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I canceled my Netflix subscription a while ago because I was sick of watching series that end on on a cliffhanger hanger, only to find out that it was canceled the same day it dropped because not enough people watched it in the first 24 hours.

I just got an email from Free League about an Electric State feature film, that I hadn’t previously heard anything about. That’s not a series, so I’d watch that. But before I drop $18, I want to know if it’s for me.

I did not particularly like the Tales from the Loop series. It was okay, but not what I hoped for. That show seemed more about giving actors the opportunity to tell emotional stories than explore the mystery of the setting. Jonathan Price’s scene where he cries over his illness does a very good job of what it is trying to do. It tells you exactly what is going on with that character without any dialogue. But they never tell you what he is ill with because that’s not important to the emotional arch of the character. It’s not even an after-thought. It’s just not relevant to the story.

You could say the same thing about the premise of most episodes. The episode about the boys that switch bodies is about the drama and conflict of the characters it affects. Why it happened is just a pretext that is never explored. The show wasn’t interested in why.

I wanted something that was a little more mind-bending mystery, and a little less Thornton Wilder.

So, for anyone who has seen it, what kind of story does Electric State tell. Does the world have verisimilitude? When weird stuff happens, does it feel like there is an in world reason, even if it isn’t clear what that reason was? Or does it feel like it just happened so we can get to the next plot point?

Does the funny little robot display a cgi hologram because that is a clue to its nature; or is it just an opportunity for Millie Bobby Brown to emote a sense of wonder against uplifting music to hit an emotional beat?

The Electric State movie completely butchered the original novel and in my opinion is a direct insult to everything Simon Stalenhag was going for in the original book. A bleak world, a lonely world. So much death shown in those pages, bodies turned to husks underneath VR helmets. This is all thrown away for an action movie starring chris pratt and Millie Bobby Brown. It pains me that because netflix owns these rights we will never get an actual good screen adaptation of this. And I feel for Simon, im sure he gave the rights to the russo brothers thinking "hey, they are good directors with good vision" only to be shown this halfway through production and now is under contract to defend his work being ruined like this. Its like having to watch a sculpture you made be destroyed by a hammer and being forced to smile.

Its like having to watch a sculpture you made be destroyed by a hammer and being forced to smile.

It's what "Hollywood" has been doing to adaptations for more than a century. No one is forcing anyone to watch, nor to smile about watching it. And no one forces authors to sign financially-lucrative and creatively-bereft contracts.

But it is akin to hearing someone say that a film/series adaptation ruined the book when the book remains unchanged in any manner.

I appreciate the review.

And, Umberto, your point is well taken, but I think you are missing some nuance. An opportunity cost is paid when when a piece of beloved media is badly translated into a different medium. Some of the enjoyment of a book like Electric State comes from imagining the pictures coming to life and learning a little bit more about the world in a different medium. (Different plot points and story beats work well in different mediums, so a well executed translation can enhance the enjoyment of the original by adding to the world). A bad translation squanders most of the potential to make a good translation, and can leave a lingering feeling of bitterness when trying to revisit the experience.