Direct enough massive MCU superhero blockbusters, and you will be give $320 million to chuck at the screen in the hope that some of it sticks. So this is the Russo brothers adapting an acclaimed graphic novel about an alternative mid-1990s where a war took place between mankind and their sentient robot servants a little earlier, leaving the robots imprisoned on a reservation in New Mexico and the human populace, almost without exception, slavishly hooked on virtual reality and the actual world experienced only through their personal drones. A feisty young heroine sets out across the country with a bot that carries fragments of the conciousness of her lost brother, whom she hopes to find with the bot's aid. They're pursued by a ruthless robot hunter and joined by a black marketeer who has his own bot partner.
The bulk of the budget then goes on FX, particularly on animating the colourful cast of robots they meet on the journey and which join forces with them to fight the tech billionaire mastermind behind the whole sorry state of the world. It does manage to amuse at times between the protracted action sequences, but being squarely for young audiences, it can't delve too deeply into satirical dissection of the relentless march of society towards its own demise, following the will-o'-the-wisp of the promise of a future utopia of endless consumerist leisure.
Critics largely hated it, but it would probably have escaped most of the scathing reviews if only it hadn't spent so much time and money on big setpieces and just a little more on ideas with substance.
4/10
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