The Electric State will be massive – but shouldn't we expect more from Netflix's original movies? (2025)

There's a good chance you'll watch The Electric State on Netflix this weekend. It'll be there, undoubtedly, when you open up the streaming service to pick something to watch after a long week of work.

The oh-so familiar features of Stranger Things' Millie Bobby Brown and Marvel's Chris Pratt will stare out, looking stern and heroic, from a thumbnail or banner, surrounded by all the things a movie should have – a cute robot sidekick, a dramatic sunset, a ripped denim vest.

Maybe you read somewhere that this was directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, behind the second highest-grossing movie of all time, Avengers: Endgame. Or that it was a (loose) adaptation of Simon Stålenhag's graphic novel set in an alternate history of '90s America dominated by robots and virtual reality technology.

But will you think about The Electric State next week? In three months? A year? When's the last time you heard someone excitedly bring up last year's Damsel, the Russos' The Gray Man (2022), Red Notice (2021), or Extraction (2020)?

And, sure, sometimes the brain craves the equivalent of a drive-thru car wash, to cleanse the neurons of pesky inconveniences like thoughts and emotions, but The Electric State cost a reported $320 million.

Avengers: Endgame cost, at most, $400m. And while we can argue in circles about whether Endgame fits the subjective qualifier of "worthy", it did at least, undeniably, satisfy all the conditions of being culturally impactful. People remember it. They talk about it. They revisit it. The money had a purpose, even if you believe that purpose to be misguided. What, exactly, did Netflix fork out $320m for?

The Electric State debuted to reviews so shaky that even its champions seem visibly strained. Paste's Jim Vorel, in one of the more positive takes, could only write that it's "one hell of an artistically neutered, sanitised boondoggle, awe-inspiring in its deployment of expensive visuals but largely bereft of any kind of genuine wit, humour, warmth or adaptational deftness".

Digital Spy's own review, meanwhile, argued that it does "just enough to get you to watch, but [is] rarely good enough to be memorable". It's received a sliver of an advertising campaign and, under best circumstances, is likely to be received by its intended audience with a shrug and a "that'll do for tonight". A shrug that, once again, cost a supposed $320m.

A phrase like "just enough to get you to watch" is applicable to most of Netflix's back catalogue of banner movie projects: The Gray Man and Red Notice cost $200m each, while Heart of Stone (2023) cost $150m.

That afforded the streamer A-list stars – Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans, Gal Gadot, Dwayne Johnson, Ana de Armas and Ryan Reynolds – a handful of international locations (though a decent chunk of these movies appear to have been shot on green screen), scripts that conform to enough action tropes that they create the illusion of a complete story, and a handful of explosions for the trailers.

That's enough to get somebody to click on a thumbnail. What happens next really isn't Netflix's concern; your monthly subscription has been paid, you're already locked in.

There's no way to judge the streamer's output by the usual metrics of CinemaScore (surveys conducted on a randomised selection of cinemagoers) or, more crucially, by the second, third, fourth etc weeks of box-office takings, in which word of mouth determines whether audiences actually like what they're watching and are telling other people to watch, too.

Netflix doesn't release raw streaming data, which means it decides what's a hit and what's not. While their self-determined criteria has changed, they currently claim to work by "viewing hours", which is the total time users have watched a movie divided by its length.

But, as n+1's damning exposé of the company's practices pointed out, there's no differentiation made between a user who finished a movie and one who only watched a few minutes or even seconds, due to morbid curiosity or the autoplay feature.

The result is front-loaded cinema: big stars, big budgets, and nothing more. It's no different to excitedly buying one of those gigantic chocolate eggs, only to discover it's entirely hollow. It's no wonder n+1 was able to claim that two high-level executives at the company were known to green-light projects without reading a single page of script.

The rebuttal, of course, would be that for every The Electric State and Red Notice, Netflix is handing off blank cheques to Martin Scorsese to make The Irishman (2019) and David Fincher to make Mank (2020) and The Killer (2023).

The upside of the streamer not being particularly concerned with the content of their movies is that filmmakers, essentially, are given free rein. As Fincher told Variety in 2023: "With Netflix, it's so much nicer, because when you pitch someone, the response is 'Wow, that's a f**king interesting and weird idea. Let's price it out and see how it might work.'"

Yet, that kind of mentality – that there should be some binary divide between what we consider "art" and "entertainment" – is at the core of the issue. The mid-budget movie is an endangered species. We used to only say that about cinemas, but it's become increasingly true in the world of streaming, too.

Netflix sweeps the festivals each year for a handful of awards contenders (in the last cycle, it was the controversial Emilia Pérez and Angelina Jolie-fronted biopic Maria). And then those movies are packaged and sold to audiences as homework to labour through in order to sound smart in the office the next day.

That binary is dull and damaging, and completely ignorant of what cinema has the capability to be. Art isn't a task, and there was a time when people weren't trained to think that way, when a divorce drama like Kramer vs Kramer could be the highest-grossing movie of 1979.

Entertainment doesn't have to completely brainless, since even Netflix recognised the success of Rian Johnson's witty and funny Knives Out mysteries enough to acquire the series for themselves.

Netflix won't be the one to change. They will continue to spend giant wads of cash on the easiest, most consciously bland movies possible, because they don't need their output to look good, merely acceptable. It's not profitable for them to take a risk.

But their audience can – and should. Because why, really, should we be so willing to settle for less?

The Electric State is available to watch now on Netflix.