Let us imagine a pub quiz, wherein the participants are asked to guess the movie’s name based on a one-line description.
Quizmaster: The protagonist has to survive a zombie attack.
Participant: I Am Legend!
Quizmaster: Nope.
Participant 2: Night of the Living Dead?
Quizmaster: No.
Participant 3: Resident Evil? Shaun of the Dead? Land of the Dead?
Quizmaster: Nope, nope, and nope. The right answer is Miruthan.
Quizmaster: Okay, next one. A guy, who is not an astronomer, is called upon to destroy an earthbound asteroid.
Participants 1, 2, and 3: ARMAGEDDON!
Quizmaster: Nope.
Participants (surprised): Then?!
Quizmaster (with a cheeky smile): Tik Tik Tik is the right answer.
Quizmaster: Moving on… A teddy bear that looks like this (points to a photo on his phone) comes alive and befriends the protagon–
Participant 1: It’s Ted!
Quizmaster: Nope.
Participant 1 (visibly annoyed): Dude, you even showed me the photo. I am damn sure that’s how the teddy bear looks in Ted.
Quizmaster: Close enough. But the correct answer is Teddy.
At this point, the participants regret signing up for the quiz with a hardcore Shakti Soundar Rajan fan and walk out of the pub.
With his latest Captain, heavily inspired from Predator,Shakti continues his mission of making Kollywood caricatures of popular Hollywood films.
“But why?” you may ask. Completely understandable.
It is a question that will be best answered by the director himself. But in this day and age, when our audiences have easy access to the biggest of Hollywood blockbusters with the best visual effects, it seems counterproductive to rehash a cult monster flick from the ‘80s. Why would someone want to buy Adibas sneakers when they already have access to the original Adidas ones?
Ripping off, per se, is not the problem. A filmmaker can steal an idea or even the plot – but what he or she does with it matters. Quentin Tarantino, for instance, felt Kaante (the Hindi version of his cult classic, Reservoir Dogs) was “fabulous.” Shakti, however, has taken the premise of Predator and made it boring.
The main problem of Captain is it fails to evoke any sense of dread. In monster movies, half the battle is won if the creature looks terrifying. The one in Captain, called Minotaur (because it looks like the Greek mythical beast), has an interesting anatomy. Its body has a small, detachable spider-like part, which can emit bio-radar waves that can, among other things, control human minds. Its saliva can cause short-term memory loss. But due to low-budget visual effects, Minotaur looks like monsters from Shaktimaan.
More than the VFX, however, the film falls flat because of an inadequate screenplay. There are a few interesting ideas; for instance, the protagonist, Captain Vetri Selvan (Arya), is an orphan. He considers his team his family. The idea of how he has people who are willing to sacrifice themselves for him sounds touching. But Shakti conveys this through expository lines (uttered by a stone-faced Arya) and a montage song with generic happy moments (one wondered if Arya and Co are in a school summer camp instead of a high-risk operations team). All the characters are underwritten. Aishwarya Lekshmi is wasted in a cameo. Even Simran, who plays a slightly bigger role, does little to keep us invested in the film. Just because the story is set in an army backdrop, the director attempts to throw in some token patriotic line in a scene that feels entirely unnecessary.
When Captain ends (in two hours, thankfully), you partly wish the creature spat at you so you can forget watching it. But Shakti closes it with the promise of a squeal. Now, that evokes a sense of dread.
Captain is currently running in theatres
