Director Shankar has been regarded as one of the finest in the country. He is best known for making grand commercial and socially conscious films that reach the masses and gain immense popularity and unanimous success.
With the amount of research, groundwork, production value and VFX work that goes into the making of his films, he is known to deliver some quality products. Very rarely does he come out and give interviews to the media. This time around, we were lucky to catch up with the prodigious director to discuss, in detail, about various aspects of his upcoming biggie, 2.0.
In this super exclusive 2.0 special interview, Shankar opened up about many exceptional features of the film, including the mighty climax sequence, Superstar's dedication, AR Rahman's tunes, Akshay Kumar's work, the enormous budget involved, and much more.
To speak in particular, we were able to catch a glimpse of the climax of 2.0 in the teaser and trailer. Similar to its predecessor Enthiran, we saw the robot getting into a huge formation to fight another gigantic formation of mobile phones to make the Akshay Kumar accident. The climactic sequence in Enthiran was a lengthy one, and we tried to gather some exciting details about 2.0's climax from the director himself.
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20 minutes after the intermission itself, you will get the feel of a climax and there will be so many happenings that you wouldn't even know when the climax began. But if you have to particularly differentiate and see, the stadium fight sequence will be the climax. Also, the climax wouldn't stick to one element. It will keep changing from the action, to the story and more. There are almost 15 scenes in the climax alone. Enthiran was completely different and this is a totally different type", he said.
And added, "
This would be almost two times the first part's climax. In Enthiran, we had just Rajini sir as Chitti, 2.0, and Vaseegaran. But this time, we have Akshay Kumar's character as well. So I think this would be double the treat."
A conversation about 2.0 or almost 80% of Shankar's films cannot do away without the mention of the Oscar-winning composer AR Rahman. His songs are often referred to has
slow poison. The way in which his songs are usually different, then they slowly grow on the listener, eventually turning into an addiction. Here, Shankar talks about how, as a director, he treats the tunes given by AR Rahman.
Shankar said, "
We don't have a fixed method to decide which song is the perfect one for the situation at hand. Some songs will just immediately click and I will take them. Sometimes, certain tunes will take some listening. He will give us the tune and usually say, "let us live with it". So we would just keep listening to it", he said.
"
While driving or while doing something else, if I start humming the tune without my knowledge, then I will just go and tell him that its perfect. If at all any tune doesn't work, I'll ask for some other tune. But mostly, he will give a good tune, but I might require a different tune, that suits my situation better. In that case, he will understand and work on something else that works for us," he added.
For more interesting tidbits on 2.0 and its features, check out our exclusive interview below: