Hacker Cinema
The Electric State
2025 · Film · 125 min
Directed by Joe Russo, Anthony Russo
ActionAdventureScience Fiction
An orphaned teen hits the road with a mysterious robot to find her long-lost brother, teaming up with a smuggler and his wisecracking sidekick.
3 negative2 neutralfrom 5 commenters
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5 comments on Hacker News
That’s true, your comment reminded me of The Electric State which maybe 50 pages of drawings with descriptions and the trailer for the movie was unintentionally funny to me like it was a parody and World War Z where I loved the short action packed book which seemed like an easy translation but I was so wrong.
We have engineered our own destruction when AI becomes self-aware and starts attacking humans. With Skynet, and killer robots. Maybe not Terminator, more like The Electric State? https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7766378/
Are they really blaming anyone? This is a good thing, but it's destined to remain pretty niche. The vast majority of people do what's easiest and what everyone else is doing. They like streaming and watch whatever is put on their home screen. Tons of people watched Electric State, Red Notice, The Tomorrow War. Citadel got a season 2.
I am such a luddite -- I hardly stream (a couple of things per year from Google Play). I know about the book "The Electric State", but I never knew it was made into a film by Netflix. If you Google search for reviews, they are absolutely savage. Just the headlines are enough:
Vulture: Netflix's The Electric State Is a $320 Million Piece of Junk
The Atlantic: How to Make an Instantly Forgettable, Very Expensive Movie
The Guardian: Why are the most expensive Netflix movies also the worst?
EDIT:
Regarding this:
> Netflix can get away with inefficient business processes because it's making enough money right now to paper over those costs, but eventually they'll have to streamline their processes. If this were really true, why are the professional stock analyst ratings overwhelming "buy" (instead of "hold" or "sell")? The stock is up 50+% in last 1 year, and 150+% in last 5 years. That is outstanding performance.
Netflix's workflow for creatives isn't more sophisticated than their competitors; Netflix simply prefers to re-create the wheel in-house while their competitors are more likely to use off-the-shelf software solutions to the extent that they use software at all.
As others have pointed out on this thread: Netflix's solutions don't scale up or down for others. This means that the technical solution is sophisticated because their unnecessarily complicated internal business process requires it. Netflix could save billions a year if it streamlined their production side like the studios have. Case in point: almost every film Netflix has made in the past few years has gone way over budget, and it's not because of backend buy-outs. (The Electric State cost $320 million, meaning that the base budget before backend buyouts was around $225 million. It doesn't even look like an $50 million movie.)
Netflix can get away with inefficient business processes because it's making enough money right now to paper over those costs, but eventually they'll have to streamline their processes. (For an indirect example, look up the story of Carolco Pictures, the company behind T2, Rambo, and other major hits.)