Endiran - a preview

Attempting technology-based films is a dicey game in India. The filmmaker will have to overcome many barriers in order to even successfully communicate the story, leave alone entertain. Many such valiant attempts in the past have bitten the dust miserably. Vikram, Kamal Hasssan’s answer to James Bond was more than laughed at by the audience. Many others, trying to balance their eagerness to do a ‘Hollywood style’ thriller with the taste of local audience, diluted the presentation so much that it often resulted of garish, shoddy outputs.

With today’s audience, the nature of the trouble has changed. In urban pockets, they have seen all the Hollywood blockbusters so it is difficult to meet their high expectations and also they approach Indian products with certain level of cynicism.
In this respect, when a filmmaker sets out to make an Indian film about a robot, words whisper around about inspiration from Terminator, I Robot, etc. Endiran, arguably the first Indian film on robots, has to bear that weight. The presence of Rajinikanth is going to level the playing field to large extent as in his fans are going to be more forgiving of the technological compromises. And the good thing for him is most of Tamil speaking peoples can be safely considered as his fans, only with a varying degree of devotion and fanaticism.

The curious question is how is Shankar going to tell this story? Is the robot going to be created by the scientist Rajinikanth to fight society’s evils? Every Shankar’s movie boasts of an almost superhero who single-handedly and tirelessly destroys corruption, nepotism and bureaucracy. Has Shankar found the most powerful superhero in the form of Robot? Is Robot a cross between Iron Man and Terminator?

These are the problem a filmmaker will have to face. None of these questions would have been asked if Shankar has made a non-technological film. But a question which this blog purports to ask, and considers significant, is how is Shankar going to ‘explain’ the concept of robotics to our audience. With the exception of the urban viewers who grew up on liberal doses of Spielbergs and Camerons, the rest of the population may not even know what a robot is and is capable of. While this could be advantageous in presenting preposterous things, such an attempt may offend trained urban pockets.

So a robot that is simple enough for rural populace to understand and enjoy and ‘accurate’ enough for urban sensibilities to appreciate is the challenge Shankar should meet in Endiran. Add to that, another curious thing would be how the technology is going to be merged with Shankar’s pot-boiler formula seamlessly? For years, Rajini fans have come to expect politically charged scenes so there’s also a requirement to include such power-packed sequences to whet the appetite of hardcore Rajini fans. That’s part of the problem for the director who had to sign up with Rajini because presenting a cohesive script whilst meeting all these requirements was never an easy bargain. Added to that the hype for Rajini films kept getting bigger for every release. Sivaji effectively ticked all these boxes and once again proved Shakar’s dexterous mastery over the mass-entertainment segment. The hype went a few notches higher when Endiran was announced. Is Shankar’s robot a cross between Iron Man and Terminator fortified with the moral angst of the old man in Indian and the ferocity of Anniyan? September 24th will be as much a test for Shankar's inventivenss as it is for the Tamil audience’s readiness.