{"id":477092,"date":"2026-03-15T14:47:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-15T14:47:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/477092\/"},"modified":"2026-03-15T14:47:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-15T14:47:11","slug":"1-year-on-i-still-dont-understand-the-hate-for-netflixs-notorious-sci-fi-bomb-im-not-alone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/477092\/","title":{"rendered":"1 Year On, I Still Don’t Understand The Hate For Netflix’s Notorious Sci-Fi Bomb (& I’m Not Alone)"},"content":{"rendered":"

March 2025 was a strange time to be a sci-fi<\/a> fan, and I\u2019m still not convinced the pitch forks that sunk the period\u2019s biggest sci-fi movie should ever have been sharpened. With the Summer season around the corner, Netflix<\/a> dropped a $300 million blockbuster gamble directed by the Russo Brothers<\/a> with two huge stars and based on a brilliant, beautiful art book by Simon St\u00e5lenhag. It had so much promise that the reviews were almost guaranteed to be cynical: those stars were, after all, two of the industry\u2019s favorite punchbags, and the Russos had made the fatal mistake of making some really good blockbusters. Shame on them, apparently.<\/p>\n

Then the reviews hit, and The Electric State<\/a> was proclaimed everything from a stale, flashy luxury, to the actual death of Hollywood. When I eventually saw it, perversely drawn to the chance to see a real stinker, I wrinkled my brow into a bemused frown that has remained for the past year. For the anniversary of its release on March 15, 2025, I watched it again, and I can only conclude that the world suffered with a special brand of hysteria that is reserved for when narratives take over sense. I am willing to die on the hill that The Electric State is not only \u201cfine\u201d as a movie, it\u2019s actually good. And quite a few people seem to agree with me.<\/p>\n

The Electric State Was Criminally Underrated (& Audiences Knew It)<\/p>\n

\"Chris<\/p>\n

The consensus was vitriolic, instantly, ruinously shaped by the cost (what do we care, Netflix has so much money that they just paid Ben Affleck $600m to put VFX artists out of work and make MORE money)? Critics branded it a \u201csoulless spectacle\u201d and a \u201cbloated misfire,\u201d conspiring to earn it just 14% on Rotten Tomatoes. For reference, that means only 10% more of the critics who saw it thought it was better than a 5 out of 10 than the people who saw and reviews Ice Cube\u2019s War of the Worlds. Yep, that disastrous, unwatchable travesty of technological \u201cadvancement\u201d is at 4%. The idea that there\u2019s only a 10% gap is criminal.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the perceived \u201cNetflix-ification\u201d of cinema to contend with: the price is an issue there, because it makes everything feel so\u2026 vulgar. As if they\u2019re taking money away from other somehow more worthy projects. The Electric State is sort of a poster child for streaming extravagance. But the movie is far from garish excess: it\u2019s about grief, and the cost of progress, and evil corporations. The crowning blow came during award season when it racked up multiple Razzie nominations, including Worst Director and Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-off or Sequel.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But a year later, I\u2019m still left scratching my head. Because The Electric State didn\u2019t deserve it. It didn\u2019t deserve the snide criticisms based solely on presence of Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt, who almost feel like lightning rods for unfair criticism themselves too. It\u2019s like a steampunk Amblin sci-fi, combining Spielbergian wonder and humanity with some of the most impressive effects work of the decade. The visuals are, in fact, staggering, and are almost completely ignored in the critical assessment of it because of COURSE they should be at $300m. Take away the Netflix issue, the cast \u201cissues\u201d, and the \u201cRusso fatigue\u201d and this all feels like a modern repeat of the John Carter phenomenon<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the time in 2012, Andrew Stanton\u2019s sci-fi was buried under headlines about its ballooning budget and marketing failures, and the narrative strangled the movie, which is now, rightly, considered a massively, criminally underrated gem. And looking at the audience reception to The Electric State, I know I\u2019m not alone. While the \u201cTomatometer\u201d remains at 14%, the audience score is 67% \u2013 one of the biggest gaps you\u2019ll ever see on that site. And yet, defences of the movie seem oddly quiet.<\/p>\n

Why Time Will Be Kind to The Electric State<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

If history teaches us anything about sci-fi, it\u2019s that the \u201cbombs\u201d of today often become the \u201ccult classics\u201d of tomorrow. Blade Runner was a flop, The Thing was loathed upon release, and John Carter was widely mocked. Like all of them, I\u2019m convinced The Electric State would be primed for a similar redemption arc if it wasn\u2019t on Netflix. And aside from the quality, that\u2019s in no small part thanks to the technology-focused subject matter that becomes more relevant by the day.<\/p>\n

One year later, with the real-world explosion of Generative AI and the increasing isolation caused by digital immersion, the film\u2019s warnings feel like a forecast. It is, of course, a perverse dark mirror, where the robots are the victims, but their impulses for survival and fight against redundancy might well be chillingly prescient. But crucially, The Electric State doesn\u2019t feel like it\u2019s preaching, and like other Spielbergian sci-fis<\/a>, it prioritizes feelings even with a high concept. I simply don\u2019t get it: it\u2019s nothing like the often bland paint-by-algorithm movies we\u2019ve seen lots of times on Netflix. And I will fight to my dying breath that everyone lost thier heads about it way too much last year.<\/p>\n

What do you think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"March 2025 was a strange time to be a sci-fi fan, and I\u2019m still not convinced the pitch…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":477093,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,392,88885,99692,169840,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-477092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-netflix","tag-regular-feature","tag-sci-fi-genre","tag-the-electric-state","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477092\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/477093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}