2.0 is a 2018 Indian Tamil-language science fantasy action film directed by Shankar who co-wrote the film with B. Jeyamohan and Madhan Karky. Produced by Subaskaran under the banner of Lyca Productions. As the second instalment in the Enthiran film series, 2.0 is a sequel to Enthiran (2010), featuring Rajinikanth in a triple role as Vaseegaran, Chitti the Robot and Kutti, alongside Akshay Kumar as Pakshi Rajan (in his Tamil debut) and Amy Jackson. Sudhanshu Pandey, Adil Hussain, Kalabhavan Shajohn, and K. Ganesh appear in supporting roles. The soundtrack is composed by A. R. Rahman, with lyrics written by Madhan Karky and Na. Muthukumar. The film follows the conflict between Chitti, the once dismantled humanoid robot, and Pakshi Rajan, a vengeful avian human, who seeks vengeance upon cell phone users to prevent the death of birds due to cellphone radiation.
Production began in 2015, with principal photography conducted at AVM Studios later that year. The first schedule was filmed at EVP World. Scenes were primarily shot in India, particularly in Chennai's Madras Boat Club and Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium. Filming was completed by August 2017. The film is the first in Indian cinema to be natively shot in 3D, which was done by cinematographer Nirav Shah. Legacy Effects made their return to construct prosthetic makeup and animatronics, with visual effects supervised by V. Srinivas Mohan. Editing was handled by Anthony and production design was conducted by T. Muthuraj.
2.0 was released worldwide in both 3D and conventional format on 30 November 2018, along with its Hindi and Telugu dubbed versions. The film received mixed reviews, with praise towards the direction, performances of Rajinikanth and Akshay Kumar, visual effects, action sequences, soundtrack and social message, although the screenplay received criticism. The film later faced scientific criticism too, with the Audubon society censuring this film for propagating this misinformation regarding the impact of mobile phone towers on birds, in an article debunking this misinformation. Indian scientists and wildlife experts, too, called out the conspiracy theory, which forms the core idea of the film. 2.0 became the highest-grossing Indian film of 2018 and highest-grossing Tamil film of all time. It also ranks among highest-grossing Indian films. 2.0 is the first Tamil film and the second Indian film, after Baahubali 2: The Conclusion, to gross over on the opening day. 2.0 grossed over US$100 million worldwide, becoming the first Tamil film to achieve this feat.
2.0 was nominated for the Golden Reel Award in the Feature Film – Foreign sound editing category by the Motion Picture Sound Editors (MPSE) at their 66th annual ceremony.
Plot Eight years after the tumultuous events of the first film, Dr. K. Vaseegaran introduces Nila, a sophisticated domestic humanoid android, to college students. He recalls Chitti, his previous creation, which he was legally forced to decommission after it went on a murderous rampage. Soon afterwards, mobile phones fly from people's hands and shops across Chennai, causing widespread panic. An emergency council of political leaders and scientists convenes, and Vaseegaran advocates reactivating Chitti to combat the threat. Council member Dhinendra Bohra opposes him because Chitti killed his father, Professor Bohra.
The phones merge into a gigantic swarm that murders prominent telecom executives and corrupt officials, prompting the state's Home Minister to authorise Chitti's reactivation. The upgraded Chitti battles the swarm, which takes the form of a giant bird, but retreats to a space research station when his battery runs low. The swarm is repelled by the high-frequency positive ions emitted by the station's antennas.
Vaseegaran and Chitti discover that the phones are bound by negatively charged aura energy with volatile electromagnetic properties. Using a high-powered photon synthesizer to produce positive ions, Chitti neutralises the swarm, causing it to collapse. The remaining phones assume the form of Pakshi Rajan, a deceased ornithologist. Chitti learns that Pakshi was a passionate avian conservationist who ran a bird sanctuary and opposed the proliferation of cellular networks. He had demonstrated that electromagnetic radiation from cell towers was killing birds, but telecom corporations and corrupt politicians suppressed his research. Despairing over the deaths, Pakshi hanged himself from a cellular tower. His spirit subsequently merged with the collective life force of the dead birds, becoming an entity able to manipulate mobile phones telekinetically.
Pakshi rejects Chitti's appeals for peace and seeks to eradicate humanity. Chitti contains his negative aura within an electromagnetic circuit, after which the government commissions Vaseegaran to mass-produce defensive androids. However, Dhinendra releases Pakshi, who possesses Vaseegaran and resumes his attack. Chitti refuses to kill his creator and is dismantled by Pakshi. Following Vaseegaran's encrypted instructions, Nila recovers Chitti and the "red chip" responsible for his original rampage. She reprogrammes it to target only Pakshi, creating Chitti "2.0", his ruthless combat form.
Pakshi traps thousands of people in a stadium and kills Dhinendra with concentrated radiation from cell towers. Chitti and his robot army fight him but are overwhelmed. Before Pakshi can kill the hostages, Chitti deploys Kutti "3.0", a legion of micro-sized cellular androids that attach themselves to Pakshi's phone-based structures and self-destruct, allowing the hostages to escape.
Chitti and the remaining robots lure Pakshi's aura to the space station, where positive ions from the antennas destroy him. Vaseegaran recovers in hospital and urges stricter regulation of cellular radiation. Chitti, Nila and the other robots are reinstated as guardians of public safety and enter government service. In a post-credits scene, Vaseegaran's smartphone transforms into a sentient Kutti microbot and jokingly declares itself his grandson.
Cast
Production Development
The commercial success of Enthiran (2010) prompted the makers of the film to immediately consider making a sequel. By March 2011, the original film's cinematographer, Rathnavelu, revealed that initial pre-production work on a sequel had begun with the same technical team. S. Shankar, the director of Enthiran, moved on to work on Nanban (2012) and I (2015) and planned to reunite with the same producers as the original was released, with Shankar revealing that he was unsure if the film "will happen at all" during an interview in 2014. While finishing the production of I, Shankar drafted the scripts of three more feature films, including a sequel to Enthiran.
Pre-production work for the film had reportedly started in June 2015 with Lyca Productions deciding to finance the project. Along with Shankar and Rajinikanth, composer A. R. Rahman and editor Anthony remained on the development team for the sequel, while Jeyamohan was added to write the screenplay. Shankar also began briefing the film's art director T. Muthuraj and visual effects supervisor V. Srinivas Mohan about their involvement in the film. Shankar had initially inquired about K. V. Anand's availability. This was before Nirav Shah joined the technical team as a cinematographer in mid-2015 and visited specialist studios in the United States to research filming methods for 3D shoots.
Jeyamohan finished work on the script of the film in September 2015 and revealed that the story would be a direct continuation of the 2010 film, with filming only set to start following the completion of Rajinikanth's commitments in Kabali (2016). The original film's screenplay writer, Madhan Karky, helped Jeyamohan on some of the more technical dialogue in the script. While the film does include characters and references to events from its predecessor, it is primarily a standalone sequel. Unadjusted for inflation, 2.0 was the most expensive Indian film at the time of its release.
Casting
Shankar held initial discussions with Kamal Haasan, Aamir Khan, and then Vikram about portraying a further role, though none of the three actors signed on to appear in the film. Subsequently, the team held talks with Hollywood actor Arnold Schwarzenegger for the role, who agreed to work on the film for a record remuneration. The makers however opted against signing Schwarzenegger due to contract issues. In late November 2015, Rajinikanth also travelled to Los Angeles to meet the film's producers and complete costume trials and initial motion capture effects work for the film. After further negotiations with actors including Hrithik Roshan and Neil Nitin Mukesh, the makers signed on Akshay Kumar to portray the role for which Schwarzenegger was initially considered.
In September 2016, Malayalam actor Kalabhavan Shajohn confirmed that he had tried out for a role in the film after Shankar was impressed with his performance in Drishyam (2013) and had signed him on.
Filming
An official launch event was to be held on 12 December 2015, coinciding with Rajinikanth's birthday. However, the team chose to avoid publicity as a result of the 2015 South Indian floods. On the first day of the shoot, a scene featuring Rajinikanth and several dwarf actors was shot at the erected set, while the team's principal cast and crew also assembled for a photoshoot.
Akshay began shooting for the film in Chennai at the beginning of March 2016 and took part in a schedule held at the EVP Film City studio in Chennai. A set of a mobile phone store was built on-site, while night scenes involving robotic equipment and military tanks were also canned. The team subsequently moved to Delhi in order to hold a forty-five-day schedule, continuing on from the same scenes with military tanks that were shot in Chennai. Subsequently, the team filmed sequences at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium depicting an Indian Super League match between Chennaiyin FC and Mumbai City FC, with hundreds of junior artists recruited to act as supporters. Actors Amitabh Bachchan and Abhishek Bachchan visited the film's set at the stadium with the media reporting that the pair were set to make cameo appearances, though the claim was later denied by the team. Rajinikanth then joined the team in Delhi at the end of March to continue shooting for the project, with the climax sequences being filmed. Action scenes incorporating robotic equipment were filmed throughout early April in Delhi, with cinematographer Nirav Shah using helicams to capture sequences involving the three lead actors.
During the shoot at the studios, the visual effects designer Srinivas Mohan digitally converted a green screen sequence into locations including the Red Fort and the Parliament from Delhi after the team were unable to secure shooting permission there. By June 2016, Shankar revealed that after one hundred days of shooting, scenes including the climax and two major action sequences had been completed and that the film was fifty per cent complete. Adil Hussain and Kalabhavan Shajohn began their work in the film during July 2016 in Chennai, while the rest of the cast were given an extended break after Rajinikanth fell ill. Following his illness and subsequent recovery, Rajinikanth returned to the sets of the film in early October after a break of close to four months. He shot for scenes alongside Amy Jackson in Chennai, where he was featured fighting huge birds created using animatronic technology with actor Riyaz Khan also joining the cast, but eventually he was not included in the final cast of the film. Soon after the schedule finished in early October, Shankar revealed that the film was two-thirds complete, following one hundred and fifty days of shooting.