The Catholic Church teaches that we are supposed to neither revel in popular culture or rebel against it.  Instead, we should think of ourselves as apart from what most people consider cool.  I was reminded of this teaching today while listening to Father Mike Schmitz’s Catechism in a Year podcast.  In reflecting upon this, it occurred to me that this is what I try to do with The Legionnaire.  I am an observer of film, praising what is good, shunning what is bad, but letting none of it consume me.  Okay, so maybe the line has been a little blurred for me when it comes to Star Wars.  My only push back for that would be that it is about good triumphing over evil, which is what God is destined to do, ultimately.  With these ideas in mind, I was with The Electric State, despite some of the negative publicity I had heard about it, all the way up until the last few minutes.  You will have to read on in order find out what turned me off.

The proctor monitoring Christopher Greene’s (Woody Norman) test probably wishes he could turn off The Electric Stateof the adolescent, who cockily puts down his pencil upon completion.  It is 1990 and before “the war,” but we will get to that in a moment.  For now, Christopher is greeted by Michelle Greene (Millie Bobby Brown), his older sister, with whom he is close.  They envision a future of them keeping in touch as he is destined to go off to college and change the world at a young age with his genius.  It is derailed by the aforementioned war, a conflict pitting humans against robots.  In this alternate universe, robots evolve from being more than mere machines doing menial tasks.  With their leader, Mr. Peanut (voiced by Woody Harrelson), they lead an uprising against their enslavement.  They are winning, too, until inventor Ethan Skate (Stanley Tucci) introduces the “Neurocaster,” a virtual reality visor that allows people to inhabit a drone, giving them electronic strength.  Once the final battle is won and the robots are put on what can only be described as a reservation in the American Southwest, Ethan markets his technology to the rest of the world.  With his company, called Sentre, he is able to revolutionize the way people behave in society.  With the use of a surrogate, suddenly people did not have to work through their own labors, but could use their minds to control a machine while they relaxed.  One person who is not on board with the craze is Michelle.  Since last we saw her, her parents and brother died in a car accident, leaving her an orphan being passed around in the foster system.  Her lack of a desire to plug her brain into Neurocaster gets her in trouble at school, to the exasperation of her foster father, Ted Finister (Jason Alexander), who is overly dependent on his machine.  Later that night, Michelle is awakened by a noise outside her window.  With Ted in too deep a sleep to be stirred by her, she is forced to come face-to-metal-face with a Cosmo robot.  In those tense first moments, it grabs a picture of her and Christopher, pointing at the boy to indicate it is Christopher.  Between this, the choice of his favorite cartoon robot, and other gestures, Michelle eventually accepts that this is her brother.  With Ted finally stirring, she must act fast to get away before he is able to summon the authorities for sheltering a robot.  Once they are able to get to a safe place, Christopher is able to indicate with his limited vocabulary the doctor that had delivered the news of Christopher’s passing, Dr. Clark Amherst (Ke Huy Quan), is the person they must find.  The problem, though, is that Dr. Amherst is in an inaccessible location: the Exclusion Zone designated for the robots.  The solution to this comes in the form of John D. Keats (Chris Pratt), a former soldier who now smuggles items in an out of the robot held territory.  Sneaking onto his big rig truck, Christopher and Michelle are not welcomed when they are found.  However, they are also being hunted by Marshall Bradbury (Giancarlo Esposito), another ex-soldier who now works for the Robot Deactivation Task Force (RDTF).  His sole purpose is finding and destroying automatons, and Christopher is the target for him and his souped-up drone.  When Marshall Bradbury wrecks John’s stash, the smuggler and his robot companion, a construction bot named Herman (voiced by Anthony Mackie), grudgingly agree to help Michelle and Christopher locate Dr. Amherst.  Their journey takes them to a defunct mall where Mr. Peanut has gathered surviving droids and is trying to build a society.  Eventually, Michelle is given the clue she needs to get to Dr. Amherst.  However, the presence of humans in the Exclusion Zone has broken the treaty, giving the humans carte blanche to invade and destroy the remaining robots. Further, Dr. Amherst reveals that Christopher is still alive, but it is his mind, despite being in a catatonic state, that has made the Neurocasters possible.  During the drone attack, orchestrated by Ethan, Christopher is captured and brought back to Sentre headquarters.  Instead of admitting defeated, John and Michelle convince Mr. Peanut to lead the remaining droids north to potentially save Christopher.  A large battle outside the company building provides the distraction for Michelle to get into the building.  Once there, she uses a Neurocaster for the first time in order to communicate with the comatose Christopher.  His solution is disappointing.  Instead of writing a happier ending into the story, the solution arrived at by Christopher to stop Ethan is for Michelle to remove him from life support.  Without his brain, the Neurocasters will not function.  Once this is done, the fighting stops and Ethan is arrested.  The final scene is Michelle recording a video explaining why she committed murder to rid the world of its favorite technology.

To be fair to The Electric State, the last image is of the Cosmo robot reactivating, suggesting that somehow Christopher has reanimated himself in robot form.  I would have been less angry with this conclusion if not for a couple of factors. First, it makes no sense.  If what Ethan had done had been worthy of legal action against him, why does Christopher have to die?  The second reason is related to that, as well as my Faith.  There have been real life cases of people who, according to prevailing public opinion, did not merit being kept alive.  While watching, the example that kept coming to me was Terri Schiavo.  Her husband and legal guardian, Michael Schiavo, elected to have her taken off life support when he determined that her life was not going to improve from her then current state.  Her parents, practicing Catholics, fought for their daughter’s life in court.  Unfortunately, Michael won and Terri was taken off life support.  Without casting aspersions on anyone in these instances, who gives us the right to make a decision as to someone else’s quality of life.  With Terri, she could not verbally communicate her emotional state.  Yet, consider what it takes to let someone die in such a condition.  Though pain killers do ease the person’s discomfort, there is no getting around the fact that you are letting someone die of thirst and/or starve.  For those of us that are cognizant, that is considered cruel and unusual punishment according to the law.  But we tell ourselves that Terri, or Michael in the case of the movie, are somehow less human because they cannot provide for themselves.  That is a form of mental gymnastics that is difficult to condone, hence why the Church is against such practices.  The film could have written it a different way, too.  We are dealing with science fiction, where the rules depend on the creativity of the mind behind the production.  Having Michael live would have also fit better with the pro-life message of the rest that said robots deserve to be treated like anyone else.  Instead, I was forced to cringe at the end.

Most of the negative things said about The Electric State indicated that critics cringed at other parts than me.  As has been alluded to, that is because the majority of the culture thinks it is okay to prematurely end the life of someone who needs the help of machines to stay alive.  It is sad that this position is so prevalent, and that they had to ruin what was otherwise a decent movie.