Movie Review - 2.0

We are all taught the proverb, all that “Glitters is not Gold” or “Do not judge a book by its cover”, but after watching 2.0, I genuinely feel that we can go through every piece or written media we have and replace it with 2.0 and the meaning would remain the same.

Watching 2.0 is like discovering a treasure box. One that is ornate, beautiful, grand designed with perfect geometry, shaped and sculpted by a thousand hands which opens up with a tantalizing hiss to reveal a small dried up piece of paper saying “treasure” crumpled up in some random corner.

Let me get this out of the way, the first three minutes of the film where we see a man walking through the fields climb up the cell tower, surrounded by birds and hanging himself is a master class in 3D film-making where the director and the cinematographer show us how 3D can be used as a deeper tool than as a flashy gimmick and an afterthought. This along with some brilliant uses of lighting and framing show that there is a really good visual film in quite a few scenes.  

And The CGI throughout the film is, while not at the level of a Hollywood production, considering the budget is something of a miracle. The eagle made of cell-phones to the gigantic, transformers/ Ultra-man style climax fight is done with a lot of attention to detail. The creative use of cell-phones as a way to create a room of horrors or a brilliant light-up forest is nothing short of the ingenuity we have come to expect from director Shankar and it will be criminal to say he does not deliver at all.

All that being said, this movie is so bad that I literally walked out of the theater after the climactic fight for a long overdue bathroom break and came back because the movie just could not hold my interest at all. It is almost as if the filmmakers realized how bad the script they had was and decided that the CGI along with a perfectly robotic Amy Jackson were the only way they would be able to stop the people from walking out of the theater.

It is almost as if they started shooting the movie and all of a sudden realized that their script was stolen and they called in the interns to finish writing something that will connect the events on the screen. The logical errors and the plot-holes in the script were so jarring and obvious, I am baffled that nobody on the writing team pointed it out. I am sure that all the “Rajini Veriyans” are boiling in their seats right now, thinking I have no idea what I am talking about, so I am going to take the time to list out some of the plot holes and inconsistencies I found in just one sitting while shouting frustrated at the screen, so forgive me if I miss any.

First, we are introduced to NILA the robotic assistant of Dr. Vaseegaran and he says that unlike Chitti she has been designed with a MPU that follows Asimov’s three laws and all her emotions are pre-programmed. This essentially means that all her emotions are not real and she cannot attain a level of sentience that Chitti can.

So how in the world that she fall in love with Chitti before it was reactivated. If that happened after the memory cores were swapped I understand the implication that NILA has gained sentience. But if she falls for Chitti before he is even activated, sets a very creepy precedent; that Vaseegaran designed a robot that looks like a good looking woman and programmed it with emotions for a dismantled robot who just so happens to be a split image of Dr. Vaseegaran. Let that sink in for a moment.

Second the MPU is swapped during the trios’ first encounter with Pakshi Rajan when Chitti is hurt and NILA runs to him overwhelmed with emotion to save him. If NILA is bound by the three laws she cannot let Vaseegaran come to harm even if it means letting Chitti get destroyed because of the First Law of Robotics: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. Of course the argument could have been made that she had to save Chitti because only he could save Vaseegaran, but it was not at all framed that way, and that is where the problem comes for me.

Third, If the MPU is not changed when Chitti becomes 2.0 that means that he can’t display emotions because the Sentient MPU is now in NILA and Chitti is just a killing machine compliant to the three laws, meaning he cannot kill Dr. Vaseegaran. If the argument is that NILA swapped the memory cores, the she cannot remain inactive even after learning that Chitti 2.0 is going to kill Vaseegaran because that would break the first law by inaction.

If the rebuttal to all this is that NILA is actually sentient then that would mean that she has a sense of self and she is not pre-programmed because sentience is based on learning and pre-programming has its limits.

I really can keep going but it seems redundant at this point. I think my time would be better spent going over the funny and, frankly, stupid decisions that the Filmmakers made both behind the scenes and in the story itself, laughing about it and convincing myself that I have not wasted a lot of my money watching this movie.

In the scene where the wave of cell-phones chase the CEO couldn't he have just ran three feet to the left? I understand going for spectacle or urgency but when there is such a big logical mistake it makes it look like the people behind Tom and Jerry wrote the script.

With all the writers involved in the script were these the jokes that they could come up with? “Your call has been disconnected” and “Dear Subscriber…” jokes? 

Why was the government, after all that happened with Chitti in the first movie, so quick to order a mass production the moment Chitti was reactivated. That just seems stupid to me. And besides after all the harm that 2.0 version put the people in the stadium during the final fight and especially the fact that it was willing to kill Vaseegaran at moment’s notice not such a big deal to them that they choose to continue on this venture?

If the movie is going to be scientific about things, then where the hell did the stuff about the auras come from? Ok I am willing to suspend my disbelief that it could be a scientific phenomenon, but it can control cell-phones and oanly cell-phones? There are so many things which operate using the same principles that phones do including most of the electronics, why can’t it control that.

If it can control only that how did it get the organic bird suit. If it can create organic matter why not create an organic body. Or if you want that pus bird aesthetic why not go with full organic wings and make it that much cooler. Why look like a second rate Birdman in the first place?

The Aura uses the cell-phones to get a physical form, but how can it manifest itself like a poor man’s version of Doctor Manhattan. How can it possess Dr. Vaseegaran? Can it possess other people than the Doctor? If so that seems to be a much better way to kill people.

And take a moment to really think about this: an entity that comes from the aura of a person who has died, is able to control physical objects, take a corporeal form and possess people? That is a ghost if I have ever seen one. Essentially the villain is a bloody ghost. *throws hands in the air* How is this a science fiction film again, rather than a horror or a ghost film? I do not want supernatural stuff in my science fiction.

Why was NILA wearing the weird robotic-armour when they were searching for the signal, isn’t she supposed to blend in. If not, then why not wear it when she is at office? If it is for protection then where is Vaseegaran’s protective gear.

The worst part of all this and something that made me basically start shouting into the audience asking for someone to kill me is when 3.0 appeared. What is the world was Shankar smoking because I really want to get on that and experience the higher plane of existence that he was on when writing that part. 3.0 was the single most annoying thing this side of 2010. Is that really the best he could come up with to bring a resolution to the fight?

Keeping to the use of writing, there is no reason for NILA to exist at all. Dot. A personal assistant? Use the mobile trashcan thing. Hacking into the museum? Make Vaseegaran use his insane tech skills to do it and show his genius rather than do a pale imitation of Mission Impossible. Driving the truck? Have Chitti do it and when he is fighting the bird, get him to struggle that much more against it.

When Chitti almost dies, make Vaseegaran risk himself and fix the MPU making him deserve the award that much more. Chitti going bad? Make him survive barely and realise that he has to kill his creator to win and if he cannot do that he needs to find the part of him that can, making the change between good to evil his decision and adding that much more character depth.

And for all the statements that Rajini made that he won’t romance actresses younger than his daughter on screen anymore, he does just the same, the moment he wakes up as the reloaded version and also in the song during the credits.

NILA exists for no reason other than glamor shots, and that one scene where Chitti Reloaded molests her, which if she is sentient, is essentially sexual harassment and if not that makes 2.0 look that much sleazier. If you are going to say that was the point, then why the hell are people cheering him on?

For one scary moment I thought, after watching Vikram Vedha, and quite a few of Nayanthara’s recent movies that Tamil cinema has moved away from treating women as eye candy but thank you so much director Shankar, Rajinikanth and team for proving that that is not the case. In case you didn’t notice this entire paragraph is sarcasm.

The ending is almost as if they ran out of budget and decided to just get the shoot over with in a small hospital room and the worst part about all this is that Vaseegaran survives and there is no consequence. What arc did the characters go through in this movie? NOTHING-ARC that is what.

Beneath all the trash writing there are some dialogues that make you think that Shankar is going to make you think about loftier things, “Laptop-ku edhukku thanks?” and the moral ambiguity of the antagonist at the moment where he asks if a man’s life is worth more than a birds but it seems as though when the moment came to address the topic the writers had a brain aneurysm and Shankar was like, quick throw a CGI sequence on screen.

The amount of unnecessary stuff on screen is baffling considering the scenes that are especially good. The pacing issues are so bad, I wanted to go for a walk outside during the film. And really? Almost two to three minutes of credits before the beginning of the film? I haven’t even watched the film, let me appreciate the names more after I watch the non-existent spectacle.

In the end 2.0 is a shell of a movie that looks really good but lacks anything of substance that I can give only 3 out of 10; one point for the Cinematography, one point for the CGI and one for the action. The fact that this is one of India’s premier CGI films does not excuse a broken, empty and frankly boring script. I am sorry, the Bahubali duology did it better. Too bad I can’t get a refund for a movie I have finished watching.