AN ALTERNATE REALITY: I SAW THE ELECTRIC STATE

Netflix's The Electric State, directed by MCU's Anthony and Joe Russo and written by MCU's Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (based on Simon Stalenhag's celebrated, illustrated novel), is an alternate-reality, science-fiction exploit. It takes place in a realm that spans the 1980s into the 1990s, where robots and humans have warred upon each other. 

From the movie's prologue, we learn that robo-tech reached its dangerous heights in the '80s, with the "bots" disregarding Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics to rebel against their masters. As such, they neared victory, but the humans gained leverage by implanting their consciousnesses into lean, soldier machines, puppeteered from unseen locales. The human triumph, however, did not stem just from this precocious advantage; an ulterior motive was at play, one that would catapult minds in an altogether A.I. way.  

It comes down to a young lady, Michelle Greene (Millie Bobby Brown), and her surrogate-brother bot, Kid Cosmo (Alan Tudyk) to unveil the secret. Cosmo, it turns out, holds a loose, symbiotic link to Michelle's younger brother, Christopher (Woody Norman), which was enacted by a scientist, Ethan Skate (Stanley Tucci), head of the once influential company, Sentre. Skate came upon the boy's extraordinary, cerebral capabilities, and has maintained the lad's comatose shell to initiate a global, virtual-reality stream: a symbiotic "paradise" where transmitted, pleasant thoughts rule the roost, but the concept is more indolent and self-serving than not. 

On their path to retrieve Christopher, Michelle and Cosmo encounter a pair of roguish scavengers, John D. Keats (Chris Pratt) and his mechanical companion, Herman (voiced by Anthony Mackie and "costumed" by Martin Klebba), who after some reluctance, join the quest. This, in turn, leads the four into a bot haven called Blue Sky Acres Mall, and from there, the plot pivots into further peril and crucial revelations.  

The characters who appear throughout this Oz-like journey are quite colorful: Marshall Bradbury (Giancarlo Esposito), the war's eclipsing hero, hired to hunt Michelle and Cosmo; Mr. Peanut (Woody Harrelson), the bots' wartime leader; Penny Pal (Jenny Slate), a post-office bot; Pop Fly (Brian Cox), a baseball bot; Perplexo (Hank Azaria), a magician bot; and Dr. Amherst (Ke Huy Quan), a friendly scientist with tenuous ties to Skate. Others round out the off-center ensemble, including Jason Alexander as Michelle's disagreeable, foster father. 

The adventure is sprawling and uses aspects of other science-fiction stories for its various parts, including Surrogates; I, Robot; Short Circuit; *batteries not included; Ready Player One; Brainstorm; Heartbeeps; Strange Days; Terminator; Ghost in the Shell; Alita: Battle Angel; Frankenstein's Army; Mortal Engines; Star Trek Generations; Space Hunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone, and the '80s, Twilight Zone episode, "Dreams for Sale." The alluding hodgepodge is never too obvious and if detected, feels more like a sprinkling of inspiration than all-out plagiarism. (Heck, Star Wars: A New Hope and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow pulled the same stunt with little to no complaint.)

With the latter considered, Electric State can't be considered avant-garde. It simply rests on its war-torn and cheerful-looking backdrops, with sporadic references to pop-cultural items from its remade era. I've heard some complain about this, with one reviewer stating that, though Electric State may not be weighed by predictable "wokeness" (thank goodness, I agree), it's still unworthy of praise, since it never hits the provoking pinnacle it could have achieved. The complaint strikes me as odd, for not every movie will end up a Citizen Kane or Metropolis, no matter the ambition applied. Movies, for the most part, are designed to deliver escapism, and if they do so without a misinformed, prejudicial pitch, better that than not. 

From my viewpoint, this one did its job, being happy, sad, scary, serious and silly all within its two-hour-plus running time: a meritorious accomplishment for any genre. 

I saw Jurassic World: Dominion...

As my readers may recall, I wasn't keen on the previous Jurassic picture, but not enough to stay away from the franchise forever. Hell, we're not talking new-fangled/male-bashing, theatrical Star Wars, after all. 

Anyway, Fallen Kingdom's "open the borders for killer creatures" is acknowledged in Jurassic Park: Dominion, but never hammered over one's head. It's directed by the back-in-action Colin Trevorrow, who co-scripted with Emily (Battle at Big Rock) Carmichael, and as it goes, this new chapter offers another chance to paint humans as a greater threat to existence than flesh-feasting dinosaurs. That's because there's no prolonged, city-mangling, Dinosaurs Attack! segment in the movie (contrary to what one prime poster implies), but rather passing encounters: interesting but sparse and therefore, unrealistic in the concept's ambitious expanse, considering the size and ferocity that most of these specimens possess. 

For the conflict end of it, the plot pushes a familiar antagonist, Dr. Lewis Dodgson, played by Campbell Scott (originally portrayed by the criminally soiled Cameron Thor of Jurassic I). Dodgson, an evident hybrid of Bill Gates and Anthony Fauci for this certain instance, believes that to save the world, one must destroy it. To usher his diabolical scheme, he conceals his trickery behind gentle chat and a humanitarian front, his big-time company, Biosyn. 

Between Dodgson's surreptitious antics and the copious, dino zigzagging (each interlocking segment ideally accompanied by Michael Giacchino's thunderous but earthy score), we're treated to a fond reunion and cast crossover, with Christopher Pratt as Owen Grady; Bryce Dallas Howard as his gal, Claire Dearing; Sam Neill as Alan Grant; Laura Dern as Ellie Sattler; Jeff Goldblum as Ian Malcolm; and B.D. Wong as Henry Wu. Yeah, the old and new give this one a kind of Star Trek generational feel, and each participant gives his/her own perspective on the primal pursuits and greedy, corporate stunts. In other words, each gets an ample chance to shine. 

Isabella Serman's little, cloned Maisie Lockwood also returns, with no consequences for her actions at the conclusion of Fallen Kingdom, which rather irks me. I mean, for that reckless stunt, the kid (no matter how otherwise brilliant she may be) deserved at least a "lifetime" sentence in reform school. However, to outset her passive aggressiveness, Mamoudou Athie's Ramsay Cole and DeWanda Wise's Kayla Watts give the interludes amicable stability, guiding the leads whenever the opportunities arrive. (Truly, these two could have sustained the movie all on their own, if the plot had, in fact, veered that way.)

To further abet the progression, our heroes face a sideline view of maddening, Biosyn-hatched locusts and an impending famine (roundabout allusions to man-made COVID, I daresay), but no matter what, Grady stays consistently at the action's center (his motorcycle-chase sequence is a Bondian triumph). This demonstrates that Pratt should be reconsidered for Indy Jones, but he won't because Indy is now gonna be a woman, if only to ensure that all is right with the woke world.

Dominion is a basic, but purposeful entry in this high-echelon franchise and maybe its final submission. As such, it has enough vim to hold one's interest, and even includes an almost Gorgo subplot, centering on Blue the Raptor and her wee daughter, which I rather liked and would have liked even more, if only it had been better developed.  

Even with such things recognized, and as much I do perceive the Jurassic movies as being decent submissions, they're not my all-time favorites for this genre. I'm more of a Gwangi/One Million B.C./Doyle's Lost World type guy, where emphasis is placed on calamity, and the humans aren't there to make friends with their aggressors or feel compelled to talk up a storm to determine why baddies (humans or reptiles) wish to rule the world. In my ideal, dino flicks, the humans strive to survive, as well as seek to kill their titanic foes, if only out of frantic necessity. For the sake of this movie (where deaths are at a minimum, and the scares snap like a wink-and-nudge amusement ride), it's rather a shame that such a severe (let alone credible) motivator got big-time blurred in the grand, saurian strut. Even so, Dominion is worth checking out, as long as one accepts its more-often-than-not, restrained value.