot points muddled all over the place. It happened especially in the third act which was so hard to even get through. They could have been minor plot points that have simple solutions, instead of them being filler crap.
    Some other buggy errors in The Electric State are the slow pacing, boring characters, and repetitive humor. Its total runtime is 2 hours and 8 minutes, right? That is wasted on how much filler the Russo brothers made to bore the viewer. Next, not only is the acting so mediocre, but most of the characters are bland. Michelle is just your everyday teen protagonist, John is the comic relief sidekick, Cosmo is the marketable buddy character. Herman may be cool, but he is only there, because John needs a sidekick like Michelle has Cosmo. Even Mr. Peanut was just there for product placement, other than any other reason. Finally, the humor is not great, even though there is 0 toilet humor. In fact, this movie should not have any humor at all, because of the book that it adapted. The writers thought the jokes were so funny that they had to repeat them more than one time.
    Even though this is a bad movie, The Electric State does have some good features put in. For the most part, the visuals are amazing. You can tell that there was a lot of work to make the war look real, even though the story is not that fun. The robots may be CGI, but they blend in perfectly with the live-action background, and almost all of them have creative designs as well. If you ignore Michelle and her gang, there are some good characters. Penny Pal, the postal robot, does at least have personality and a purpose to be in this movie. Also, Herman may not have a good reason to be in the movie, but he is a good character by himself. Finishing off, the soundtrack is decent, albeit the songs are not fit for the movie. Again, if you just ignore whatever the characters are doing, you can just bop to the rock songs that are playing in the background. There is also this Taco robot that plays on the piano, which was also a redeemer in the movie.

Conclusion

    A big budget experiment just made The Electric State into a generic Hollywood movie that does not stick to the book's pages. Expensive costs are double-edged swords. If the budget is spent on both good visuals and storytelling, then that is worth the use. Otherwise, if that is spent only on the visuals and cast, then that is a waste of money. We could have gotten an adaptation that told a depressing story about the robots interfering with the world, but instead, we got this. If you would like a good adaptation that adapts the source material well, this is not for you. Skip this. Go to the theaters and find something else like this but better.

    Score: 2/10 (why can't you find other big hits on Netflix instead?)