This Movie Could Have Been Great, But... | The Electric State Review & Ending Explained - video Dailymotion

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The Electric State, Netflix’s astoundingly expensive new movie starring Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt, managed to take a very interesting concept and… ruin it. Though it technically...

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00:00The Electric State, Netflix's astoundingly expensive new movie starring Millie Bobby

00:04Brown and Chris Pratt, managed to take a very interesting concept and ruin it. Though it

00:11technically has all of the parts that should, at the very least, make for a watchable big-budget

00:17flick, star power, good visual effects, etc., nothing about this movie seems to work. And in

00:24that, it's ended up becoming the exact thing it was meant to skewer. So what all went wrong

00:30with The Electric State? And what's up with that ending? Let's take a closer look. Based

00:36on the 2018 graphic novel of the same name by Simon Stolenog, though we'll talk about

00:41the number of ways it differs in just a sec. The Electric State follows teenager Michelle

00:46through an alternate timeline 90s, where she's surviving in a dystopian world that's come

00:52to pass after a human-robot war. The robots had become sentient, and no longer wanted

00:57to be forced into servitude to the humans, and so attempted to revolt.

01:02For years, they never complained about working around the clock. But the day eventually came

01:07when they grew tired of the lives we assigned them.

01:10Their rebellion was crushed, and the robots that were left had to take a peace treaty that

01:15saw them being forced into an exclusion zone away from the humans. The humans, on the other

01:21hand, became trapped by a different issue. Evil tech overlord Ethan Skate has gotten humanity

01:27hooked on VR, living their lives out in fake worlds to the point that many have essentially

01:33lost their connection with their regular human selves. Michelle, who we quickly come to find

01:39is not like the other teens. She has no interest in the technological world.

01:43Sorry, I have a condition where I can only live in reality.

01:46Is also having to deal with the trauma from her past. Her parents and her brother died in

01:52a car crash, leaving her as a lonely orphan. Or so she thought. It turns out that her brother

01:58is possibly still alive. Kind of. She sets out on an adventure that would be dangerous if this

02:05film had any real stakes or tension. It does not. To try to save her brother and also possibly what's

02:11left of the world. Older sister has to save younger brother from some evil third party

02:16is a trope that shows up pretty regularly in cinema. And usually serves as a way to explore

02:21the harsher sides of the in-between stages of growing up as an eldest daughter. Trying to figure

02:26out your own life as you hurtle towards adulthood. Feeling responsible for caring for your younger

02:31siblings. And responsible for anything bad that might happen to them. And the many tensions that can

02:36arise attempting to walk these two paths. The electric state doesn't really seem interested in

02:42exploring that to any real degree though. Michelle is definitely sad about her brother in some vague

02:49way. And realizing he might still be alive is what sets her off on her quest. But there's an emptiness

02:56there that the story never manages to overcome. One big change from the original story is that Michelle

03:02has essentially been bumped from main character to sidekick for Keat. Though is essentially a very

03:08bored prat phoning in bad quips and Party City legally distinct space movie smuggler cosplay. They also

03:16chose to add in that evil tech guy skate to work in what seemed to be the film's real goal. Which was to

03:24totally obliterate the actual point of the original story. The electric state essentially is the thing the

03:31original work was commented on. While the graphic novel worked to explore the lasting effects of a

03:37world consumed by hyper consumerism. And the dystopic disconnected wasteland that lay in its way.

03:43The electric state is that empty disconnected hyper consumerist dystopia it's pretending to be against.

03:50For a movie that's supposedly about how bad it is that humans have essentially let themselves be

03:55replaced by machines. They've created a bunch of characters that themselves feel inhuman and robotic.

04:02Within a world that's just as glassy and hollow as the VR world they're supposed to be trying to escape.

04:08Much of this is likely in large part due to the fact that the Russo brothers who directed the film

04:14don't actually think that that future is so bad. They've been very open about how they're all in on AI

04:20replacing essentially everything human and creative about filmmaking. Or sorry to partner with creative

04:26visionaries to develop the next generation of filmmaking technology. The film and graphic novel

04:32also diverge in their creation as well. The graphic novel was funded via Kickstarter by an audience of

04:38people who wanted to support a real artist and were excited to see what he created. The movie was

04:44thrown together slop made by people who don't seem to care and for no one in particular. Coming in with a

04:50price tag of over 300 million dollars. And that's not including promo costs. The Electric State is

04:56apparently one of the most expensive movies ever made. Overpaying for spectacle is nothing new for

05:02Hollywood. But this isn't even a spectacle. It's hollow and boring and, aside from the robots themselves,

05:10not even nice to look at. Adam Naiman wrote in his review for The Ringer,

05:14What's extraordinary about The Electric State is the inverse relationship between the richness and

05:19complexity of its special effects design. The genuinely uncanny way its non-human characters

05:24seem to occupy real space alongside their flesh-and-blood co-stars. And the evasiveness

05:29and banality of the storytelling. Oftentimes, when something that's panned for being terrible drops,

05:35there's a chorus of, well, not everything has to be deep. Nothing actually matters.

05:40Why are you trying to think about things? Just have fun! But this movie also manages to totally miss the

05:46mark on even schlocky humor. So even those people will likely be bored by it at best.

05:51This film is just a very expensive, shiny shell papering over a story that's been entirely hollowed out

05:57in order to appease the corporate overlords who decided to bring it into being in the first place.

06:03Netflix has been willing to poke fun at itself in the past, but only in a way that, at the end of the day,

06:09made sure to hit home that they do hold all of the cards and have us all trapped. But as their

06:15hold has become less and less sure, they've seemed to become more and more interested in turning away

06:20from any real conversations in favor of creating an endless stream of whatever just to keep people

06:27stuck to their screens. Hmm, that sounds familiar. Because the megacorp that spent over 300 million

06:33dollars on it doesn't actually want to deal with what the story is about, the story just kind of

06:39ends up being about nothing. And that's how we ended up with that ending. Michelle eventually does

06:46find her brother, coming to realize that his brain is being used to power Skate's neural network VR

06:52and the evil robots. And he is alive, kind of. But unfortunately, he's become so connected to the

06:59machine that he knows he won't be able to survive without it. But he realizes that IT also won't be

07:05able to survive without HIM. And so in the end, Michelle agrees to let him go to save what's left of

07:11the world. And the evil is defeated. The graphic novel's ending is rather ambiguous. Because IT,

07:18like the entire book, is meant to provoke deeper thought. The film, on the other hand, is very on

07:24the nose with its ending. They specifically added the evil tech guy so that they could have a single

07:30source of everything that was wrong. Take him out and ta-da, everyone's free. And no one has to think

07:35about how we got here as a society or why. At the end, Michelle gives a pseudo-sentimental monologue

07:41about how everyone should leave the VR world behind and go make connections in their real world.

07:46Which, yeah, for sure. But the movie itself doesn't even seem to really believe that.

07:52Netflix essentially is, or wants to be, the Neurocaster. It has the same goal of keeping

07:58people locked in with an endless stream of slop. And so the moral of the story must be changed so

08:04that that isn't the real issue. As far as the film is concerned, being trapped in a glaze of nostalgia

08:10based solely on IP and continually mainlining slop is just fine. As long as it's under the watch

08:16fly of a good corporation and not the bad guy. The film tries to be a phone bad story, but also isn't

08:23even willing to actually dig into the way that technology and our use of and connection with it

08:28absolutely can and does cause problems both small and large. It could have been an opportunity to

08:34explore so many of the real world issues that we're having to contend with. Rise of AI, corporate

08:40hegemony, addictions to social media and the virtual world, the fear of losing genuine human connection.

08:47But instead, it chooses to sidestep any actually interesting or possibly deep conversation or insight.

08:54But the problems don't start or end with the electric state. The film is in many ways a perfect

09:00example of so many things that are going wrong with the film industry in our current moment.

09:05Money hungry studios desperately grasping for eyes by trying to convince people they're saying

09:09something or have a point of view, but being too afraid to actually do anything barrier breaking or

09:15interesting. And so instead just throwing a bunch of money at the problem and hoping that they can make

09:21the outcome sound good enough to investors, the studio's real target audience, to juice the numbers

09:27for the next quarter. Studios don't want to pay the creatives actually making movies, but are willing

09:33to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on one terribly made property that no one even ends up

09:38enjoying. Netflix doesn't have to share their numbers. And when they do, they're able to finagle

09:44them to say whatever they want. If they want this to be a major booming success that shows the haters,

09:50the numbers will magically say that. If they want it to be a big money pit flop so they could write it

09:56off, then it will be so. The electric state is also a perfect example of something that has been a

10:01problem across platforms, but that Netflix in particular has been called out for pushing.

10:07Second screen viewing. AKA making movies and shows for people to just have on in the background while

10:13they watch things they're actually interested in on their phones. Will Tavlin wrote in his piece

10:18casual viewing for N Plus One magazine? Such slipshod filmmaking works for the streaming model

10:23since audiences at home are often barely paying attention. Several screenwriters who worked for

10:29the streamer told me a common note from company executives is, have this character announce what

10:33they're doing so that viewers who have this program on in the background can follow along.

10:38And actress Justine Bateman told The Hollywood Reporter, I've heard from showrunners who were

10:43given notes from the streamers that this isn't second screen enough. Meaning the viewer's primary

10:48screen is their phone and the laptop, and they don't want anything on your show to distract them

10:53from their primary screen. Because if they get distracted, they might look up, be confused,

10:58and go turn it off. And you can really feel this in the electric state. The writing is empty,

11:05just barely doing enough work to get everything from point A to point B. Just enough to create

11:10some background noise, but not enough to actually engage anyone. While the electric state adaptation

11:17might have been a letdown, you can always read the great graphic novel. And if you're looking for

11:22something else to watch instead, you can check out Tales from the Loop, which is based on another of

11:26Stolen Hog's novels. It manages to bring this eerie robot-laden world to life, while still keeping the

11:33mystery and ambiance, and meaning intact. And for films, try Blade Runner and its sequel Children

11:39of Men, A Scanner Darkly, or Bong Joon-ho's new film Mickey 17. While the electric state isn't all bad,

11:47the robots do look quite nice, and it's clear that the visual effects team really put in a lot of work

11:52to make them look and feel integrated into the world. It fails far more than it succeeds. It's an

11:58unfortunate waste of such a great concept, as well as a lot of money and time. Its flopping could be

12:05assigned to Netflix and the other streamers to begin moving away from this bloated, overpriced,

12:10and underbaked second-screen silo, and to start heading back towards putting their money and their

12:15weight behind good films. But it doesn't look like they're planning on unplugging from this dystopia

12:21anytime soon. That's the take! Click here to watch the video we think you'll love,

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This Movie Could Have Been Great, But... | The Electric State Review & Ending Explained

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