It is my humble opinion that great movies serve one purpose - they make it a memorable experience for viewers. And they make it memorable by wowing audiences visually, cognitively or emotionally or a combination thereof. Few movies transcend all three experiences in the exact right proportion. Movies that fall do this are defined as Awesome Movies.
As an example, Enthiran, released in 2010, was an awesome movie.It had a humanoid robot (cognitively appealing), built from scratch with sheet metal and PCBs (more cognitively appealing),with Aishwarya Rai (visually appealing), a robot that falls in love with her (emotionally appealing), and tons of Rajinikanth (cognitive, visual and emotional phenom).
But alas, there is such a thing as "too much" of any one of these experiences.If there is too much visual action, or emotional drama or cognitive masala, the Awesome movie fizzles out. And that has been known to happen before as well. A lot.
In the coming days, 2.0 hits the screens. There will be moments before,
during, and after the movie, where you will question everything you know about
your appreciation of a fine cinematic experience, and start to believe that the
movie is bad.
You will hate Akshay Kumar as the Bird in the sky, and every time you look
at his face you will be reminded of the insane amount of CGI and Artificiality
and Non Realistic Fantasy the director has put in the movie.
If you are a Rajini fan, you will think the movie didn't have enough Rajini
in it. It will descend into a debate about whether or not Rajini should enter
politics.
If you are a Shankar fan, you will think the movie was too much about Rajini.
It will descend into a debate about whether or not Rajini should enter
politics.
If you are a Rahman fan, you will question if his days of good music are
gone forever and if you should officially start a Santhosh Narayanan
Thalaivaaaaaa (with 4 extra a's) Page on Facebook.
If you are an Amy Jackson fan..... well, dont bother, you are not real. Wake
up. (Incidentally she's not real in the movie either, playing a role written specifically for her - a robot!)
You may be a progressive thinking liberal, and you will want to burn the
theater down for a couple of the bad jokes Shankar tried to insert to please
front benchers. It will descend into a debate about India's culture and
Sabarimala.
You may be financially conscious and the vulgar $450 Cr number will boggle
your mind into saying crazy stuff like "So much Poverty we could've
removed if we spent money on buying clothes for poor". It will descend
into a fight about whether BJP should be building statues.
There are possibly thousand different reasons you have been waiting for this
movie to come out. And as soon as the initial rush of being in the
theater, watching this movie leaves you, you will find that the movie doesn't
live up to the extraordinary expectations you had for it, because one aspect of
the movie ruined it for you.
In the midst of all this, you will read a 100 reviews trashing the movie,
500 status updates and check-in's with movie ticket pictures, Youtube videos
with poor imitations of the Superstar, a few crazy clips of the people involved
in the movie getting angry, and at least 5 High Court cases for banning the
movie for either "hurting sentiments" or "copyright
infringement".
And all this will spoil the movie for you, and you will start to question
"everything you know about your appreciation of a fine cinematic
experience, and start to believe that the movie is bad."
It is important you resist that feeling.
You see, regardless of how good a movie 2.0 actually is, this is an
extremely important movie for audiences in India to watch. Because this movie
in some ways, will decide what movies we will watch for the next 10
years.
Few film-makers break out of the safety net (and only they can afford to)
make movies that expand the boundaries of the cinemas we watch. And these
pioneering filmmakers giving new technologies, new styles and new techniques a
platform in their movies is what makes the Indian film industry gain new
capabilities to tell new and bigger stories.
When Shankar used 65 cameras in one action scene in Anniyan, it was unheard
of. Today it is common place enough that simple duet songs use it.
When Rajamouli made Magadheera, he really built the tools to be able to make
Baahubali in the years down the road.
When Bollywood made 10 different boxing movies, it was slowly building the
fanbase and interest, and the template to succeed at making one Dangal.
In an absolute disappointment of a movie called Kochadaiiyan, an established
sequence of operations was established to produce a motion capture movie in
India, and that's what is making 2.0 possible.
Bad Ambitious Movies always beget Great Ambitious Movies!!
The possibility that making 2.0 today may make an Amar Chitra Katha
Superhero Movie possible, or a Mars mission movie a la Tik Tik or Martian
possible.
But what about being objective, and critiquing the nuances of filmmaking as an appreciation of art and a reflection of our society and popular culture? I say - Valid point! But hear me out.... Now, I know very little about how the Universe operates, and my worldview is restricted to my Facebook and Twitter feed. But if the reviewers on my feed are anything to go by, nuance and subtle references are severely underrepresented features of their assessment of movies, and in all fairness, the First Law of Social Media Engagement states that the more nuanced view someone takes, the lesser likes/retweets/engagement it gets - which defeats the whole purpose of posting opinions onto social media in the first place. So reviewers, by natural laws of Social Media Survival of the Fittest gravitate towards populist 1-liners which reduces movies to caricatures of themselves.
So regardless of why you hated 2.0 or any other movie that will be released in future, please
remember to thank the people who stared at the task, knew and understood how
impossible it was to make the movie they wanted, and went ahead did it anyway,
because at the end of the day, this movie is not about this one movie alone, it
is about the kind of movies we will see in decades to come in Indian Cinema!
Update: I watched 2.0 in Rochester Hills, MI (on the day of release, there were at least 20 shows in Tamil, in addition to about 10 more shows in Hindi/Telugu in the Detroit area - in total Maayajaal style - unheard of for an Indian movie, even Baahubali), and absolutely loved the movie! It was everything I hoped for, and more. 2.0 the Rajini character in the second half of the movie is Black Sheep Chitti on steroids, and I absolutely loved it! And what a great job tying everything back to the environment and how we are destroying it with cell phone towers - I get it, it was a little preachy, and felt like a kid's movie at times, but the lighthearted nature of the movie was a big part in why it was enjoyable! And as predicted, social media is full of disappointed moviegoers - there's just no pleasing some people I tell you.
