🏏T20 Asia Cup 2025: Match 19 - Final: India vs Pakistan @Dubai🏏
Bigg Boss 19: Daily Discussion Thread- 29th Sept 2025.
BOOTH ROAMING 28.9
PAAV PHISLAA 29.9
Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai - 29 Sep 2025 EDT
🎶🎵Tribute to Lata Mangeshkar on Her 96th Birth Anniversary🎵🎶
Geetanjali to die?
India Won Asia Cup 2025- Trophy Missing! Glory Without the Trophy?
And Janhvi gives another flop!!
Maan and Geet- Love Wins Against All Odds..
Aishwarya Rai at the Paris fashion week
101 ways to patau your pati
Bhagwan Ke Charnon Mein Swarg
Trump's 100% tariff on Bollywood films
✦ Font-astic Voyage Contest Voting Round 1 | Invites ONLY ✦
Originally posted by: ZanduBaaM
All language first day will be 85Cr+😆
Originally posted by: BiraSaysWhaddup
Should have stuck to the video games 😆Robot and I were horrible. 2.0 is along the same lines, it seems
Originally posted by: priya185
How is the film?
November 29, 2018 15:15:28 IST
Cast: Rajinikanth,Akshay Kumar,Amy Jackson,Adil Hussain,Kalabhavan Shajohn,Sudhanshu Pandey,Kaizad Kotwal
Director: Shankar
Note: This is a review of the Hindi dubbed version of the Tamil film 2.0
There was a time when the cheep-cheep of sparrows and other birds would wake us up every morning even in the urban concrete jungles of India. Over time, as humans have persisted in playing havoc with the environment, those soothing sounds have gradually died out of our lives. This travesty of natural justice is, justifiably, a cause of frustration and rage among environmentalists and even laypersons with basic common sense and self-preservation instincts. Now imagine a film writer who understands the logic behind their anger, yet takes the bizarre decision to turn one such green activist into a murderous supervillain determined to destroy humankind for its callous carelessness.
Writer-director Shankar does precisely that in his new film 2.0, sequel to the 2010 blockbuster Enthiran(Robot) which starred Kollywood giant Rajinikanth as the well-meaning and brilliant Dr Vasigaran who built the robot Chitti (Rajini again) for the benefit of humankind. Aishwarya Rai Bachchan played his girlfriend Sana, and Danny Denzongpa was cast as Dr Bohra, who saw technology merely as a means to fulfill his dreams of great wealth. Despite the abundance of Tamil commercial cinema clichs, Enthiranhad a fun comicbook quality, a substantial story and absolute clarity about its politics: it was a film on the transmutability of good and evil, and the risks posed by technology in the hands of immoral individuals.
Rajinikanth and Akshay Kumar in a still of 2.0
2.0 is mixed up to the point of being downright stupid. As an unexplained force in the film snatches cellphones away from millions of residents of Chennai, the government turns to the scientist community for help. Allow me to revive Chitti, says Dr Vasigaran. But the home minister reminds him of the court ruling to dismantle the robot after it had caused death and untold destruction once Dr Bohra tampered with it for his own selfish ends.
When people start dying at the hands of a mysterious being though, there is no choice but to get Chitti back. So far, what we have is a reminder that it is not technology we must fear but humans who misuse it. Point taken.
The ridiculousness of 2.0's politics surfaces only in the second half. A line uttered early on by Dr Vasigaran, "When people cannot understand something they either dismiss it as a terrorist attack or the work of God," has potential but goes nowhere. Instead, the film becomes not about machines going out of control (which was a focal theme of Enthiran) but about the need to keep righteous human anger in check.
Bollywood star Akshay Kumar - making his Kollywood debut here - plays the respected ornithologist, Dr Pakshirajan, who gets tired of trying to convince the government, corporates and ordinary citizens to save our birds by cutting down on cellphone use. (Spoiler alert) Following a series of events, he metamorphoses into a gorgeously ugly, giant supervillain whose aura combines with the aura of scores of dead birds and takes on a physical form constructed by using stolen cellphones as his building blocks.(Spoiler alert ends)
By this stage, Shankar comes across as being increasingly confused about what he wants to say through this film. Sadly, his confusion at the scripting stage plays into the hands of political establishments that, in the real world, are indeed demonising activists, including environmentalists. This is inexcusable.
Though he struggles with his storyline, Shankar does show imagination in the conceptualisation of 2.0's visual effects and action sequences. Clearly, no expense has been spared in creating them. That said, the glitz and grandeur become boring after a while in the pre-interval portion as the story takes forever to take off and the SFX are beset by repetitiveness, as though a teenaged boy is trying to impress his school buddies with his brilliance. Cellphones being snatched out of the hands of crowds, a magnificent river of glittering cellphones flooding the ground - the sight is awe-inspiring the first time, even the second time, but when the same trick is used again and again, and then again... Oh c'mon, why didn't someone snatch the toy out of the boy's hands?
The special effects and stunts pick up only in the final confrontation between Chitti and Dr Pakshirajan, but it is too late by then. Besides, there is no single person in the storyline in whom one can be emotionally invested. Dr Vasigaran operates in the background throughout, Chitti takes centre stage but has more swagger than soul, and it is impossible to dislike Dr Pakshirajan because his cause is actually one worth defending.
Besides Rajinikanth's performance is a mixed bag. Even the spotlight on Chitti is driven more by SFX than acting, and the manner in which the star is tapped is decidedly unsatisfying. 2.0 gives him neither the unrelenting bombast of the standard big-bucks Rajini-starrer, nor the understatement he is capable of as we saw so recently in Pa. Ranjith's well-conceived, thought-provoking Kaala.
There are only two worthwhile, albeit small, roles among the supporting cast. Adil Hussain lends some dignity to the Minister he plays, and Kalabhavan Shajohn provides brief comic respite from the otherwise slow-moving proceedings as the corrupt, cold-hearted Minister Vairamoorthy.
2.0 is a prime example of the dispensability of women in Indian commercial film sequels. Sana is reduced to a voice on the phone here, Shankar does not even use Rai Bachchan's voice for her, and the woman is still nagging her boyfriend every single time she calls him while he goes about the important business of saving the world. Since leading women in Rajinikanth films these days are anyway rarely anything but glamorous distractions, she has been replaced here by the lesser known Amy Jackson who plays a dull, impossibly curvy, Barbie-like robot assistant to Dr Vasigaran called Nila. As if she is not clichd enough, she the sole woman of any significance here represents emotion and heart in the plot, while the men represent reason and scientific thought.
Though it is nice to see that a Bollywood hit machine like Akshay Kumar wants to expand his horizons and work in another Indian film industry, it is hard to understand why he chose this lukewarm role in a tepid film that gives him such limited screen time - we get to see him properly only after the interval. Kumar tackles Dr Pakshirajan with conviction, but in the end, the tons of heavy prosthetic make-up and costumes (if they can be called that) overshadow his personality, star persona and acting.
There is only one department in which Shankar's thoughts seem to be crystal clear: the bow to Rajinikanth's primacy in the constellation of male Indian commercial movie stars. As if as an inside joke, a song playing in the background during the closing battle between Chitti and Pakshirajan uses the words "anaadi khiladi" which, while it literally translates into "foolish player" with reference to the bad guy, is also a reminder of the buzzword long associated with Akshay Kumar's stardom since it has appeared in so many of his film titles. It recurs in the closing song which contains this line: "Anaadi, khiladi, narak mein teri jagah hai khaali (Hey you fool, you player, there is a place waiting for you in hell)." Umm, is this just a coincidence, or was the lyric writer being intentionally subversive?
Be that as it may, after this song comes an epilogue featuring Dr Vasigaran and Chhota Chitti a.k.a. 3.0, which amounts to an announcement of yet another sequel. Considering how steel cold and yawn-worthy 2.0 is despite its top-notch special effects, the thought of more Chittis is hardly worth celebrating.
Director: S Shankar
Cast: Amy Jackson, Rajinikanth, Akshay Kumar
Composer: A R Rahman /Qutub-E-Kripa
Rajinikanth walks into a room. That is probably the line in the script. More accurately, it would have said Dr Vaseegaran walks into a room. Shankar betrays no intention to change this idea from Enthiran,of giving the Superstar his most passive introduction in the last thirty to thirty-five years. In Enthiran,we see him meddling with an android, the camera gradually panning away from him.
It is Akshay Kumar as Pakshirajan (he is from Thirukazhukundram, Pakshithirtham) who gets a big reveal, accompanied by a stylish walk and menacing look. In a non-Rajini universe, Pakshirajan would have been Shankar's hero. He is the one who gets the Shankar staple a flashback to evoke sympathy. He is the one assuming an identity to terrorize common people for their misdeeds. But this is a Shankar film in a universe where Rajinikanth exists as a colossus.
Shankar is unlike Rajini film directors (post the Superstar status) that came before him, those who serviced only the star, his aura and his legend. They rode on that for the better part of two to three hours. Shankar, for all his visual spectacle and grand themes, is primarily a myth maker. In 2.0, we see that myth maker but not as much as we would have liked. Pakshirajan is served by the myth of eagles that stopped coming to Thirukazhukundram in Kali Yuga, himself taking on the eagle form.
There is also a singular visual character to Shankar's myths. In 2.0 (written by Shankar and dialogues by B Jeyamohan), he gives us a story about a baby that was still-born. He shows the baby in the hospital, in its crib right next to the mother. Look at how Shankar imagines a still-born baby. First, for a new born, the size of the baby is misleading. It's huge, almost imposing on the big screen. And it looks like the baby is made of clay, the joints a little too fine, the fat a little too pronounced, and even the shrivelled male member is detailed carefully.
This mirroring is all Shankar. Shankar also has a thing for exaggerated deaths and murders. Right from Gentleman to Indian, the kind of murder being central to the theme of Anniyan up till the hideousness of revenge in I. In 2.0, people die when mobile phones enter the body and explode into pieces. A mobile phone, having done its work inside as if it was Kuato from Total Recall, bursts out of a man's intestines. These are not shown of course, but Shankar puts them in your mind.
Unfortunately, in 2.0, these staples don't form a whole. In place of nano swarms, we have mobile phone swarms. Smart phones as autonomous swarms is admittedly a neat idea (smart phones are now...smart?), what if we become subservient to something that was our toy, something we fiddle with every waking hour and manipulated to our own fancy? There is even an allusion to selfie-related deaths. There is a mention of how Pakshirajan's theory of cell phone tower radiation being harmful has no science backing, but the film spits out a lot of gibberish from Vaseegaran in order for us to take it seriously. After all, the whole premise of the film rests on it. At one point, Vaseegaran mentions that Pakshirajan's existence can be explained by spirituality mixed with science. One wonders if Shankar wrote that or Rajini himself.
The film has an enjoyable Crichtonian quality but without a lot of the writer's significant, at least part meaningful detail. What we are left with is our friendly neighbourhood superhero, Chitti. In Chitti's first scene in the film, there is an attack on the city, a building under construction and a suspiciously huge net. Chitti does something we've seen Spiderman do a million times.
As the film progresses, the set pieces get better. There is a familiar Hollywood summer movie disregard for civilian population in the destruction all around and the special effects hold up to a degree. Despite that, it is somewhat a satisfying feeling to see the setting be TTK Road and not Times Square. But it is so fleeting, the other places we see are so generic that we have no connect. Shankar recalls the quality that made Enthirans last half hour a crazy roller coaster ride. But with mixed results. A R Rahman and Qutub-E-Kripa deliver a thumping score to complement Chitti's walk, one-liners and punches, both literal and metaphorical. Rajaali' is a particular crowd-pleaser.
2.0 is the film where A R Rahman has had the most fun in a long time. Yet, Shankar is unable to dismantle the building blocks of Enthiran and create something fresh. Chitti running for power supply is a tired trope by now. Does he have a dash charger? There is also the re-use of magnets and scrap metals to fight mobile phone swarm. The most arresting quality of Enthiran, a significant film in the Rajinikanth oeuvre, is about Rajinikanth as the creator and the destroyer. The film literally tells the story of a hero and a villain, both of Rajini's making. And it parallels the aura of Rajinikanth the Superstar, an image he himself has created and something he alone can destroy, if he so wishes. There was heart in Enthiran. In 2.0, there is only silicon.
Director: Shankar
Cast: Amy Jackson, Rajinikanth, Akshay Kumar
Composer: A R Rahman /Qutub-E-Kripa
In Shankar's 2.0, right after the scientist Vaseegaran is introduced without much fanfare, cellphones start flying.
Literally.
A guy is on the phone, and he watches his phone fly away. Another guy is on the phone at a different location, and watches his phone fly away. Yet another is on the phone at yet another location, and his phone flies away too. A woman is on the phone, and her phone flies away. Phones fly from funerals, from trains, from cell phone stores. They fly solo, then they team up and fly away in the sky, in giant spiral tornado bands. They just fly.
Yes, you want to get up and scream, we get it. We get that phones are bloody flying.
And then of course, because it is a Shankar movie, people now gather to talk about phones flying.
TV reporters breathlessly tell us that phones are flying. Well, duh, we know. Then, there are conferences where people meet to talk about phones flying. And people rush to the office of the Chennai Police Commissioner, asking the cops to help them recover their cellphones that have flown away. While all this is happening, the phones, they just keep flying out of people's hands.
And yet, as yet another phone floats away, a part of you is intrigued. Shankar has set up his hook. Why are phones flying away?
It is a Shankar motif, this repetition. Unsubtle, but brilliantly successful, the director has built a career making gaudy big-budget masalas that pit a common man against a system. The repetition helps him reinforce the odds against his heroes, one man, defeated once. Then defeated again. And again. And again. Like how phones fly over and over. Then the man who was defeated rises up in anger, and the crowd rises with him.
*****
And now, the flying phones come down to the Earth as a group, and up the ante significantly, adding murder to their list of crimes. Proper murder. Done using flying phones, that now seem to have learned how to crawl along the floor as well. In 3D, the phones come at you before missing you and going on to hit the target.
File this away for the future, dear reader: If you are ever confronted by a murderous phone, keep your mouth tightly shut. You'll thank me for it.
Meanwhile, the phones are waging war on the military and winning.
Equally meanwhile, Vaseegaran is telling a giant conference room filled with two talking persons and innumerable nodding persons that the only way to win over the cellphones is to switch them all to Aircel service bring his truant robot, Chitti, back to life. He is accompanied by his robotic assistant Nila, who is played by another robot named Amy Jackson.
And now, the movie begins. We want to know who Chitti is going to fight?
And now, the movie ends. Because Shankar does not seem to know who Chitti is going to fight.
A hateful monster? A bird? A bird made out of cellphones? Perhaps a man who is married to Twinkle Khanna?
Rumour has it that he is still trying to figure that one out.
*****
In his book Thiraikathai Ezhuthuvathu Eppadi' [How to Write a Screenplay], the late writer Sujatha, a frequent collaborator with Shankar, cites Shankar's screenplays as an exemplar of effective screenwriting in Tamil. Shankar's previous efforts, Gentleman, Mudhalvan and Indian were brilliantly written, weaving in convincing plots with sleaze and mass appeal that made their audience root for the hero. But after I, Shankar's writing has deteriorated, coinciding perhaps with the death of his frequent collaborator, Sujatha.
For 2.0, Shankar has collaborated with the acclaimed Tamil writer Jeyamohan, whose record as a writer for films is not so stellar. Sarkar and Kadal.
Because, 2.0 has neither a lovable protagonist, nor an antagonist worth hating. All it offers are gibberish pseudoscience about auras and radiation and frequencies. Also, flying phones.
*****
For a movie that is about science even fictionalised the sheer incompetence in even basic scientific facts is mind boggling. The Cellular Operators Association of India objected to 2.0s depiction of cellphones (and towers) in the movie, and for once, it is hard to argue against their objections. Shankar uses pseudoscience and made up facts to accuse cell phones of causing harm to humans and people, and it is hard to dismiss these as writer's liberty when the hero makes an earnest appeal at the end that validates these claims.
No, carriers don't increase the "frequency of their towers.
In this movie, someone is mad because cellphones kill...birds. Glass windows, which are also known to kill birds, keep shattering in the movie. Win win.
*****
I think phones have stopped flying by now, because nobody has one. I have one, though and I am clutching it tightly.
*****
AR Rahman, whose most popular track for this movie (Endhira Logathu Sundariye') is used in the end credits, outsources his background score to his music students, Qutub-E-Kripa. One wants to complain about the background score, but when you realise that Shankar's preferred alternative is Harris Jayaraj...
Qutub-E-Kripa and AR Rahman, they are fine. They do a great job.
*****
Shankar repeats a few favourite themes of his, Thirukalukundram and birds; lonely landscapes where people get murdered in exotic fashion. And the Anniyan trope of the same person morphing into two different characters instantaneously.
*****
By now the cellphones have figured out how to arrange themselves in formations, as has Chitti. Nila is also fighting and resuscitating Chitti, while wearing tight-fitting robot clothes that look suspiciously like the clothes humans wear when cycling. There are stunts where the formations fight each other, guns blazing away. The stunts made me want to watch phones flying away.
Also, if Chitti carried a battery pack, the movie would be so much shorter.
*****
And then, Endhira Logathu Sundariye came on. I tell myself that Rajinikanth's next movie is Petta.
The visual effects are well-executed, which is about par for a movie with a budget as high as this one; but poorly conceived, which is about par for this movie. Each stunt seemed to end the same way, one robot entering the other and exploding. The camerawork and the visuals, the sound recording and special effects, they all cannot mask the fact that 2.0 is mostly a badly-written big budget bore.
The trailer of Akshay Kumar and Rajinikanth's much-awaited project 2.0 broke records on YouTube. It garnered a combined 25 million views on digital platforms within 24 hours of its release. Now, similar trends are expected from the movie when it releases in theaters on November 29. Trade experts have predicted a humongous opening for the Shankar directorial which has been in the making for last three years.
Trade analyst Girish Johar has said 2.0 will have a mammoth opening at the ticket counters. "The trailer of 2.0 has increased the expectations of the audience who have been waiting for the film's release for a very long time. With a fantastic director like Shankar, I don't think the movie will falter even after the first day. Movie buffs in the South will go berserk as superstar Rajinikanth plays the lead role in the movie, Johar told indianexpress.com.
Also, Akshay Kumar's presence in the film will pull people to theaters in the Hindi belt as well. Johar suggested, "A strong villain always pulls audience as they get involved in the film and start connecting to the hero because of the villain. So, Akshay's villainous avatar in 2.0 is definitely something which cinephiles are looking forward to. Also, his popularity in the Hindi speaking belt will help the sci-fi film mint money at the box office. It has the potential of becoming Akshay's non-holiday highest opener."
Giving an estimated figure of day one box office collection, Johar added, "The Hindi version of the film is expected to earn something between Rs 20-25 crore on the day of its release. If we consider all languages (Tamil and Telugu), the Rajinikanth starrer will touch Rs 100 crore (gross) mark on day one.
Sharing details about 2.0's opening in India, trade analyst Ramesh Bala wrote on Twitter, "#2Point0 Hindi Occupancy improves after Morning shows.. Excellent WOM in Hindi Belt..Tamil and Telugu opened to Massive Occupancy rate all over South!
2.0 is India's most expensive film to date and the second-costliest film in Asia. It is also India's first film to be shot directly with 3D cameras.
Made by Lyca Productions at the cost of more than Rs 550 crore, 2.0 will hit screens on November 29.
Param Sundari review and box office https://x.com/umairsandu/status/1960372607494115457?s=46 t=gmo_g396jwmtO4eUOAuljw
So long valley review Tridha Choudhury and Akanksha Puri...
Detective Sherdil review thread (Diljit Dosanjh) https://x.com/zee5india/status/1935767034262176252?s=46 t=gmo_g396jwmtO4eUOAuljw
Panchayat season 4 review thread discuss...
The royals review thread...
Hindi TV Shows
Bindi
Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi 2
Jodha Akbar
322