The Electric State: New Russo Bros. Movie Receives Their Worst Reviews in 20 Years

No matter what happens throughout the rest of their careers, directing duo Joe and Anthony Russo will always be remembered as the guys who wrapped up Marvel’s Infinity Saga and broke box office records with Avengers: Endgame. Nobody can take achievement away from the Russo brothers, which is good news, considering their post-Endgame efforts have been lackluster at best. Each movie the Russos have directed since Endgame has been met with rough reviews, and their next effort has the worst reception of the bunch.

The third consecutive straight-to-streaming movie for the Russos is proving to be another critical failure. The Electric State is debuting exclusively on Netflix this Friday and the early reviews have been the opposite of glowing.

As of Sunday morning, 22 reviews for The Electric State have been submitted to Rotten Tomatoes and the majority of them have been negative. The film currently holds a 23% rotten score on the site, which is surprisingly worse than both of the Russos’ other streaming movies.

2022’s The Gray Man has a 45% score on Rotten Tomatoes, while 2021’s Cherry has just a 37%. The Electric State‘s score is below both of those, and far below the four Marvel Studios films directed by the Russos (Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame). It makes total sense that the directors would be heading back to Marvel Studios for the next Avengers movie, considering how they’ve fared away from comic book adaptations.

The only Russo-directed movie with a lower score from critics came nearly 20 years ago, in the form of the 2006 comedy You, Me and Dupree. That film holds just a 20% on RT, right below the score of The Electric State.

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Remember, a Rotten Tomatoes score isn’t indicative of how “good” a movie is, rather it explains how widely accepted it is. 23% of the reviews have been positive, but the score doesn’t reflect what those reviews actually say, or how good or bad they say it is.

The most disappointing thing about this is that The Electric State boasts an excellent cast. The film stars Millie Bobby Brown, Chris Pratt, and Oscar-winner Ke Huy Quan. The story follows a young woman in a dystopia world that goes on a search for her younger brother, joined by a robot and a charming drifter. You can check out a full synopsis for the film below.

“The Electric State is a spectacular adventure from the directors of Avengers: Endgame set in an alternate, retro-futuristic version of the 1990s. Millie Bobby Brown stars as Michelle, an orphaned teenager navigating life in a society where sentient robots resembling cartoons and mascots, who once served peacefully among humans, now live in exile following a failed uprising. Everything Michelle thinks she knows about the world is upended one night when she’s visited by Cosmo, a sweet, mysterious robot who appears to be controlled by Christopher — Michelle’s genius younger brother whom she thought was dead. Determined to find the beloved sibling she thought she had lost, Michelle sets out across the American southwest with Cosmo, and soon finds herself reluctantly joining forces with Keats (Chris Pratt), a low-rent smuggler, and his wisecracking robot sidekick, Herman (voiced by Anthony Mackie). As they venture into the Exclusion Zone, a walled-off corner in the desert where robots now exist on their own, Keats and Michelle find a strange, colorful group of new animatronic allies — and begin to learn that the forces behind Christopher’s disappearance are more sinister than they ever expected.”