"The Electric State" Dir: The Russo Brothers, 2025

There are some films that I have to admit I will watch more out of a sense of duty, in this case because of my interests in robots and pop-culture, rather than to satisfy a raging curiosity for the latest sci-fi blockbuster and Netflix' "Electric State", falls into that category, adapted from the art book with a loose mostly hinted at narrative of the same title by the Swedish illustrator / concept designer Simon Stålenhag, who also acted as associate producer on this Hollywood produced film.

With what has been quoted as being the biggest budget film from Hollywood to date, something that is certainly evident in the visual effects work, which is top-notch, the film's design influences that run though Stålenhag's work are very much on show, these being mid-century American advertising mascot design and the work of early Japanese Manga artists, specifically Tezuka Osamu, whose classic creation "AstroBoy / Atom Boy" is referenced in a too obvious way.

I haven't actually read Stålenhag' book though I'm certainly aware of his work that places giant robots and other technological artefacts in bleak and banal Scandinavian settings and that feel immediately filmic as a result of his use of photography as a basis for digital paintings.

I wasn't aware at the outset that Millie Bobbie Brown featured in the lead cast alongside Chris Pratt, Stanley Tucci and Ke Huy Quan, an actress whose work is always interesting but any suggestion that the film itself might be improved by her presence was soon dispelled as it settled into a standard format that you've seen in so many films before it, ie a few heroic figures have to take down a big bad guy (Tucci) in a high tower and are massively outnumbered and out-gunned, in this case by "drones' or Tucci's robotic shock troops and robots who have rebelled against their creators and are on the run from termination.

The twist is that after a robot rebellion by machines that were built to serve and perform menial tasks like flipping burgers etc, Tucci's "Ethan Skate" has invented a solution which is to operate robots remotely by humans wearing VR helmets, or "Neurocasters". I remember a term, "Waldo", that referred to a similar use of technology as an extension of a puppeteer and here it is employed to by-pass the threat of supposed machine sentience. "Ethan Skates" solution comes at the expense of the life and mental capabilities of Bobbie Brown's "Michelle" kid brother "Christopher" (Woody Norman), thought killed in a car crash decades previously as seen in the film's prologue and now kept barely alive in a research facility. However, his consciousness has somehow escaped and entered the circuitry of "Cosmo" a robot designed to resemble a popular cartoon character and the subject of Christopher's favourite TV show and this sets up a scenario where Michelle and Cosmo cross country to find the location of the research facility, picking up the truck driver "John D.Keats" (Chris Pratt) along the way as they try to avoid the crack robot-terminator, "Marshall Bradbury" (Giancarlo Esposito).

In the course of their journey the trio find themselves in an abandoned theme park staffed by robots who are now expendable and ready for termination and this sequence offers the film's designers free reign in terms of imagining all sorts of possible robot designs based on food products like Tacos and peanuts while ensuring that they remain in keeping with Stålenhag's design ethos.

I fell asleep part way, not a good sign, and the sense that the plot is ploughing a well-worn Dystopian sci-fi furrow is very evident, however the film compensates with the art direction and design and some interesting ideas like the theme park that are never fully explored, instead offering some rather clunky preachy-ness about what it is to be human at the conclusion.

The other plus point is the visual effects work where robots of varied size and quirky design populate cities decimated by a war between machines and humans and that interact very convincingly with the human cast of the film and really feel like rounded (pun not intended where "Cosmo" is concerned) characters.

The Russo Brothers inevitably lean toward the action film genre they are best known for so I guess it's to be expected that any film of theirs will be filled with mayhem, explosions and gunfire and this is certainly the case at the film's climax as the trio and other robots storm the heavily fortified research facility that holds the comatose body of "Michelle's" kid brother "Christopher", Tucci's "Ethan Skate", inventor of the "Neurocaster" technology, and Ke Huy Quan's "Dr Amherst", the scientist tasked by Skate in keeping "Christopher" alive.

Originally intended for a theatrical release that may have done it more favours, it failed to hold my interest for much the same reasons as Spielberg's 2018 film "Ready Player One", though without being stuffed to the gills with visual effects in the same way.

"The Electric State", Dir: The Russo Bros, 2025

Netflix