If an algorithm designed a classic, big-screen spectacle for the small-screen age, The Electric State probably wouldn’t be too far off the mark.
This is an Amblin-inspired, big-budget adventure with dystopian, science-fiction wonder, nostalgic callbacks, well-liked stars (Chris Pratt! Millie Bobby Brown! Stanley Tucci! Giancarlo Esposito! Ke Huy Quan!) and the directors ( Joe and Anthony Russo ) behind some of the highest-earning movies of all time.
In theory, it should work. A kid on a dangerous, cross-country journey with a robot that may or may not be her brother whom she thought was dead? A reluctant, jaded adult companion who’s quick with a one-liner? The Electric State should be some future Spielberg’s new favorite movie, the one that they’ll reference in their Oscars speech as the thing that made them want to make movies. And yet it’s lacking a spark and a soul that might distinguish it as memorable or special. Worse, considering everything it has going for it (including a reported budget that may have exceeded US$300 million), The Electric State is kind of dull.
Photo: AP
The Electric State was loosely based on an illustrated novel by Simon Stalenhag that was released in 2018 and quickly scooped up for movie adaptation purposes with Marvel veterans Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely writing the script. Set in the early 1990s, this is a world in which service robots have risen up and demanded rights and freedom. The humans respond by going to war.
This four-year war is skimmed over in a montage at the start of the film and, by 1994, Mr. Peanut (Woody Harrelson) is signing a peace treaty with Bill Clinton and the remaining robots are exiled to rot in the desert. The human victory was attributed to the drone creations of a Steve Jobs-ian tech billionaire Ethan Skate (Tucci), who is soon hawking his “Neurocasters” to the public. They scoop it up and soon society is just a bleak wasteland of screen zombies content to let their avatars work while they relax and fantasize a way out of their downtrodden existence.
There are shades of The Creator, WALL-E, Ready Player One and many, many more films in here. But no one gets mad that something is derivative if it’s also good. It’s only when the kitchen sink references are so clear and come up so short that it becomes a real problem.
Photo: AP
Brown plays Michelle, an angry, orphaned teenager who lost her entire family not in the war, but in a car wreck. The one she misses the most is her little brother Christopher (Woody Norman, giving the best, most emotionally authentic performance in the film), a reluctant child prodigy. One day, a robot of a cartoon character they used to watch together turns up at her foster home, speaking only in the character’s catchphrases. But after some gestures toward a photograph, she starts to believe that this robot is, somehow, Christopher, or at least someone who can lead her to the real Christopher. And thus starts their journey across America, and into the robot “exclusion zone” to figure out this puzzle. They soon team up with a war veteran/smuggler Keats (Pratt) and his snarky robot sidekick (Anthony Mackie, for your Marvel bingo card) and try to evade Esposito’s robot bounty hunter.
The robots they find in the exclusion zone are voiced by an army of celebrities you’ll go insane trying to place before angrily resorting to IMDb, including Harrelson, Hank Azaria, Brian Cox and Jenny Slate. Their designs are thoughtful and remarkable and should evoke a sense of awe in the viewer at the sheer ingenuity behind this film, where many of the most impressive shots seem to be the recreations of Stalenhag’s illustrations of dismantled, decaying robots. The action, however, gets mind-numbingly repetitive by the end of the bloated runtime.
Pratt and Brown, while fine individually, don’t really find their groove as partners on this journey either. Pratt is kind of just doing his thing and gets the few clever one-liners in the script. Brown, meanwhile, seems a little bored by yet another teen adventure role. And both ultimately look like movie stars in ‘90s cosplay, which might be a metaphor for the larger failure of the movie.
Photo: AP
The Electric State was, of course, not made by algorithm, which is an admittedly cheap shot for a Netflix original. Unfortunately, it just feels that way.
Photo: AP
Behind a car repair business on a nondescript Thai street are the cherished pets of a rising TikTok animal influencer: two lions and a 200-kilogram lion-tiger hybrid called “Big George.” Lion ownership is legal in Thailand, and Tharnuwarht Plengkemratch is an enthusiastic advocate, posting updates on his feline companions to nearly three million followers. “They’re playful and affectionate, just like dogs or cats,” he said from inside their cage complex at his home in the northern city of Chiang Mai. Thailand’s captive lion population has exploded in recent years, with nearly 500 registered in zoos, breeding farms, petting cafes and homes. Experts warn the
The unexpected collapse of the recall campaigns is being viewed through many lenses, most of them skewed and self-absorbed. The international media unsurprisingly focuses on what they perceive as the message that Taiwanese voters were sending in the failure of the mass recall, especially to China, the US and to friendly Western nations. This made some sense prior to early last month. One of the main arguments used by recall campaigners for recalling Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers was that they were too pro-China, and by extension not to be trusted with defending the nation. Also by extension, that argument could be
Aug. 4 to Aug. 10 When Coca-Cola finally pushed its way into Taiwan’s market in 1968, it allegedly vowed to wipe out its major domestic rival Hey Song within five years. But Hey Song, which began as a manual operation in a family cow shed in 1925, had proven its resilience, surviving numerous setbacks — including the loss of autonomy and nearly all its assets due to the Japanese colonial government’s wartime economic policy. By the 1960s, Hey Song had risen to the top of Taiwan’s beverage industry. This success was driven not only by president Chang Wen-chi’s
Last week, on the heels of the recall election that turned out so badly for Taiwan, came the news that US President Donald Trump had blocked the transit of President William Lai (賴清德) through the US on his way to Latin America. A few days later the international media reported that in June a scheduled visit by Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄) for high level meetings was canceled by the US after China’s President Xi Jinping (習近平) asked Trump to curb US engagement with Taiwan during a June phone call. The cancellation of Lai’s transit was a gaudy
RSS