The Electric State Review: A $300 Million Monstrosity of Empty Spectacle

The Russo Brothers, once celebrated for their crowd-pleasing work in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, have once again proven that without Kevin Feige’s tight creative oversight, they are little more than glorified content manufacturers. The Electric State, their latest and most expensive disaster, is a testament to everything wrong with modern blockbuster filmmaking—a soulless, visually garish, and emotionally hollow experience that somehow manages to squander its $300 million budget on a film that looks like a straight-to-streaming failure.

Based on Simon Stålenhag’s evocative graphic novel, The Electric State tells the story of a young woman, Michelle (Millie Bobby Brown), who travels across a ruined America with her robot companion to find her lost brother. What made Stålenhag’s original work so compelling was its subtle, melancholic storytelling, where a dystopian sci-fi future was rendered with quiet intimacy and personal stakes. The Russos, however, have no such interest in nuance. Instead, they transform a hauntingly beautiful tale into a generic, explosion-laden chase movie that lacks the emotional weight necessary to give its narrative any staying power.

Gone is the book’s atmosphere of eerie desolation, replaced by the kind of empty, digital sheen that has become a hallmark of the Russos’ post-Marvel work. The film treats its setting as a CGI playground rather than a tangible world, robbing it of any authenticity. The sweeping vistas and decayed technology that made the original artwork so compelling are here reduced to an over-lit, weightless CGI barrage that looks more like a cutscene from a mediocre AAA video game than a fully realized film.

This is not the first time the Russos have fumbled a high-budget project. After Avengers: Endgame, which largely succeeded due to the groundwork laid by better filmmakers before them, they moved into original projects with Cherry (a lifeless Oscar bait misfire), The Gray Man (a $200 million Netflix dud with zero personality), and now The Electric State, their worst film yet. With every outing, they prove that their success in the MCU was an accident of circumstance rather than talent. Their approach to filmmaking is purely functional—they know how to stage action, but they have no artistic voice, no ability to evoke emotion, and no sense of pacing beyond throwing expensive set pieces at the audience and hoping something sticks.

It’s frankly insulting that The Electric State cost more than Oppenheimer, Dune: Part One, and Blade Runner 2049—films that, regardless of budget, delivered visionary, visually striking, and deeply engaging cinematic experiences. The Russos, meanwhile, have managed to burn through hundreds of millions of dollars and somehow still produce something that looks cheaper than a mid-tier Netflix sci-fi movie.

Millie Bobby Brown, who has proven her capabilities in Stranger Things, is utterly wasted here. The film saddles her with the burden of carrying an entire story that offers her little to work with beyond tired exposition and forced sentimentality. Michelle’s character is supposed to be our emotional anchor, but the film’s writing is so shallow that she never feels like a real person—just another cog in the Russo machine.

Chris Pratt, playing yet another gruff, wise-cracking traveler, phones in his performance as if he knows he’s in a bad movie. The supporting cast, including a bizarrely miscast Giancarlo Esposito, can do little to elevate the script’s soulless dialogue and generic plot beats. The dynamic between Michelle and her robot companion should be the heart of the film, but their interactions lack chemistry, and the relationship feels forced rather than earned.

If The Electric State is the future of streaming mega-budget filmmaking, then Hollywood is in serious trouble. Netflix, which has already hemorrhaged money on lifeless, overproduced content like Red Notice and The Gray Man, seems determined to keep throwing obscene amounts of cash at the Russos, despite their continued inability to deliver anything memorable. What exactly did $300 million pay for here? The special effects are unimpressive, the action is rote, and the storytelling is as flat as a parking lot.

There is no justification for this level of spending when filmmakers like Denis Villeneuve, Christopher Nolan, and even Gareth Edwards (The Creator) have demonstrated how to craft visually stunning, thoughtful, and ambitious sci-fi stories for a fraction of the cost. The Russos, in contrast, have taken an evocative, deeply personal source material and turned it into an expensive yet forgettable content dump.

The Electric State is emblematic of everything wrong with modern blockbuster filmmaking: It prioritizes digital spectacle over storytelling, it wastes talented actors with a lifeless script, and it demonstrates that the Russos, when left unchecked, have no ability to make compelling cinema.

This is not just a bad adaptation; it’s a cynical exercise in expensive mediocrity, proving that an unlimited budget means nothing in the hands of creatively bankrupt directors. For $300 million, Netflix could have funded 100 original indie sci-fi films that actually had something to say. Instead, they handed a blank check to directors who continue to prove they are more corporate strategists than filmmakers.

Final verdict: Avoid this movie at all costs, unless you enjoy watching $300 million set ablaze in the least interesting way possible. The Electric State is a monument to Hollywood’s worst instincts—big, dumb, expensive, and utterly forgettable.

RATING: 1.0 out of 5 stars.

The Electric State will stream on Netflix on March 14, 2025 and quickly be forgotten.