The Russo Brothers have made some of the best blockbusters in movie history with their screenwriting duo Markus and McFeely. The directors helmed MCU movies Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers Infinity War and Avengers Endgame.
Yet after leaving the Disney franchise, the siblings have struggled to repeat their success on streaming despite roping in Marvel stars like Tom Holland and Chris Evans for Cherry and the Gray Man. And now their latest effort, The Electric State, lands on Netflix next week with a budget of $320 million – which makes it one of the most expensive movies ever made.
Based on the graphic novel of the same name, the film takes place in a retro-futuristic 1990s as an orphaned teenager (Millie Bobby Brown) travels the American West with an eccentric drifter (Chris Pratt) and a robot in search of her brother.
The Electric State has 23 per cent positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes at time of writing, making it the worst entry for the Russo Brothers to date. No wonder they’ve returned to Marvel to helm the next two Avengers movies with Robert Downey Jr returning. Check out some review highlights for The Electric State below, starting with a 1 star going up to a more forgiving 4.
The Independent
The Electric State contains the most baffling call-to-arms in recent cinema. This is a story, in short, about how all those damn kids should put their phones down and go hug the nearest corporate mascot.
The Guardian
There’s no soul, no originality, just a great big multicolour wedge of digital content.
The Hollywood Reporter
The film is busy to a degree that grows more and more assaultive. But it’s neither funny nor exciting. Like so many streaming originals, The Electric State seems less a real movie than an imitation of one.
Digital Spy
The Electric State is a bundle of ideas we’ve seen before – and ultimately less than the sum of its promising parts.
Variety
Directors Joe and Anthony Russo surprisingly undervalue their source material’s blueprint, turning author Simon Stålenhag’s salient, bleak thriller into a whimsical, sanitized mess of mimeographed ideas from a handful of far better cinematic inspirations.
indieWire
Truth be told, there isn’t a single laugh — or even a knowing smile — to be found in this relentlessly stale ordeal, which does for sci-fi adventure comedies what “The Gray Man” did for action thrillers: absolutely nothing.
Empire
The Electric State loses some of the quiet profundity of the original text, but as a breezily watchable retrofuturistic jolly, it has just enough juice.
Daily Telegraph
But it’s so beautifully designed… with both its flesh-and-blood performers and the larger world, that I defy you to watch more than five minutes without wishing that your flatscreen was the size of a house.
The Electric State is streaming on Netflix from March 14, 2025.