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. That’s not a surprising take to see from Anthony and Joe Russo, the director duo behind the second-highest-grossing film of all time, Avengers: Endgame, produced for the empire of Mickey Mouse. Still, it’s an interminable one to have to sit through.
The Russos, for Netflix and with the help of Endgame screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, have stripped away the melancholy that underpinned The Electric State’s source material – a 2018 graphic novel by Simon Stalenhag that reflected on humanity’s intertwined relationship with technology. Instead, its alternative history of west coast America in the Nineties has been mined for self-satisfied nostalgia.
