Early in The Electric State, inventor and Stanley Tucci paycheck role, Ethan Skate, sits at his mothers kitchen table. With a loving smile, she sets baklava before her son, which Skate accepts warmly.Its good to see you like this, mom, he says, trying to hold back the sadness creeping in. But no sooner does Skate settle into enjoying the experience than her apartment begins to flicker, her speech start to stutter. In the very next shot, we see Skate sitting at his shiny office desk, wearing a headset. With a frown, he pulls off the headset and smashes it to the ground before calling in his subordinates for a stern reprimand.Skates reaction to the emotional simulacrum of his mother is the closest thing The Electric State ever gets to a genuine human moment. The rest of directors Joe and Anthony Russos latest is just a series of signifiers slapped together into a movie.Based on the beautiful illustrated novel by Simon Stlenhag, the new Netflix original The Electric State takes place in an alternative 1994 where a sudden influx of technology earlier in the decade resulted in a robot uprising. The machines that we created for manual labor turned against us, leading to a short but bloody war. The war came to an end when Skate invented technology that allowed humans to put their minds into mechanical bodies, giving them the same endurance and fearlessness of their robotic rivals. But with the end of the war came a new status quo, in which humans became addicted to the mechanical body technology. All humans live their lives now by wearing the headset, instructing their machine bodies to do work while their minds visit some false utopia and their bodies waste away.That is all except for Michelle (Millie Bobby Brown), a rebellious foster kid who refuses to fall in with the crowd. After meeting a robot that claims to contain the consciousness of her late genius brother Christopher (Woody Norman), Michelle sets off to find the devious Skate (Stanley Tucci) and the kindly Dr. Amhurst (Ke Huy Quan). Shell also need to pass through a robot-only zone ( a danger for humans), leading her to enlist the help of former soldier Keats (Chris Pratt) and his smart-mouthed robot sidekick Herman (voiced by Anthony Mackie and performed by Martin Klebba).From just those barest of plot points, you can guess the entire movie. Michelle is an angsty teen youve seen a million times before; Pratt and Mackie swap the exact same type of quips they drop in Marvel movies; Quan is all earnest kindness as Amhurst; and Giancarlo Esposito shows up later as the same cool and even-tempered villain hes played a million times since he was Gus Fring on Breaking Bad.Proper filmmakers would worry about the baggage carried by these tropes and an overeliance on typecast performers. Such storytellers would strive to make these characters and performances defy or exceed audience expectations. Not so with the Russos. Instead the pair seem happy to continue their paucity of imagination since leaving the Marvel stable following 2019s Avengers: Endgame. Like Cherry (a Tom Holland vehicle for Apple TV+) and The Gray Man (a Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans two-hander for Netflix) before it, The Electric State reminds audiences that the Russos have no ideas or emotions to add to the screen.In that way, the Russos make perfect sense as the duo to helm Netflixs bold blockbuster gamble. The streamer reportedly spent $320 million to bring The Electric State to life, and the movie represents the height of the streamers aesthetic of Laundry Day Cinema. Like most Netflix originals, The Electric State is designed to keep people who arent paying attention from turning it off. If youre only glancing at the screen while looking for a pair of socks and playing Wordle, youll still get it. Pratts character has a heart of gold despite his smart mouth; the abrasiveness of Browns character is just a way to hide her vulnerability; and everyone needs to learn to accept people who are different. You might even chuckle at some of the one-liners and say oooh! when something goes boom. Youll get to feel engaged even if you arent engaged.Anyone actually watching The Electric State will be bored to tears within the first 10 minutes, in which a barrage of news clips and talking heads to show the machine rising, the subsequent war, and the new post-war status quo.Even worse, someone watching The Electric State might start to take it seriously and try to engage with the movies worldview. Is it saying that AI is the future, and all of us Luddites need to get out of the way and feel bad for the generative models that are taking our jobs? Is it using machines as a metaphor for the working class, suggesting that the proletariat needs to rise up against its exploiters? Is it suggesting that Walt Disney, the stated creator of the original robots, is a true genius and we art snobs need to stop fighting the brilliance of the blockbuster entertainment he created?Join our mailing listGet the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox!No, of course not. The Electric State isnt saying anything. Sure, it borrows images from all of those ideas, but it doesnt have a brain in its head and neither the Russos nor screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely appear smart enough or interested enough to consider the meanings behind the images they employ. In the same way that The Electric State makes Mr. Peanut (voiced as a jocular Southerner by Woody Harrelson) into the robot rebellions wise and beleaguered leader, with no reference to the consumer product he hawks, the movie doesnt even deal with the barest implications of its images. Its all about how the stuff looks, not what it means.Its a good thing, then, that The Electric State does actually look pretty good. As with Marvel, the Russos have strong source material to bring to the screen. They still prefer a color palette of concrete on a rainy day, but that suits the rusted robots that Stlenhag designed for his book. Moreover, their movements are pretty impressive, especially those of the smiley-faced robot that represents Christopher. When he shakes his head pensively to indicate to Michelle that he doesnt know where his human body is at, we actually believe that theres a thinking, feeling brain behind the metal facade.Sadly, the same cannot be said for The Electric State itself. Every feeling in the movie is faked, every idea borrowed and flattened. Then again, who needs to feel something when theres laundry to do. Netflix exists to distract us from our menial tasks and, in that regard, The Electric State is the ultimate Netflix movie.The Electric State streams on Netflix on March 14, 2025. Learn more about Den of Geeks review process and why you can trust our recommendationshere.