One of the lessons video production inevitably teaches is that while action grabs the audience’s attention, reaction gets them involved.  In other words, the most amazing stunt in the world will always feel hollow unless it’s followed by a shot of someone reacting to it.  Seeing someone laugh or recoil or drop their jaw in amazement sets the context for the action and spurs our emotional engagement.  It’s one of the reasons the Transformers movies feel so achingly repetitive after twenty minutes of their incredibly sophisticated action scenes—there’s no one helping us care that the car is now a mighty flying robot.  Unless you want to count Megan Fox, but as an actress, she’s basically a posable action figure.

All that said, today’s awesome video clip could not care less about that kind of theory.  This delightfully cheesy clip excerpts a 2010 Bollywood film called Enthiran-The Robot, a madcap adrenaline rush about a scientist’s unsuccessful struggles to control his android robot after it falls in love with his own fiance.  Ouch.

It is the most expensive film in India’s prolific film history and has enjoyed worldwide financial and critical success, eventually becoming the highest grossing Indian film of all time.  Who knew?

The best part is that the visual effects imagination is as spectacular as the execution is awful.  Which reverses  the typical Hollywood formula that camouflages a lack of imagination under flawless CG perfection.

Anyway, enjoy this admittedly-overlong clip for the high-flying exuberance of its patently ludicrous story.  It makes little to no sense. Still, it’s kinda wonderful.  Happy Friday!

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By Dennis Ryan, CCO, Element 79

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