MOVIE MUSIC UK

Original Review by Jonathan Broxton

There are a lot of similarities between The Electric State and Ready Player One. Both are based on highly respected and popular written source material – The Electric State is adapted from a graphic novel by Simon Stålenhag, Ready Player One was adapted from a novel by Ernest Cline. Both stories feature a great deal of period pop culture nostalgia seen from a point in a dystopian future. Both movies are directed by filmmakers with tremendously successful records at the box office: Ready Player One by the legendary Steven Spielberg, The Electric State by Anthony Russo and Joe Russo, whose films include MCU blockbusters Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame. And both films have received scathing reviews, from critics and audiences alike; one recent review in The AV Club eviscerated The Electric State, saying that the Russos had “crafted a crass commercialist product that both misunderstands and betrays its source material.”

Having never read the original novel, I actually really enjoyed The Electric State for what it was. I thought it was a fascinating concept, was visually creative, and had some funny and poignant moments. It also has some really prescient things to say about billionaires running social media companies who end up being evil megalomaniacs, but that’s a discussion for another time… The film is set in an alternate 1990s where robots have been a part of human society since the 1950s but have existed in a state of perpetual slavery; seeking freedom and liberty, the robots revolt, leading to a devastating war which the robots eventually lose thanks to the intervention of billionaire Ethan Skate and his ‘neurocaster’ technology, which allows humans to operate remote drones. The surviving robots are banished to an ‘exclusion zone’ in the remote deserts of the American south west, and neurocaster technology becomes ubiquitous in society.

Years later, troubled orphan Michelle Greene is about to be kicked out of her latest foster home when she is nervously approached by a robot based on the ‘Kid Cosmo’ cartoon series. The robot manages to convince Michelle that it is being controlled by her younger brother Christopher, who she was told died in the car crash that also killed her parents; determined to find her brother, Michelle and Cosmo set off across the dystopian landscape. The film stars Millie Bobby Brown as Michelle, Chris Pratt as the charming former soldier Keats who becomes her ally, and Stanley Tucci as Skate, with Ke Huy Quan, Jason Alexander, and Giancarlo Esposito in major supporting roles, plus Woody Harrelson, Anthony Mackie, Brian Cox, Colman Domingo, Alan Tudyk, and Jenny Slate providing voices for some of the robots Michelle encounters along the way.

One final similarity between The Electric State and Ready Player One is the fact that both films feature a score by composer Alan Silvestri. I wrote in my review of Ready Player One that the score was an intentional throwback to Silvestri’s mainstream heyday, a quintessential score that combines all his best and most famous trademark sounds from his long career on the film music A-list – and The Electric State is very much the same. Like Ready Player One, the score is a blend of the action music Silvestri wrote for things like Judge Dredd and the Russo Avengers movies, combined with the incessant percussion of Predator, the more intimate drama of Forrest Gump or Contact, the glassy electronics of The Abyss, and a massive amount of Back to the Future, in terms of rhythm and orchestration. The entire work is awash in all his most popular stylistics, with perhaps one key exception: it lacks a truly memorable central theme to tie it all together. There are themes, of course, and several of them, but their statements are surprisingly subdued at times, never really breaking out into the sort of bold music that we know Silvestri is capable of.

However, despite this, I still found myself being inexorably drawn to Silvestri’s stylistics, and appreciating the music for what it is. The magical, twinkling motif that appears at the beginning of “We’re Always Connected” is the recurring thematic idea representing the core relationship at the heart of the story, between Michelle and her brother Christopher; there is a warmth and familial sentiment to the theme which is really quite lovely, and the subsequent explorations of the theme performed by pianist Andy Massey are very pretty, again in a sort of light Forrest Gump/Contact kind of way. This sense of lightness and optimism continues on through the first moments of “The Year the World Changed,” but then it quickly becomes more serious and dramatic, with militaristic percussion licks and heroic brass fanfares conveying the flashback exposition telling the story of the robot uprising, and its subsequent quelling thanks to Skate and the ‘neurocaster’ technology.

The theme for Michelle and Christopher is the emotional anchor of the score, and it appears frequently as the score unfolds, underscoring Michelle’s driving purpose. Interestingly, Silvestri is able to offer numerous adaptations and emotional variations on the theme to illustrate whatever is happening to Michelle at any given moment – it is thoughtful and pensive in “Do You Feel the Air On Your Face,” at the end of “Kid Cosmo Arrives,” and in “Scavenger Bots,” among many others; elsewhere it is turned into an action motif in cues like “It’s Time to Zoom,”, and later it even features during the propulsive western segments in “The Dr. with the Glasses” and at the end of “Nothing But Oil Stains and Screws”.

For me personally the most enjoyable parts of the score are the ones where Silvestri leans into his familiar action style, which has now been popular since the mid-1980s with scores like Back to the Future and Predator, and shows no signs of abating. Silvestri is excellent at this stuff; cues like “It’s Time to Zoom,” the last minute or so of “Not Some Spring Break Hot Spot,” the thrilling “He’s Marked for Deactivation,” “What’s the Call Pops,” and the occasionally quite brutal “The Butcher of Schenectady” contain rousing and bombastic passages for the full orchestra that fans of Silvestri’s long-standing action style will enjoy; as I am one of them, I do so immensely.

Embedded within many of these cues there are what appear to be a series of action motifs representing different characters: one for Michelle which comes across as a variation on the brother-sister theme, a Morricone-esque one for Keats and his robot Herman, and a more patriotic one for the community of robots led by Mr. Peanut who eventually team up with Michelle on her quest to find Christopher and stop Skate. Silvestri intricately weaves flashes of these themes in and out of his action material, sometimes playing them contrapuntally to illustrate moments where different characters are working together, and sometimes offering them as a heroic fanfare to pinpoint a specific moment.

The theme for Keats and his robot Herman gets its first outing in the ominous “Power Save Mode,” and then is prominent throughout “Not Some Spring Break Hot Spot,” while the theme for the robots appears noticeably during the rousing Americana of both “The Cradle of a New Mechanized Civilization” and “Nothing But Oil Stains and Screws”. It’s themes-and-variations writing 101, but Silvestri does it with such skill, and the fact that this kind of thing seems to be a rarity these days underlines how difficult it is to do well.

Other moments which I found noteworthy include the sinister electronic dissonance at the end of “Do You Feel the Air On Your Face,” the guttural horror sounds at the beginning of “Kid Cosmo Arrives” when Michelle first encounters the forbidden robot and fears it is going to kill her, and the grungy cowboy travelogue vibe of the aforementioned “The Dr. with the Glasses” for which Silvestri employs guitar, a harmonica, and a fiddle alongside the orchestra. Later, “Kid Cosmo Movie Night” is whimsical and emotional, and there is a real sense of tragedy and despair to “Consequences” that I found very effective.

The last 20 minutes or so of the score – from “You’re Not Alone” through to the end of “We Live” – underscores the conclusive battle sequence where Michelle, Keats, and the robots launch an attack on Skate’s ‘Sentre’ compound in order to rescue Christopher and stop Skate’s megalomaniacal plans. Silvestri’s music runs the gamut here, pairing more thrilling action with moments of tenderness and emotion; the neurocaster reunion scene between Michelle and Christopher in “It’s Coming from Me” is especially effective, as is Herman’s apparent death scene during the conflict of “God Bless America”. However, it is action that dominates, and Silvestri really pulls out all the stops, embedding the theme for Michelle and Christopher, the theme for Keats and Herman, the Robot theme, and what appears to be a sinister secondary motif for Skate and Sentre, into a series of outstanding action cues. “Here’s Johnny” and “Poor Taco” contain moments of exciting bombast, including some notably flashy brass writing and even a few moments of choral power, and it all builds up to a soaring finale.

While the film itself may – rightly, according to many – have been the recipient of a significant amount of critical scorn, film music fans shouldn’t sleep on the score. It’s a great example of Alan Silvestri doing all the things he is famous for, and doing them well. Some may be disappointed at the lack of a truly unifying theme beyond the main Michelle and Christopher theme, which may be at times too subtle, but even while acknowledging this, the power and density of the action, the depth of the emotions, and the fun of the southwestern vibes were enough for me to be entertained throughout. Always remember, Kid Cosmo’s your pal!

Buy the Electric State soundtrack from the Movie Music UK Store

Track Listing:

• We’re Always Connected (2:45)
• The Year the World Changed (4:26)
• Do You Feel the Air On Your Face (3:08)
• Kid Cosmo Arrives (3:12)
• It’s Time to Zoom (3:04)
• The Dr. with the Glasses (4:25)
• Power Save Mode (1:44)
• Not Some Spring Break Hot Spot (3:50)
• He’s Marked for Deactivation (1:56)
• Scavenger Bots (3:34)
• See Where The Day Takes Us (2:33)
• The Cradle of a New Mechanized Civilization (2:57)
• Kid Cosmo Movie Night (3:03)
• Nothing But Oil Stains and Screws (3:24)
• What’s the Call Pops (3:41)
• The Butcher of Schenectady (3:43)
• Consequences (3:37)
• You’re Not Alone (3:20)
• Here’s Johnny (3:22)
• Poor Taco (3:48)
• God Bless America (4:06)
• It’s Coming from Me (2:45)
• We’re Running Out of Time (3:41)
• The Day Is Ours (1:02)
• We Live (1:38)

Netflix Music (2025)

Running Time: 78 minutes 44 seconds

Music composed by Alan Silvestri. Conducted by Alan Silvestri and Mark Graham. Orchestrations by Mark Graham. Featured musical soloist Andy Massey. Recorded and mixed by Dennis Sands and Nick Wollage. Edited by Mark Jan Wlodarkiewicz. Album produced by Alan Silvestri and David Bifano.