Netflix has finally dropped its newest action thriller, a movie that absolutely broke the bank with a whopping '£245,000,000' budget.
The film stars Millie Bobby Brown, Chris Pratt, Ke Huy Quan, and Woody Harrelson, and is directed by the Russo Brothers, so it having a huge budget is not a massive surprise.
Dropping just one day after Netflix’s latest hit series Adolescence, the streamer will be pleased to have a film and a TV series this week that will both likely shoot to the top of its viewing charts.
Brown, who recently revealed that’s not even her real name, stars as Michelle, a young orphan who travels across a technologically ravaged version of the United States.
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The film is called The Electric State and is based on a cult classic comic book of the same name.
With a reported budget of $320 million (£245m) it is the most expensive film Netflix has ever produced - and so you’d hope that reviews would live up to the mountains of cash it has pumped into making it.
Unfortunately, though, the public opinion on the film is about as negative as it can get for a movie of this size.
Many fans online were critical of the trailers, with the top comment on the thriller's final trailer sarcastically saying: “Hey, The Electric State is also the name of a beautifully haunting story about societal collapse, emerging technological sentience, and what it means to be human in a world where humanity is steadily loosing its humanity.
“I would love to see that book made into a movie too someday!”
Another said: “Thought provoking, it really gets you thinking about things. Like, ‘why am I still paying for Netflix?’”
While you may hope it was just fans being pessimistic, reviewers seem to agree.
The series debuted to an abysmal 19 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, with Elisabeth Vincentelli saying in their scathing review for the New York Times: “The movie is obvious, garish and just plain dumb.”
Giving the film a one star review, The Times' Kevin Maher said: “The look is mid-period Transformers. The dramatic tension non-existent. And the performances uniformly weak. This is top-dollar tedium.”
Courtney Howard, of Variety, tore into the Avengers directors Joe and Anthony Russo who helmed this film, saying: “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.”
In addition to this, The Electric State sits at 32 percent on Metacritc, and the most popular review on IMDb at the time of writing is a one star calling the movie ‘dull and painful’.
The Electric State is available to watch on Netflix now.
Topics: Netflix, Film, Millie Bobby Brown, Chris Pratt
Michael Slavin