In the same way that a knockoff looks like the original article, The Electric State seems like a lighthearted, imaginative blockbuster.  It appears to be pricey, has some obvious design decisions based on its science fiction worldbuilding, and has actors you might recognize doing certain actions (e.g., Stanley Tucci uttering "stuffed peppers").  If you don't look attentively, you might believe you're seeing the actual thing.  Hell, you might even appreciate using it and wonder why reviews like mine were so negative.
 
This is precisely the reason why knockoffs are so detrimental to the original work.  The main goal of movies like this is to make you believe that what you're seeing is enjoyable and that it's a real movie.  The entire moviegoing experience is devalued if it is successful and you leave believing this is what a movie is.  Even though you may not be aware of it, you think about movies less now than you did before.  To put it plainly, movies can and ought to be better than this.
 
I will demonstrate what I mean.  In the parallel 1990s depicted in The Electric State, robots were a commonplace aspect of daily life for many years.  At first, we were on the brink of defeat in the conflict with humans that began when they gained the consciousness to fight for their own rights.  The tide was turned by tech tycoon Ethan Skate (Stanley Tucci), whose discovery of cerebral connections enabled people to control robotic bodies.  The survivors were sent to a desert exclusion zone when the robots lost.
 
It sounds great, doesn't it?  It is occasionally.  The robots in this universe gained popularity in the 1950s and brought with them a retro-futuristic look. The filmmakers also experimented with the unique machine designs.  The impersonal slickness of Skate's Sentre Technologies products, which have been adapted for daily use and are now commonplace, stands in contrast to this.  Adults utilize neurocasters to split their minds, assigning tasks to their drone body while part of them engages in a simulated fantasy. Teenagers attend school using neurocasters (but still in person, for some reason).
 
However, in practice, The Electric State's science fiction is confused and hollow, crammed together with allusions to the 1990s for no apparent reason other than to appeal to the nostalgia of a particular group of people.  In a world with sentient AI and neural projection, does it make much sense for computers to still resemble boxy PCs and for AOL to still say "you've got mail"?  Furthermore, I can't discern any greater purpose for the robots' references to consumer culture, which is traditionally fruitful territory.  The movie's suggestion that it's preferable to have multiple brands displayed rather than just one company's products is the closest I can come.
 
The dialogue is usually another dead giveaway.  Exposition of all types abounds in the Electric State, and you'll be able to spot it by its awkwardness.  The heroine Michelle (Brown) describes finding a package label in her car trunk without any apparent cause, which is my favorite plot-related example.  But without a doubt, the most embarrassing is when Pratt's smuggler Keats yells, "Clap on!" and then claps to turn on his lights.
 
This is the most basic and indolent form of story structure.  The Electric State is a train of dominoes, whereas a true film along these lines might be a puzzle, revealing a few parts to keep us interested while awaiting the revelation of how they all come together.  Additionally, Joe and Anthony Russo shoot the opening of each domino like a moment of intrigue and the connecting of two dominoes like a cunning reveal since they are experienced enough to know what an entertaining movie should look like.
 
This is not to say that The Electric State lacks advantages.  The VFX work that was done to make the overall vision a reality is frequently excellent, even if it has flaws.  I thought Jenny Slate's courteously violent mail robot Penny Pal was my favorite of the robots, and I thought the joke about Keats' robot partner-in-crime near the end was hilarious.  It's not an absolutely awful movie.
 
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The Electric State Review

G GOWTHAM

13/03/2025 11:47 AM