How ‘The Electric State’ team created a world of unlikely robots

The new Netflix movie “The Electric State” depicts a world full of robots — but not robots as we know them. Directed by brothers Anthony and Joe Russo (who previously helmed two Avengers blockbusters, “Infinity War” and “Endgame”) for a reported budget of $320 million, “The Electric State” takes place in an alternate version of the 1990s, one where sentient robots have existed for decades. That’s long enough for them to have rebelled against their human masters, lost the war, and found themselves exiled to an area of the Southwest — an area that the film’s heroes (played by Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt) must sneak into. Crucially for visual effects supervisor Matthew E. Butler, design-wise, these robots are “deliberately the antithesis” of the robots that exist today. “Most of us have seen modern-day robots … and are used to these designs,” Butler told me. “If you look at Boston Dynamics robots, you’ll notice that they concentrate the mass of the robot at the center of the rob ... Read full article.