The Electric State

Swedish artist/illustrator and author Simon Stålenhag is brilliant. I've loved his books since Tales from the Loop was first released, and I was naturally thrilled when Amazon Prime picked up the rights to it, promising a grand dystopia in TV form. Unfortunately, the series didn't live up to expectations and it didn't take many episodes for me to get tired of it, but shame on the one who gives up. Avengers directing duo Joe and Anthony Russo bought the rights to Stålenhag's other work, The Electric State, and pumped around $300 million into the film that Netflix then later bought. The Electric State is being released next Friday and it's set to be the streaming giant's big spring release. But is it any good...?

The short answer here is, yes. The Electric State is good. Not a film that I'll be raving about in five years and nothing that I'll be watching again in the near future, but the Russo Brothers' fun 90s flirtation with the source material at least offered me enough character, personality, and charm that I felt satisfied when the credits rolled. It should be said that anyone expecting a faithful, respectful 1:1 adaptation of the book will be terribly disappointed. Fans of Stålenhag's work must all be aware that the Russo Brothers, together with Stålenhag, changed several things, rewrote several aspects and parts of the story so that this could fundamentally be something completely different from the original Stålenhag story. Normally I would have disliked that strongly. In nine cases out of ten I don't understand why you would buy a ridiculously expensive license to then just come up with a bunch of your own lore. Paramount's TV adaptation of Halo is a shining example, as it felt more like Babylon 6 than anything else.

But the Russo Brothers manage to steer clear of the worst pitfalls here and I have had to adjust my own rule of thumb a little, because The Electric State is entertaining, stylish, and lavish. The story is predictable and very typical, but it works. In an alternative past, in the mid-90s, humans, after years of war and bleak prospects, have managed to suppress a dominant robot threat via a tech visionary's ingenious invention. The robots are disarmed and thrown on the other side of a 260-mile-long wall where they are left to rust. This is while humanity uses the technological innovation that ended the war for pure (and brain-dead) relaxation.

Millie Bobby Brown plays Michelle, a foster home troublemaker who hates school, hates her life, and hates the connected society where everyone sits in their enormous VR helmets and lives the life they dream about but don't dare to chase in the real world. Her proclaimed-genius little brother has disappeared, the world is one big disjointed, depressing mess, and Michelle decides to break the mould, stop doing what people tell her to do, and instead set off on a grand adventure to somehow try to find her missing brother and escape the enslavement of this tech age.

While Stålenhag's book is a strikingly beautiful, desolately empty, and faded road trip movie, characterised by a dystopian America inspired by wayward robot designs and memorable vistas, the Russo Brothers' film is a colourful action-comedy where Stålenhag's remarkable robots are fused with MTV-like, Hubba Bubba-esque 90s aesthetics, including denim vests and bright yellow Walkman cassette players. The 90s had little to nothing to do with the book, but it is the focus here, and in more ways than one, I think it works... and really well too.

A dark book about loss and loneliness has become a charming action-comedy for the whole family (I even saw it with my kids), and - don't get me wrong - there will be plenty of Stålenhag fans who don't like that. Yet, I had fun, from start to finish. Although the Russo Brothers are unlikely to win any awards for The Electric State, it is one of the very few Netflix Originals that hasn't genuinely irritated me.