Warning:
Please watch the movie and then go through the suggestions. Myself saw the movie more than 3 times. The following may not interest you unless you watch the movie.
The Title
The Name “Enthiran”, “Robot” in other languages, wasput probably because in Tamil Nadu there will be some amount of tax reduction if the name is in Tamil. So, in other places the name is “The Robot”. In Malayalam the name could be read as “Yanthiran” , derived from Yanthram meaning machine or mechanism. Some times the advertisements spelt it in the Tamil way of pronouncing which doesn’t give a clue to the meaning. Thanks to the popular format of sub-Titling in English we know what the intention was.
Primary flaws in the film
The film lacked novelty to the English film viewers who have already gone through the nuances of the concept of Humanoid robot. A weak script illustrates only weak characters .
1) The scene 1 : A feeling of a lab depicted cannot be related to anywhere in India. A robot brings flowers from Heroine and reads the handwriting in the gift. Impossible. OK . They started off with the impossibilities so that viewers do not become too sceptical and start asking questions of logic in the film beyond imagination. But then the Robots in the lab understand the local language in which the lab assistants speak. Good voice recognition abilities!
2) The scientist says that he has worked on the project for ten years ( that is said later) why would he keep skype account active while doing serious research in the computer. He doesn’t mind the heroine who tries to contact him via skype . So what was the purpose of skype there?
Suggestion: Show inbox full of her messages.
3) The Heroine with a name “ Sana” cannot be associated easily. May be it was put to get it in lyrics of the songs they had imagined.
4) Shankar doesn’t notice that the spelling of “Neural Scheme” on the monitor is wrong . It is wrongly spelt as “Nueral Scheme”.
5) Not too funny scene by Santhanam plays spoilsport. No proper explanation is given for the irresponsible behaviour of the lab assistants.
6) Why does the robot say in the first song that its language is Tamil? Parochialism!?
7) Rajni is ridiculed by the scientist who goes to Rajnikanth’s trademark antic with cooling glass/ sunglass.
8) The Robot learns even Bharthanatyam then why doesn’t he know who chellaatha is?!
9) Most of the TV viewers have seen “The small wonder” serial , that was telecast in star plus, where a robot does the households, acts human, and it goes to extreme that it can eat and go to toilet. TV viewers know that the robot understand things as it is and when said “give me a hand” it removes the hand. So there is nothing new when the scientist’s mother asks the Robot to “put the TV” it puts the TV down on floor.
10) The Scientist should have known this and should have prevented it. That the scientist did not understand the level of comprehension of the robot is depicted again and again in various scenes.
The robot fails to understand the “No parking” sign board a serious flaw in the making. The other mistakes could somehow be forgiven. The scientist takes the robot to heavy traffic to test the driving skills of the robot. The Scientist’s character fails in all aspects.
The Robot flips through some magazines while others are scanned! Difference?!
11) Why does the scientist count the number of kisses as two power nine. Zero logic!
12) I would have preferred Vivek (Comedian in Tamil movies) as Robot rather than Rajnikanth playing double role. The robot actually looks like Vivek .
13) The first villain Denzongpa is an official and senior to the hero. There is no explanation whatsoever why he could not get his robot to understand and execute a simple command as “Walk” . How does he manage to get contract with terrorists. How then did he become an official in AIRD, what is the expansion of AIRD?! . How does he program the red chip and get it to work on the robot.
14) ! The robot increases the loudness of the speakers it limit and breaks the system. Why would he do that when he knows that high volume sound could affect heart patients, even if it was for seconds.
15) ! Trans-receiver? Its transceiver or transmitter plus receiver there is nothing . Its supposed to be a high tech movie.
16) -The Robot jumps up defying gravity from under the water. No explanation. The director takes care to explicitly show the magnetic stuff later in a fire escape scene.
17) ! After much metal beating them the rowdy guys aren’t tired!
18) – Why wouldn’t the robot get the power from the electric supply to fans inside the train or from the overhead cables?
19) – Zeno’s paradox; why don’t they mention the name. Its supposed to be a high-tech film.
20) ! Why would the girl in bath tub full of water worry about catching fire. Why would she call for help?!
21) Suggestion: The scene where the robot gets hit by thunder should have been done on more plain field and the distance between the scientist and robot should have been farther.
22) + The scene with Graphical mosquitoes was excellent. With good humour.
23) Instead of graphical flowers forming inside, they could’ve begun with 0s and 1s making flower shapes. (Even Wall-E had a lover)
24) Irumbile oru idhayam, the best song in the film. The best that A.R Rahman does that is with beats and Western style.
25) Excellent scenary for the song Kilimanjaro. But Shankar does not consider showing Machu Pichhu rather he would show the dance and people. What a waste. The song is slow , probably to help Rajnikanth so that he can show some movements. The song is best heard at 1.5 x original speed.
26) !? Scientist doesn’t know e-waste management, also he doesn’t know how to properly dismantle the Robot and dispose it. He does not remove the program from the Robot, any reverse engineering could reveal the neural scheme which the scientist bravely defended.
27) ? If the robots had IP then the Scientist could’ve hacked it down after finding the server (Any resemblance to Terminator had to be avoided, may be that is why they didn’t build on that concept.)
28) ! Why should the Scientist himself go inside the Robot’s palace he must have had back up robots to run.
29) Suggestions: The robot should believe itself to be god for making so many clones under him. The emotions that it feels itself lesser than the humans was not properly illustrated.
30) Why didn’t the Robot have back up non-conventional energy sources of wind and solar energy.
31) To check whether the group was full robots The Robot just had to check the database and verify all the bots.
32) The weakness of the robot , the concept of flashing lights was not mentioned with the AIRD or the military. The director seems lost in the Graphics.
33) Brilliant graphics display. In sense overwhelming.
34) But how many people understand what a computer worm is?
Some more suggestions: The first villain Denzongpa looks like Pervez Mushsharaff . the Character could have been more strong terrorist who searches for bright scientists and robots that can be used for mass destruction and chaos. So he gets into the AIRD with that motive while he is not actually a Robotics engineer. So why he could not make good robots could be explained. The Scientist’s assistants call on the AIRD chief for change of job. No convincing objective is given. It could be like this. One of the chaps who plays the role of the Hero’s assistant could be a brilliant programmer that he gets lured by the money offered or gets brainwashed by the Terrorist or gets threatened . So he re-engineers the dismantled robot for the terrorist and gets himself killed by the terrorist so that the secret remains secret. The Robot getting the new program knows how to regenerate his own type. It goes own to regenerate itself. It has god given emotions due to the thunder strike. It knows through its black box, which records data in the surroundings even when inoperational, has records of the programmer getting killed. The basic AI algorithm is monkey algorithm were the robot learns by imitation first and then improves the action in speed and accuracy. So the Robot kills the terrorist. The Robot becomes terrorist having seen killing, having the new program, having the learning program.
The Hero reverse engineers the code gets control. The Climax will be same. He runs through a series of patches to destroy the bad program. The Robot is dismantled into demagnetising environment so that it cannot rise up again. The Robot won’t tell the visiting school kid of 2030 that it started thinking. But it would be written on the board of description.
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