LOS ANGELES, March 12 (Reuters) -

American filmmakers and brothers Anthony and Joe Russo, the

directing team behind Marvel's "Avengers: Infinity War" and

"Avengers: Endgame," aim to transport audiences to an alternate

timeline in their film "The Electric State," which begins

streaming on Netflix ( NFLX ) on Friday.

"The intention was to make a live-action Pixar movie," Joe

Russo told Reuters, referring to the animation studio.

"We wanted that same tone and depth of storytelling,

emotion, laughter, tears, you know, really wanted to bring as

full an experience we could do a live-action movie but really

trying to be as inspired as we could by Pixar," he added.

Set in an alternate 1997, the film introduces a world that

has just ended a war against robots, which are now outlawed and

put into a zone in the American Midwest.

The film follows Michelle, played by Millie Bobby Brown, who

has seemingly lost all her family members in a car crash.

However, when a robot arrives in her house, claiming to be

her presumed dead brother Christopher, she decides to head to

the zone to find her brother's physical body.

Along the way, she teams up with Keats, played by Chris

Pratt, a scavenger in the zone, and the pair soon find

themselves facing off against hordes of deformed robots and

virtual reality driven mechanical avatars.

"The Electric State" is among the most expensive films ever

made, according to media reports that said its budget was $310

million. Netflix ( NFLX ) did not respond to a question about the movie's

cost.

Despite the steep monetary investment in the Russo brothers

film, the film had a 20% positive score out of 20 early reviews

collected on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

"Save for a few likable robots, 'The Electric State' is

charmless and curiously dull. It's almost as if all the money

and tech in the world are not sufficient replacements for

imagination," wrote chief critic Richard Lawson in Vanity Fair.

The film features an array of robot characters, but instead

of relying on generic computer-generated robots, the Russos

decided to make things more practical for their actors.

"We had a troupe of actors who were very talented actors,

but also specifically talented in motion and movement," Anthony

Russo said.

"And they would portray the robots. They would each sort of

take a different robot. And they were really critical in terms

of creating the energy on set, also developing the personality

of the robots, the movement of the robots, etc," he added.