KUALA LUMPUR, March 13 – A new sci-fi film helmed by Avengers: Endgame directors Joe and Anthony Russo, The Electric State, will be premiering on Netflix tomorrow.
Set in the aftermath of a robot uprising in an alternate version of the 1990s, The Electric State is based on the titular graphic novel by Simon Stalenhag.
The film follows an orphaned teenager (Millie Bobby Brown) who travels across the American West with the cartoon-inspired robot Cosmo, a smuggler (Chris Pratt) and his helper bot Herman in search of her younger brother.
Anthony said the film marked the first time the brothers have “worked with a teenage female protagonist where the entire film and story was designed around her.”
Oscar nominee Stanley Tucci and Breaking Bad fame Gioncarlo Esposito also helm pivotal roles in the film. Tucci plays the antagonist, tech mogul Ethan Skate while Esposito stars as Colonel Marshall Bradbury, a ruthless robot-slayer working for Skate.
“Bradbury is a retired army officer responsible for tracking and hunting down robots. In terms of similarities that I share with the character, I went to a military school and had a little bit of military background growing up.
“So, I understand that leaders have to act and carry themselves in a certain way to get the job done,” Esposito told Malay Mail during an exclusive interview recently.
“Bradbury operates in shades of grey, with motivations rooted in both personal stakes and a vision for what he believes is the greater good.
“On the surface, he may seem like someone who’s purely driven by power, but underneath, there’s a deep sense of conflict and even regret.
“I love characters like this because they challenge me to portray both strength and fragility, sometimes in the same scene,” he added.
Stanley Tucci stars as tech mogul Ethan Skate while Gioncarlo Esposito plays the role of Colonel Marshall Bradbury, a ruthless robot-slayer working for Skate. — Picture courtesy of Netflix
Meanwhile, Tucci described Skate as “a tech genius who studied animal behaviour and learned a lot from that to create neurocasters, a system that allows a person to project themselves to live in the world, but safely.”
Tucci, who was also part of Captain America: The First Avenger, also hailed the visual effects in The Electric State as “stuff we’ve never seen before”.
“What’s so interesting about the Russo brothers is a lot of people rely very heavily on VFX but they don’t know how to direct actors.
“The difference between these guys, as is evidenced in the movies that they previously made, is that they love VFX, they use it like it’s nobody’s business, but they know how to direct actors,” he said.
