Netflix’s upcoming family friendly sci-movie The Electric State could have turned out a whole lot scarier if it had directly followed its source material. But, directing duo the Russo brothers and their team decided to lighten some of the themes so the movie could be enjoyed by a wider range of ages, something that star Giancarlo Esposito says is a good thing.
"To me, I feel like this is a movie I'm going to bring my children with me to," says the star to GamesRadar+. "They still have actively developing minds about the world around them who are very concerned about what's going on today. I think it's brilliant that our youth are waking up earlier due to the advent of the cell phone and computers, and I think they're exposed to more at an earlier age."
The Electric State movie stars Millie Bobby Brown, who travels across a war-torn nation with her new robot buddy to find her brother. Along the way she enlists the help of an ex-soldier (Chris Pratt) and his android-in-crime, but as the four search for answers, they encounter the effects of the human vs robot war. The film is based on the 2018 graphic novel by Swedish artist Simon Stålenhag, however, readers might find that the movie does tend to skip over a lot of the novel’s scarier images, presumably to fit its PG-13 rating.
Much like the movie, the novel is set in an alternate '90s where a technological war has ravaged the US and follows a teen girl and her robot as they encounter some quite chilling sights, some of which you can see on Stålenhag’s site. Although the novel isn't all out horror, there is no doubt that the illustrations are much creepier than the flick. Just some of the book’s reviews call Stålenhag’s story, which is told through a series of paragraphs and artworks, "Hauntingly beautiful, bleak, sad and somber," and "spooky."
However, the movie does bring over the novel’s strong themes of political injustice, prejudice, and the dangers of technology when it falls into the wrong hands. "I think the more they see films like this that allow them to see all of humanity, not only depicted in those who are real, but those who are not real, is really important," adds Esposito. "And so this has to be a movie that young people, especially because one of our stars is a young person, that young people need to understand."
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