It’s not just that it’s not very good that in itself is more frustrating than saddening.
The Electric Stateresembles a fun, creative blockbuster, in the way that a knockoff resembles the genuine article.
You might think you’re seeing the real thing if you don’t look too closely.
Which is exactly what makes knockoffs so damaging to what’s being copied.
So let me be absolutely clear:movies can be, and should be, better than this.
The robots lost, and the survivors were banished to an exclusion zone in the desert.
Image via Netflix
The Electric Stateis based on the 2018 illustrated novel of the same name by Simon Stalenhag.
Sounds kinda cool, right?
And the robots' consumer culture references, classically fertile ground, serve no larger purpose I can find.
Image via Netflix
This emptiness is a common feature of such fraud films.
But the most embarrassing one is undeniably Pratt’s smuggler Keats yelling “Clap on!”
before then clapping to turn his lights on.
Then there’s the storytelling, which is what I find most insulting.
But being interesting,genuinelyinteresting, is hard.
It’s not thatThe Electric Statedoesn’t have things going for it.
Even if the overall vision is flawed, the VFX work that went into realizing it is often great.
This is as elementary and as lazy as story structure gets.
It’s not thatThe Electric Statedoesn’t have things going for it.
Even if the overall vision is flawed, the VFX work that went into realizing it is often great.
It’s not an out-and-out terrible film.
