Endhiran - A sci-fi enthusiast's take on all things Robo

I finally saw it. I FINALLY SAW IT ! Endhiran, Shankar's 167 crore magnum opus will go down in Indian film history as one of the defining movies of this era a-la a thiruvilayadal, a thillana mohanambal or an ayirathil oruvan (the old one…not that self obsessed 3 hour gorefest that came out last year).

As Endhiran's box office figures continue to inch towards the big dipper, Kamal hassan is probably banging his head repeatedly against a wall and Shah rukh is drowning himself in a bottomless trough of dal makhani. But well ... I'm guessing no producer would've agreed to sink 150 crore into a project unless it starred the 61 year old demigod superstar.

All through Endhiran I couldn't help but feel a strange sense of foreboding. Its the same feeling I get when I read Bicentennial Man or I-Robot(AND NO! I'm not talking about that crap-fest of a movie starring Will Smith... the only thing the movie shares with the book is the title... AMEN).

According to me, what we saw in Endhiran is exactly what the future holds for ? Well, by saying this i dont mean that a scientist with a strange hairdo will create an android in the comfort of his oddly shaped lab with the help of a failed singer and an irritating sidekick. But, like all sci-fi buffs I believe we're closer to creating a Chitti than you might think.

One reason why many of my sci -fi friends dismissed Chitti as being a work of fiction was his memory rating... a whopping 1 Zettabyte. I, on the other hand am a little more optimistic about this... consider the fact that the RAM on my laptop now was unheard of a few years ago.

Also; while a 1 terahertz processor isn't something you'd be able to buy off a shelf at BestBuy tomorrow, they exist and work pretty well.

Isaac Asimov mentions in his later writings that he had to coin the term 'positronic brain' to explain the incredible levels of artificial intelligence in his robot characters. He was apparently writing I-Robot at the time when the positron was being discovered and it was becoming a popular buzz-word in science circles. Shankar and Sujatha explain Chitti's intelligence as being based on a hard coded Neural Schema (something that Chitti himself is unable to reveal to anyone). It'd be interesting to know if Chennai's frontbenchers got all this, but still.. I guess they had rajni and aish for company and weren't complaining.

As a race, we've have been obsessed with the emotions of non-humans since the time we learned to create (statues, cave drawings…you get the general idea). This concept, when delineated in film hasn’t always been convincing. Spielberg did it well in his 2001 release, A.I. while Roberto Benigni as Pinocchio was painful (one a side note: I still wonder how A.I. would’ve turned out had Kubrick actually gone ahead and made it in his lifetime…but no… he abandoned his plans to make a movie about an ultra-advanced robot and made a movie that gave us some nude footage of Nicole Kidman instead.Thank you Stanley Kubrick..RIP).

In Endhiran, Chitti is upgraded with some software that simulates hormones and is given several seminars on emotions and sexuality by his creator. Once this is done, he promptly goes about hitting on his creator’s fiancée; eventually becoming so drunk with love that he reveals his neural schema to his creator’s arch nemesis. The 'software induced hormones' explanation was a nice touch and i don't believe I've read that explanation for a robot's behavior anywhere (ten points for originality, Shankar!).

Chitti, while courting Aishwarya Rai in the first half, explains how they cant essentially ‘get busy’. When he is eventually upgraded to a leather clad killing machine with a grey tuft of hair, he is able to create an electronic embryo from within and is ready to impregnate the object of his affections. Well, then I guess for some strange reason Bohra’s red chip had a few tons of porn along with all that DESTRUCTION PROGRAMMING :|.

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Shankar usually ends his movies with one final revelation (remember that ‘Tell me your dreams’ ending he gave us in 2005?)… Nevertheless, SPOILER ALERT (KINDA): Endhiran cuts to 2050 with Chitti’s parts lying inside an acrylic case in a museum and that girl from the old gokul santol ad who never seems to grow up is on a museum tour with her class.But he kills the whole scene when Chitti's disembodied head actually speaks out. I dont know if i'm missing the point of this scene... but it seemed kinda lame to actually make him talk.

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On the whole Kudos to Shankar and Kalanidh "SunTV" Maran for making this movie worth the wait. Rajini's next release will most probably be the much-delayed Sultan-the Warrior. So cya there ! :D

(Thanks for reading! Comment away!)