Chris Pratt Was Moved to Tears Reading The Electric State Script

At New York Comic Con, The Electric State teased major excitement and even more action on behalf of Anthony and Joe Russo’s new Netflix film.

This footage and the open conversation with show’s creators and actors – like Chris Pratt and Millie Bobby Brown – was shown to the rapt audience of the Empire Stage on Thursday, immediately after a fresh teaser trailer was released online.

The film is Stream on Netflix from March 16 and is based on Simon Stalenhag’s graphic novel which depicts man versus machine in ‘90s.

Electric State is about Michelle (Brown), a young woman with a sweet but mysterious robot who gets accompany by drift, Keats (Pratt) for a cross-country expedition to find her brother in a retro-futuristic U.S., where there is uneasy truce after a human and AI war. 

Joe, who jokingly shared that he’s “exhausted” with his current slate of work (which includes a pair of upcoming Avengers movies), noted that he and Anthony began work on the project five years ago, and were pleased to reunite with some of their Avengers: Endgame co-stars such as Chris Pratt, Anthony Mackie and Imdb opinions of Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely.

“It’s a real passion project. We’re very, very excited to bring it to audiences. It’s massive in scale. We love telling very big stories,” responded Joe.

In the interview, Pratt said he had intended to take a year off but the previous creative teams and the story hooked him.

“It’s not the kind of thing that typically gets made to be a blockbuster style movie like this. It could not be more original, that’s why it is such a big swing, Pratt added. “I assumed that such kinds of movies would be the last chance to become in a large picture like that. I still have to look at every opportunity like that. And I did. It’s just such a great story. Saying that I was touched to tears by the reading.

In terms of how the Russos approached this adaptation, Anthony pointed to the “fascinating” art of Stalenhag’s graphic novel, and likened the experience to adapting Marvel Comics properties for Captain America: Captain America: Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame.

It came down to ‘We just looked at the images, and the story that he unfolds in the graphic novel’. It is very opaque. But it is common these days that something that seems easy is actually a bit complicated to figure out where it is to come from. You get it in glimpses,” said Anthony of the teasing comment. “You realise there are so many more things going on in the background of what this guy is saying in the graphic novel, which you can only imagine.”

One of the issues was figuring out how to fit one story into a two hour feature instead of extending it in a graphic novel format. “You have to get much more specific about the narrative, so we had great, great fun, sort of diving in and using his incredible artwork as inspiration to figure out what kind of story we can tell this world,” said Anthony.

Joe and Anthony have grown up on television shows like Arrested Development and Community. Joe mentioned that that there are many things from Community in the film as well as talks and topics.

“Just think about a 1990s where, in the late fifties, Disney’s animatronic officially came to life and then began to clamor for civil rights,” Joe added. “That’s what, that’s where the war comes out.” It selectively picks the ’90s to tell those stories and to give backup to the theme of that movie.

Added Pratt about the time period: “It’s a ‘90s that is quite relevant to what is happening today. A cameo footage had Pratt and Brown explaining many production design references to ‘90s such as Big Mouth Billy Bass, Cabbage Patch Kids, Barbie, VHS, Beanie Babies, among others. This one highlighted where the movie would remind the audience about that time and then bring in technology and problems of today. 

Asked what the directors wanted to get from their series, Joe stated that they followed the ‘80s Amblin or Robert Zemeckis with hints of scores like Alan Silvestri in Back to the Future. 

Brown then said in an interview that she did not have much between shooting the scene of this movie and another movie and that she put some efforts into thinking about what her soon-to-be “angsty teen” should make her want, she sent photographs of Drew Barrymore in the ‘90s. “I had never done anything like this before,” Brown said. “It was very different. Speaking of it as an actor – it was quite a test… The Russos did such a beautiful job in directing my trajectory…I am thankful to direct my attention at the Russos and ask, ‘How do you want me to play this and that?’ We really found it together.”

New clips revealed Brown and Pratt hanging around in an old volkswagen van with Keats, Herman’s giant robot buddy who is voiced by Mackie. Returning to the matter of trust in their friendship, Keats explains to_lm why he has issues with trust, and how they have met and, in fact, saved each other from the wars with other robots, they find what looks like a deserted mall. Though they realize that it is not an abandoned building when they are attacked and when a new robot approaches them after their van has overturned. 

Following the clip Joe then discussed about bot Herman and shared more about the two major roles of robots and humans in the movie. “The thing that I find most intriguing about all the lead characters of the movie is that each one of them has some tragedy or traumatic experience in their lives, which they are trying to escape,” he said. That’s right, they are all social drop outs in one way or the other. I think the technology is very present in the movie but neither of them wants to be involved with it and they figured out how to get out of it. Herman is a dropout. It’s given up on the robot community. Doesn’t engage in it… they survive in a rebels’ fashion and are fugitives from justice living outside of the law. 

Brown and Pratt also communicated regarding the challenges which were created while working with motion capture and other technologies as well. “ I have so much appreciation to the Russos, but also the mo-cap actors and the team that worked on it to give us some foundation so we didn’t have to create most of it,” Brown said. 

Also starring in the film are Ke Huy Quan, Stanley Tucci, Jason Alexander, Giancarlo Esposito and Woody Norman, while the voice-over of the major robotic characters is supplied by Woody Harrelson, Mackie, Brian Cox an When the directors were talking about the film, they mentioned The Electric State’s cast, and their preference for ensembles. 

One thing that we absolutely love is using an ensemble cast. You can see it in all of our work: All our little films, all the big films, television works. We suspect it is so because we are from a large Italian American family where there were many people in cramped spaces and they spent lots of time conversing rather loudly. “It is just that you find yourself getting comfortable with the idea of the community and you start to embrace the diversity.”

As the panel came to a conclusion, Brown wished for families to have something fun to watch, a point the Russos made at the beginning of the panel. “And as she said, it takes you truly on a journey,” he added. “Entertainment is big, and I think it’s really nice for families to get a chance to be able to step out of the real world that is so dismal, and step into a world that is so magical.”