SPOILER SPECIAL
The Electric State
THE RUSSO BROTHERS ON THE KEY MOMENTS OF THEIR ROBOT EPIC
WORDS CHRIS HEWITT
THE ELECTRIC STATE, the third (and, for the time being, last) post-MCU movie from Joe and Anthony Russo, is a heartfelt and often deeply unconventional (even downright weird) movie set in a world where sentient robots have been exiled from humanity after a bitter war. “We wanted to make a film that challenged a younger audience,” says Joe Russo. “The tone is broadappeal: it’s meant to invite as many people under the tent as possible. And hopefully there are ideas in it you can have a conversation about afterward. One of which is death, another is technology and its impact on our collective mental health.” Here, Empire has a conversation with the Russos about the crucial beats from their movie.
FAMILY REUNION
At its heart, The Electric State is about the relationship between a protective older sister (Millie Bobby Brown’s Michelle) and her genius brother Christopher (Woody Norman). Except there’s a big twist: Christopher is clinically dead, and his brainwaves are being used by technocrat Ethan Skate (Stanley Tucci) to power the revolutionary tech that ended the human-robot war and has effectively ensnared most of humanity in the warm cocoon of a virtual world. But Christopher has found a way to smuggle his consciousness into the body of a robot called Kid Cosmo. In an early scene, the two reunite. “We love the fact that Michelle is looking for some form of very personal human connection through this figure,” says Anthony Russo. “There is a beauty and a hopefulness in technology.” Cosmo’s limited lexicon (he says things like, “There’s trouble on the moon!”) is provided by the voice of Alan Tudyk. “In the original version of the movie, he didn’t speak at all,” adds Anthony.