The Electric State

Anthony Russo, Joe Russo

Amina Ahmed

One of my favorite novels that I read in high school was “Never Let Me Go” by Kazuo Ishiguro. Honestly, it’s probably why I’m an English major—themes of ontology, the right to exist, and worthiness… come on, I was a goner (quite literally sobbing at 1 a.m.). Netflix’s newest film, “The Electric State,” covers similar themes, which is probably why I was drawn to it from the beginning. 

The film takes place in a fictional world where humans have recently won a war against robots. How did they win, you ask? By making themselves robots. Humankind made gadgets that allowed them to upload their minds into drones, allowing them to be in multiple spaces at once. Our heroine, Michelle Greene (Millie Bobby Brown), comes across a drone robot with the consciousness of her brother, whom she thought died several years ago. She teams up with Keats (Chris Pratt) and his robot friend, Herm, to travel across the country to find and save her brother.

The film is a pretty good watch if you have it on in the background. It’s packed with action scenes and explosions, if that’s your thing. But as always, I’m left slightly dissatisfied with films that try to break the status quo. Not only is their analysis of humanity a little surface-level (killing and enslaving others is pretty bad to me, even if said others are man-made), but the script was very cliche. My main gripe is that the film industry made this movie about living beings having their own autonomy. . . when the industry and the actors in the movie themselves have said and/or done nothing in regards to the Palestinian genocide. It all reads ingenuine to me, especially when the call is coming from inside the house.