Official Trailer:

It is a goosebumps moment as each letter of Super Star rolled in 3D in the title sequence. From the title sequence till the end, 3D worked with effective use of depth and I found 2.0 to be much better than many Hollywood 3D fares. After initial 3D euphoria, I switched to 2D version since with 3D I felt either lighting to be dull or subjects appear smaller than in reality or no depth since most of them are shot in 2D and converted to 3D. With 2.0 though, 3D works impressively and adds oomph to the VFX spectacle. 2.0 scores very high in all technical departments, special effects, sound design, editing and background music. Special effect scenes are well imagined and creative, credit goes to Shankar, the creative mind behind it. Bedroom with mobiles, Inception inspired rising mobile road, Alien inspired mobile bursting out of the tummy, transition between Vaseegaran and Pakshirajan faces, Shape shifting mobiles and robots, horse shoe, sparrow taking its last breadth, 3.0 army, 2.0 birds net and cage, scenes are impressively done supported by great sound design and BGM. Kudos to the whole team.

All these VFX spectacle, would have worked great if some effort has gone in the story department 😢. If you ignore the story, movie is a time pass VFX ride, even with repetitiveness of special effects and few dips in momentum. There is repetitiveness in story-telling too, Shankar uses the same tropes from his earlier outings, flashback, vigilante, Shankar’s favorite duality and multiple personality (Vasee with Pakshi’s aura), lecture in the stadium (luckily it is not long). You also get a Murugadoss style message at the end, why everyone should switch to talcum…err…turmeric powder. Here we are told why we need to be nice to birds, reduce number of mobile networks, crank down the mobile tower power.

There is story, of course. But the problem I guess is that director couldn’t make up his mind whether to make a masala or a horror or a social satire movie. This is not a sci-fi movie, unless if you consider The fifth force as science. The fifth force could have been used as an effective supernatural horror tool to generate jump from your seat moments. We don’t get those in 2.0. When The fifth force makes calls to the bad guys, instead of scare we look for the special effects. Could have been a masala movie if we know whom we need to root for. Usually, we would root for the vigilante, like in Gentleman, Anniyan, Indian, even if they take the law in to their own hands to kill the bad guys. End justify the means. Those vigilantes play to our fantasy, things we always wanted to do, things we play out in our head. In 2.0, roles get reversed, villain Pakshirajan gets the moving flashback, who turns in to vigilante the fifth force post his suicide. He is the good guy, rather good soul, wanting to do the right thing. But Pakshirajan ends up as villain, since Rajni is the hero, pretty much Rajni is there in every frame that too in multiple versions and sizes. Usually, we would get a scene where villain holds a knife to heroine’s throat blackmailing the hero. Here we get the hero, Kutti 3.0, threatening to strangle pigeon’s throat blackmailing Pakshirajan 😞. So, is 2.0 a social satire then? Pakshirajan does come across as Mannar Mannan character in the movie Joker. Mannar Mannan also gets ignored and mocked and gets killed by the establishment towards the end. Joker worked well as social satire movie. Considering the mood of 2.0, it doesn’t come across as a social satire movie either. This lack of clarity in storyline is the weakness of the movie.

Hard not to compare 2.0 with 1.0. 1.0 as a masala sci-fi worked great. There is good amount of science, Frankenstein monster, Ram Sita Ravana love triangle including kidnap of Sita, and a great villain. Who can forget Chitti telling poetry to a dynamite, action packed kidnap sequence, or the memorable dialogues, it is new to nature not against nature, or it is a hypothetical question. That creative energy in storyline is missing in 2.0.

Again, if you ignore the story, movie is a good time pass 3D VFX spectacle. Similar to Transformer series.