Arjun: indian animation turns a page

Finally, I got to see Arjun. It has been in making for more than 2 years now. All thanks for Disney, without which, Indian cine-goers could not relish a home made animated blockbuster, which, for a change, doesn’t look like a drawing board of a 2 year old kid. Yes, despite being a fanboy of animation movies I have skipped all the good, bad and HOLY MOTHER OF GOD homemade animation movies dished out in recent times. 

 My love for animation movies goes back to my school days when I loved reading Nagraj, Super Commando Dhruv, Bankelal, Doga (I feel sorry for you if you haven’t heard of these guys, read up!) along with Spiderman, Batman etc. So while some of you were busy sweating it out in the field and getting into relationships, I was in my fantasy world of comic books, cartoons and video games. So much so that a stuck stage in Mario meant continuous slogging for hours. On related note, not being able to rescue or at least see the princess remains one of the biggest disappointments of my childhood, others involved something called marksheets(pfffft).

  This was before I had heard of Disney-Pixar or the likes. I love animated movies because of the freedom it bestows upon the creator. The only limit is the imagination. If you can imagine, it’s possible. The good part of reading fiction is you are free to imagine it the way you want to. The more vivid imagination you or the more interesting picture author paints, the more you enjoy reading it; and the sad part is when you see it reduced to mere mortality in live action movies. Ask any harry potter fan and he/she will tell you how disappointed they are with the movies, though personally not big on potter, i agree. Its actually tough to create fiction in a live action movie because of expectations and that’s where animation scores. 

  Now imagine what it can do to the epics like Chandrakanta, Alif Laila, Vikram Baitaal or a Hatim Tai. I did not add Mahabharata to this because they will require at least a trilogy to show it completely which doesn’t seem feasible right now. But you do get a glimpse of how awefantasticsome would that be, if and when, they actually decide to do it in the process of watching Arjun. You are left gasping for breath with the lavishness of the whole frame when the protagonist jumps in the pond to spear the goldfish. I could only compare it with what I saw in B R Chopra’s work , which wont be fair, because frankly speaking I wouldn’t have bothered with this movie if it weren’t for him. He made Mahabharata interesting for me with whatever means he had at his disposal at that time.

 

  Animation quality of Arjun however is generations behind Pixar’s other works like UP or Ratatouille but this has certainly set the wheels rolling. People that be, will notice animation movies as a sustainable market and who knows we might even get to see a full blown ‘Rajnagar ki tabahi’ featuring Nagraj and Super commando dhruv battling it out with Grand master Robo in a action packed 3D blockbuster or a KroorSingh in all his glory (YAKKOO). After all Toy Story was an experimental movie too.

  I have my fingers crossed. In the mean time, go watch it on the big screen. And those who are stick stuck with the idea of animation being for kids, GROW UP!  \m/oO\m/