The Electric State, the latest movie from the Russo brothers, is adapted from Simon Stålenhag's graphic novel of the same name. Set in an alternate '90s dystopian society, one populated by the wreckage of a human vs. robot war, the graphic novel is full of striking, emotive imagery.
Fittingly, then, the Netflix movie boasts flawless VFX, bringing to life the sentient robots who attempted to rise up against human mistreatment – and were beaten.
"The graphic novel provided our jumping off point," explains Anthony Russo when we meet with him and his brother Joe over Zoom. "We love the images that Simon Stålenhag created. They were kind of like our guides through our process in many ways. But we also worked with the extremely talented production designer Dennis Gassner, and fortunately we have a long relationship with Dennis, and we were able to speak with him about this movie for a couple of years before we got to shooting it. So we had a long time in development, figuring out what the world looked like, who the robots could be.
"We did a lot of experimentation in terms of what they were," he continues. "We finally landed on this idea that they were the creation of Walt Disney and were brought into the world to entertain people, or to provide services for people, to be very non-threatening, to be very inviting, user friendly. They also had a nice, childlike simplicity to them. Their artificial intelligence isn't quite as complex as our human intelligence. So they have this nice feel. But there's a very long road of development in terms of figuring out who each character was, and how we brought that to life with a combination of artists, motion capture performers, voice actors, etcetera."
The VFX also blew away Chris Pratt, who plays Keats, a former soldier turned smuggler. "The finished project is truly stunning," he tells us. "That's been the overall consensus from the various people that we've spoken to, and certainly we agree with that opinion. It's truly breathtaking imagery, of course inspired by Simon Stålenhag's graphic novel, which in itself is truly profound and unlike really anything I've ever seen."
Naturally, such a VFX heavy movie means not everything you see on the screen was actually physically on set. "It's a very technical job doing a big movie like this, 100-plus shoot days. Some days we had really amazing sets to be inside," Pratt explains. "The mall itself is a real mall, and it was all set dress. We had a really great set deck. For the most part, the sets were really, really big. It's just the world beyond those sets that were gorgeous and pretty much animated. I didn't do any shooting in the desert yet we had a whole sequence in the desert. The whole third act, we didn't go to Seattle, yet there we were in Seattle. So for us, when we're interacting with the robots, it's people in mocap suits, but we're interacting in worlds that we don't see. It's primarily green screen."
But the graphic novel's tone is fairly bleak, while the Netflix movie is more of a family friendly adventure. It's a change the Russo brothers say Stålenhag was fully on board with.
"Well, that was also intentional," explains Joe Russo. "Younger generations are more exposed right now and potentially more in danger from technology. We wanted to make sure they saw the movie. That was something that Simon Stålenhag, who's the author of the book, was fully supportive of. He has kids himself. We all wanted to make sure that we broadened out the appeal of the film so that families could sit down and watch it together."
The Electric State is streaming on Netflix this March 14. In the meantime, check out our guides to the best Netflix movies and best Netflix shows to stream now to fill out your watchlist.
