The Electric State

Robots have been a part of cinema history for many years in Hollywood. I remember one of the very first robot films i watched on VHS back in 1987 and that was a film known as The Terminator. Most of you probably know this is the classic science fiction action film that really gave director James Cameron a big career step into Hollywood. Of course this was also the film that made Arnold Schwarzenegger a huge cinema star as the cybernatic assassin The Terminator. I remember back in 1987 when my school friend Nicklas had a VHS copy of this film in their living room among their VHS video collection. In this VHS video collection they had a lot of Clint Eastwood films because both Nicklals and his parents loved the spaghetti western films with Eastwood. It was here in this collction i saw one of the coolest VHS covers i had seen at that time and it was of course the VHS cover of The Terminator. Nicklas let me borrow the film and i watched this film constantly. Imagine being 10 years old watching a film like this that looked like nothing i have ever seen before. Seeing Arnold Schwarznegger as The Terminator was definetely one of the true epic moments in 80´s cinema history as we were introduced to iconic female character Sarah Conner ( played by actress Linda Hamilton ). During this time back in 1987 i remember my father rented a film called Short Circuit on VHS. It was a science fiction comedy telling the story of robotic soldier, S.A.I.N.T. Number 5, who is struck by lightning and gains a human-like intelligence, managing to escape the NOVA Laboratory facility. The robot finds itself in Astoria, Oregon and is found by Stephanie Speck ( Ally Sheedy ), an animal caregiver, who mistakes him for an alien. She takes him home and begin teaching Number 5 different things through "input", a way for Number 5 to learn new information. Short Circuit is a really charming 80´s classic robot family movie that´s definetely worth watching on physical media. If you get the blu ray listen to the commentary track. The sequel Short Circuit 2 is also worth a watch if you are able to get a blu ray copy. Speaking of robots i heard early this year a new robot film was coming to Netflix known as The Electric State. When i heard the budget was over 300 millon U.S. dollars i knew this probably would have a lot of technology in the film. With a big famous cast ( where some of the actors do the voice of some of the robots in this film ) and a big budget based on the illustrated science fiction novel by autor Simon Stålenhag , is The Electric State a film better than i expected or is this almost as bad as the entire Twilight franchise?

In 1990, a war between humans and robots has left the world in disarray. With the help of Sentre CEO Ethan Skate ( Stanley Tucci ), who developed Neurocaster Technology that allowed humans to upload their minds into drone robots, humanity managed to win the war, while robots were banished to the exclusion zone. However, the success of this technology meant many people opted to live their virtual lives in a semi-vegetative state while drones did most the work, In 1994, teenager Michelle Greene ( Millie Bobby Brown ) lives with her incompetent foster dad, Ted Finister ( Jason Alexander ). One day Michelle get a home visit by robot Cosmo who have been looking for her. He can only communicate using gestures and pre-recorded words, but convince her that he is controlled by her deceased younger brother Christopher ( Woody Norman ), who was a child prodigy. It turns out that Sentre found Christopher´s body after the accident and they decide to use his exceptional intellect and integrating his consciouness into the Neurocaster. Cosmo and Michelle travel to locate her brother, while teaming up with some new faces along the way.

I have seen several reviews of The Electric State and i understand why some people don´t like this film. But im going to give my own opinion regarding this film and it´s completely fine if you disagree with me, after all not everyone likes the same kind of movies. When it comes to a film like this i think you need to enter it without holding high expectations. I mentioned the Short Circuit films earlier in my review and those films were pretty simple family entertainment films made for a family to watch. The Electric State feels like a family movie just like the Short Circuit films did back in the 80´s. The story is very simple, the characters are not complicated at all and there is a lot of robots in this film with different designs ( which is good since i like diversity ) and in some ways you could say this film may have been inspired by films such as Short Circuit. The fact that this film takes place in the year of 1994 makes everything a little bit more fun, especially when certain robot designs actually reminded me of 90´s influences from films of that time period. Chris Pratt ( who plays the beloved character Peter Quill in the Guardians Of The Galaxy movies ) is without a doubt one of the most charming characters in The Electric State. His character Keats is loud, want to look cool but fails by having a similar hairstyle of Nickelback singer Chad Kroeger used to look like in the early 2000´s. Actor Stanley Tucci is here as well and even if his performance is nowhere near as good as his best film, i do appreciate seeing him in here. The CGI scenes of robots do look pretty good so you can tell they have spent a lot of money for a reason. So on to the negative side and i don´t think that many robots have some kind of personality. Johnny 5 in Short Curcuit had some kind of personality and i would have liked to have some robots with a different look. Actress Millie Bobbie Brown´s ( who i do enjoy in the Netflix TV series Stranger Things ) character Michelle doesn´t come off to be interesting at all. Since she is one of the main characters that is a big missed oppurtunity. The robot war itself doesn´t feel that dangerous, at least not compared to what a war looked like between robots and humans in the 2011 sci fi action film World Invasion: Battle Los Angeles. I will say though that what we still have here is a charming robot adventure that might entertain certain ages in your family. Directors Anthony Russo and Joe Russo have made a film that feels like a throwback to the 80´s and we need adventures like these films in modern days. The Electric State do have flaws but i find this film more enjoyable than i expected. Worth a watch on Netflix if you just want to get into the 80´s or 90´s vibes without a complicated plot.

Rating: DDD