After being stalled in the development phase for nearly a decade, the film's principal photography began in 2008 and lasted two years. The film marked the debut of Legacy Effects studio (which was responsible for the film's prosthetic make-up and animatronics) in Indian cinema. Enthiran was released worldwide on 1 October 2010. Produced by Kalanithi Maran, it was India's most expensive film up to that point.
The film received generally positive reviews upon release. Critics were particularly appreciative of Shankar's direction, storyline, Rajinikanth's performance as Chitti, music, action sequences, production values and the visual effects by V. Srinivas Mohan. Enthiran emerged as the highest-grossing Indian film of 2010. It won two National Film Awards, three Filmfare Awards, seven Vijay Awards and two Screen Awards. Enthiran was followed by a standalone sequel, 2.0, which released in late 2018.
After a decade of research, the scientist Dr. Vaseegaran creates a sophisticated android robot with the help of his assistants, Siva and Ravi, in order to commission it into the Indian Army. He introduces the robot, named Chitti, at a robotics conference in Chennai. Chitti helps Sana, Vaseegaran's medical student girlfriend, cheat on her examination, then saves her from being assaulted by a group of thugs. Vaseegaran's teacher, Professor Bohra, is secretly engaged in a project to create similar android robots for a terrorist organisation, but so far has been unsuccessful. The dealers of the organisation give Bohra an advanced payment, but threaten to murder him if he fails to complete the project within the deadline. This prompts Bohra seek the details of Chitti's neural schema, intending to program his robots correctly.
Vaseegaran prepares Chitti for an evaluation by the Artificial Intelligence Research and Development (AIRD) Institute, which is headed by Bohra. During the evaluation, Chitti attempts to stab Vaseegaran at Bohra's command, which convinces the evaluation committee that the robot is a liability and cannot be used for military purposes. Later, Vaseegaran deploys Chitti to save people from a burning building in an effort to prove Bohra wrong, but fails when Chitti saves a girl named Selvi who was bathing but was ashamed being naked filmed on camera and flees, only to be hit and killed by a truck. Vaseegaran asks for one month to modify Chitti's neural schema to enable it to understand human behaviour and emotions, to which Bohra agrees. While nearing the deadline, Chitti becomes angry with Vaseegaran, demonstrating to him that it can manifest emotions.
Chitti uses Sana's textbooks to successfully help Sana's sister Latha give birth to a child. Bohra congratulates Vaseegaran on the achievement and belatedly lets the robot pass the AIRD evaluation. Chitti develops romantic feelings for Sana after she congratulates Chitti by kissing it. Later, at Sana's birthday party, Chitti attempts to kiss her while dancing and is confronted by Vaseegaran and Sana, to whom it confesses its love towards her. They try to make Chitti understand that it is a machine and its love for Sana is against nature and how it is established, Sana explains to Chitti that they can only be friends. Saddened by her rejection, yet still in love with her, Chitti deliberately fails an evaluation conducted by the Indian Army, resulting in Vaseegaran chopping Chitti into pieces, which Siva and Ravi dump into a landfill site.
Bohra visits the site to retrieve Chitti, which has now reassembled itself, albeit in a damaged state. Bohra embeds a red chip inside Chitti while reconstructing it along with Siva and Ravi, converting it into a ruthless killer. When Siva and Ravi ask Bohra why he is doing this to Chitti, Bohra tells them he is using Chitti to earn money through his business and defame Vaseegaran, scaring Siva and Ravi. Chitti gatecrashes Vaseegaran and Sana's wedding, kidnaps Sana, creates replicas of itself and kills Bohra. Using its robot army, Chitti occupies AIRD and causes mayhem in the city. After informing Sana that it has acquired the human ability to reproduce, Chitti wishes to marry her so that a machine and a human being can give birth to a preprogrammed child, but Sana refuses. It eventually finds Vaseegaran, who entered AIRD to stop it, and nearly kills him before the police appear. The ensuing battle between Chitti's robot army and the police personnel leads to many casualties and much property destruction. Vaseegaran eventually captures Chitti using a magnetic wall and accesses its internal control panel, whereby he instructs all the other robots to self-destruct. He removes Chitti's red chip, calming it.
In a court hearing, Vaseegaran is sentenced to death for the casualties and damages caused by the robot army, but Chitti explains that it was Bohra who caused its deviant behaviour and shows the court video footage of Bohra installing the red chip. The court drops all charges on Vaseegaran, but orders Chitti to be dismantled. Left with no choice, Vaseegaran asks Chitti to dismantle itself. While saying goodbye, Chitti apologises to Vaseegaran and Sana before dismantling itself.
Several years later, in 2030, Chitti is a museum exhibit. A curious school student on excursion asks her guide why it was dismantled, to which Chitti responds, "Naan sinthikka arambichitten" (I started thinking).
I thought that playing Chitti the robot would be very difficult. He is a machine. His movements should not be like a human being's. We had to draw a line. If I deviated even slightly, Shankar would point it out and say I was being too human. After four to five days of shooting, we found a rhythm.
In 1996, following the release of Indian, S. Shankar approached and pitched three storylines to Rajinikanth to consider for his next venture. This included scripts which would later become Sivaji: The Boss (2007), Enthiran (2010) and I (2015). Rajinikanth was sceptical and refused all three scripts at the time.[19] Following the completion of his first directorial venture in Hindi, Nayak (2001), Shankar announced his next project, Robot, which was to feature Kamal Haasan and Preity Zinta.[20][21] The film was to be produced by the now-defunct company Media Dreams, a division of Pentamedia Graphics.[21][22] The film was reported to be a futuristic techno-thriller set in Chennai in around 2200 or 3000.[23][24] Despite the completion of a photoshoot featuring Haasan and Zinta,[25] the project was shelved as a result of scheduling conflicts with Haasan.[26] Shankar consequently started work on Boys (2003).[21]
After Boys, Shankar began work on his next feature starring Vikram, which was initially reported by Rediff.com to be Robot revived,[27] but was later revealed as Anniyan (2005).[28][29] One month post the release of Sivaji: The Boss in June 2007, he approached Shah Rukh Khan for the lead in Robot.[30] Shankar had cast Priyanka Chopra in the lead opposite him.[31] Khan was about to produce it under his own banner, Red Chillies Entertainment, but in October the same year the project was officially aborted due to creative differences between him and Shankar.[30][32]
Several actors were considered for the role of Professor Bohra, including Amitabh Bachchan, J. D. Chakravarthy,[43] Sathyaraj and British actor Ben Kingsley,[44][45] but it was Danny Denzongpa who eventually received it, making Enthiran his first film in Tamil.[46] Dubbing for Denzongpa was provided by Kadhir.[47] Comedians Santhanam and Karunas were cast to portray Vaseegaran's assistants Siva and Ravi respectively.[48]
The soundtrack album and background score were composed by A. R. Rahman.[49] Vairamuthu, Pa. Vijay and Madhan Karky authored the lyrics for the songs.[49][50] Manoj Bharathiraja, son of filmmaker Bharathiraja, was signed on to be an assistant director after he approached Shankar.[45] Also working as assistant directors were Atlee,[51] Shree and Karthik G. Krish.[52][53] Sabu Cyril, in addition to being the film's art director, made a guest appearance as Shah, an interpreter between Bohra and the terrorist organisation.[17][54]
R. Rathnavelu was hired as the cinematographer after Ravi K. Chandran,[55] Nirav Shah and Tirru were considered.[56][57] Anthony was the film's editor.[58] Yuen Woo-ping, known for his work in The Matrix trilogy and the Kill Bill films, was selected to be the stunt co-ordinator, while Legacy Effects, a visual effects studio based in the United States, were in charge of the prosthetic make-up and animatronics in the film.[59] Munich-based film technical company, Panther, were responsible for the crane shots.[60][Note 4] The film's subtitle captioning was done by Rekha Haricharan.[61]
Manish Malhotra and Mary E. Vogt were chosen to design the film's costumes.[62][Note 5] Fifty-seven costumes were used for Rai, including a "Mexican tribal" look that she sported during the filming of the "Kilimanjaro" segment.[63] According to make-up artist Banu, no prosthetics were used for Rajinikanth to avoid bothering him by withholding his time on set.[64] Additional make-up was by Vance Hartwell, an employee of Legacy Effects.[65]
The visual appearance of Chitti was based on the G.I. Joe action figures. For Chitti's "villain robot" look, its hair was spiked and brown coloured lenses were used for its eyes, whereas for its "good robot" look, green coloured lenses were used.[64] The wig used for Chitti's "villain robot" look had a silver streak in the middle, made out of Yak hair,[66] while its leather jacket was designed by Vogt.[66] To make Vaseegaran look mature, the team made Rajinikanth sport an Oakley beard.[Note 6] Suits made of copper were used for Chitti's costumes.[68]
For Sabu Cyril's sets, Shankar required approximately twice as much studio floor space as for his previous film. After rejecting Ramoji Film City for technical reasons, Enthiran's producer, Kalanithi Maran, took six months to set up three air-conditioned studio floors on land in Perungudi owned by Sun TV Network.[69] Filming began on 15 February 2008 at AVM Studios in Chennai.[57] After the initial stages of filming, Shankar and Rathnavelu toured the world for three weeks, scouting for exotic filming locations.[70] They visited Austria, Germany, Peru, Brazil and Argentina, looking for a backdrop to shoot the "Kilimanjaro" and "Kadhal Anukkal" segments,[71] eventually deciding on Peru and Brazil.[72][73] "Kilimanjaro" was filmed at the ruins of the Incan city of Machu Picchu in Peru, with some 100 Brazilian extras.[71][72] It was choreographed by Raju Sundaram and supervised by Fernando Astete, director of the Machu Picchu archaeological park.[72][74] "Kadhal Anukkal" was filmed in Lenis Maranhenses National Park in northeastern Brazil.[73]
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