Netflix’s ’Electric’ Mistake
The best thing I can say for Netflix about The Electric State is that I spent the first half certain that I was watching an Amazon movie. I think I was conflating it with Chris Pratt in The Tomorrow War – another science fiction film in which he stars as... the same basic character he tends to play. A lot. But I also had just read the news that Jennifer Salke was ousted as the head of Amazon MGM Studios and kept thinking, "no wonder, with stuff like this." But as it turns out, The Electric State is a Netflix movie, as such, completely unrelated to Salke – well, perhaps not completely (more on this in a minute). The worse news is that it’s bad. Like really bad. But the worst news is that it apparently cost $320M to make.
That's not a typo,1 as much as Netflix might wish it were. It's an incredible amount of money to spend on any movie, let alone one for a streamer, let alone one this bad. How the hell did it cost that much? Nobody knows.2 But unlike with the Salke situation at Amazon, it's wild that seemingly no one was fired over this. I mean, people might lose their jobs at Disney over the Snow White box office results. Had Electric State been released in theaters, it may have made Waterworld look like the next great franchise.
Of course, it wasn’t released in theaters (well, beyond a couple for premieres). Netflix doesn’t do theaters (except when they do).3 Without a theatrical release, no one can hear your studio head scream. And a movie like this can basically do as well as Netflix wants it to when it comes to its position on the streaming charts, thanks to their all-important algorithms. And so a “bomb” because just another bad movie. But while that may be subjective in real life, on Netflix, it’s just another data point, at worst.
And I mean, it may even be doing well for Netflix. But it’s not doing well for me.
Last week I dove into Apple's strategy for TV+, noting in particular how blunders let them to overpay for certain content – in particular, movies – time and time again. But also it generally felt like no one was actually checking in on the quality of those films. But Apple, to their credit, has not made a movie as bad as this one.
Undoubtedly the decision to buy these rights was tied directly to the Russo Brothers – they of Avengers fame and fortune – but the reality there is that they seem to have a very particular skillset that’s either around very low budget sitcoms or absolutely massive Marvel movies. There seemingly is no in between. Maybe Netflix thought if they could mix Star-Lord with arguably their own biggest homegrown star lord in the form of Millie Bobby Brown,4 they could pull off, well, not just the biggest Netflix movie ever, but one of the biggest movies ever, period. Sadly, it just doesn't work on any level.
Back to Salke, who again, has nothing actually to do with this film, but have I mentioned that it sounds like she may have ultimately been fired over the nightmare that was Citadel for Amazon? Everyone was quick to blame James Bond – and undoubtedly, that fiasco played a role – but Citadel was her massive swing to create a new franchise around... yes, spy IP. Starring a guy who I've long thought might make for a good Bond, no less, in Richard Madden. But the first season ended up being a total disaster – with multiple versions by different creatives being made, apparently. And then Salke greenlit a second season. Which has also apparently gone through a nightmarish production. And now, with the Salke news, it's being postponed, perhaps indefinitely, which does not seem coincidental.
But what on earth does this have to do with The Electric State? Well, the same duo behind that disaster is behind this one: the Russo Brothers.
Again, they've directed a handful of the largest movies of all time – including two in the top ten. When you do that, you can basically do what you want – just ask James Cameron, who is in the midst of making his 15 Avatar movies or whatever. But this is giving me quite a bit of anxiety about the potential for the next two Avengers movies – both of which are being directed by the Russos. Both of which may cost upwards of $500M to make given the casting alone.
Again, they've done this before. But then again, The Electric State is that bad.
It's so bad that it's almost not even worth mentioning much of anything about the actual film. It's sort of a very bad version of Ready Player One mixed with a very bad version of The Creator. Ready Player One wasn't perfect either, but it was directed by Steven Spielberg, who is able to elevate even just okay adaptations with his filmmaking skill. I watched it again last night just to make sure – after I watched the second half of The Electric State, because I couldn't even make it through the full movie in one sitting – and yeah, it's far superior to The Electric State. There are similar themes, of course, and similar usage of popular, nostalgic music. Ready Player One just does it all better – though shout-out to the use of Danzig's "Mother" in Electric State, which was honestly the highlight for me.5
There are also some similarities to Wall-E, of course, with the humans being nearly literally glued to their devices and living in literal fantasy worlds. And the concepts of AI/robot rights, which again, The Creator handles far better than Electric State. It is interesting just how little this movie actually has to say with regard to AI given the reality we're all actually living in. Speilberg's A.I., now 25 years old and released long before our current age, says far more interesting things.
I do appreciate that the visor device that all the humans wear here is Vision Pro-like. Not so much in its design, more so in the way it transfers human faces to the robots, in a way that looks almost exactly like Apple's comically ill-conceived EyeSight feature. But that was only my second favorite bit of tech from Electric State. The first was the life-support/brain-upload machine powering all of Sentre – how Spectre like! – which could be completely disabled and destroyed by... touching three very well-labeled buttons. It took Millie Bobby Brown about 3 seconds to win the war. And she probably could have done it in 1 second if she hit all the buttons at once. No security. No fail safes.
A 3 button problem. A $320M problem. A Russo Brothers problem. But not a Jen Salke problem. And oddly, not a Netflix problem.
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
1 I can't trackdown an actual source for that exact amount -- nor could AI -- but this Matt Belloni newsletter at Puck last year put it at costing "closer to $300M". Since then, there are many reports just matter-of-factly putting the number at the very specific $320M.
2 Well, okay someone knows. It sounds like it was a fairly insane base price (which Universal balked at) mixed with special effects overruns (which were fine, but not all that... special). And perhaps bigger bonuses due to Netflix's lack of theatrical exposure...
3 And, I suspect, will be doing a lot more of this for both marketing and talent rentation.
4 Who, it must be said, is really bad here. There's no sugar-coating it.
5 Though I honestly did enjoy Brian Cox as the weird baseball bot guy. These are serious people.