Imagine a future in ruins. But it’s actually not the future—this story takes place in 1994, in the aftermath of a battle between humanity and artificial intelligence that ended in a devastating stalemate. The people who died were buried; the automatons who were destroyed rust away where they fell. The defeated robots have been banished to an “exclusion zone” in the southwestern desert, while human society attempts to rebuild without the help of the mechanical beings it created.
That’s the backdrop of The Electric State, the sprawling new adventure film from Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame filmmakers Joe and Anthony Russo. The project combines a coming-of-age road trip comedy with philosophical musings about what makes someone (or something) actually alive. “You can recognize humanity in technology, and you can recognize inhumanity in humans,” Anthony Russo says for this exclusive first look. “Both things are possible. That’s the struggle.”
After wrapping their decade-long tour of duty on Marvel’s biggest superhero team-ups, the brothers directed …