By Kikelomo ONIGBANJO
If it was Hollywood that made Colours of Fire with all the special effects, AI, animation and paparazzi, and then sprinkled Tom Cruise, Denzel, Samuel L Jackson, De Rock and maybe one Marvel actor inside, you people would be screaming, ‘THIS IS CINEMA!’
But because it is Nollywood, everybody suddenly has an opinion about VFX.
You people are brutal sha. The comments made me laugh till I cried!
But the movie is not that bad.
In fact, I think the biggest problem with Colours of Fire is not even the animation, CGI or AI. It is Uncle Uzor with the big mole on his face.
Sir.
What exactly was your mission?
You were sent to kill a monster terrorising an entire community. You entered the place, saw one fine woman with a substantial backside and suddenly forgot the mission briefing. You decided to give her hot fok.
WTF is wrong with you bro? (No pun intended)
Your village people were waiting for results and you were busy conducting your own private research.
God abeg o!
And then we have to talk about the casting.
Ah.
I genuinely do not understand the decision to cast Uzor Arukwe and Osas Ighodaro in Yoruba-speaking roles in a Yoruba epic when neither of them naturally speaks Yoruba.
And before anybody comes for me, I am not saying they are bad actors. They are both talented actors.
But casting is not just about whether somebody can act. Sometimes the role has specific requirements. If I cast you as a Lagos Agbero, you cannot call people into the bus saying, ‘Good afternoon, passengers. Kindly move inside.’ In Queens English.
There are some things we must respect. And I am sorry, but if you are making a Yoruba epic, the language is part of the atmosphere. It is part of the character. It is part of the world you are building.
Trivia: That Masoyinbo guy was their Yoruba language instructor.
Seriously, he tried.
But even Masoyinbo’s spiritual intervention could not save some of those intonations and accents.
You cannot give us the palace, the costumes, the beads, the talking drums, the mythology, the ancient kingdom and then suddenly the dialogue sounds like somebody learnt Yoruba from Duolingo five minutes before call time.
All Uzor could comfortably say was “Baba” and “Efunsetan.”
At some point I was listening to the dialogue like someone trying to decode a voice note sent from an unknown number.
Osas, on the other hand, basically said, “You know what? Let me just act. Yoruba can take care of itself.”
Abeg.
I also know Uzor is currently one of the hottest things in Nollywood right now. The man is everywhere. You open Netflix, Uzor. You turn left, Uzor. You turn right, Uzor. At this point, if I open my freezer and see Uzor inside, I will not even be surprised.
But this particular casting?
No, sir.
And I am still trying to understand how he won the AMVCA for Best Actor over William Benson’s performance in To Kill a Monkey. But that is another conversation before somebody starts throwing their wig.
Now, the story.
Colours of Fire follows two tribes, the Blue Tribe and the Red Tribe, whose conflict is rooted in misunderstandings surrounding mythology, history and their interpretation of the past. The warrior, Akinbode meets a sacred beast and falls in love with Moremi and this ignites a forbidden romance.
Niyi Akinmolayan tries something different by combining live action, animation and AI to tell the story.
And you can see that a lot of work went into it.
Of course it is not perfect, even Hollywood has not figured it out yet.
There were moments when I felt like the movie was having an identity crisis.
One minute we are watching a live-action scene.
Cut. Animation.
Cut. AI.
Cut. Back to live action.
It became overwhelming at some point.
But here is where I think we need to be fair.
I don’t think the conversation should solely be about whether the CGI was inconsistent, whether the animation looked perfect or whether the AI moments were seamless.
Most of us cannot even tell you what software they used. We just know that something moved strangely in the movie and we shouted, ‘They did not do this CGI very well’.
These filmmakers stepped outside the usual Nollywood comfort zone and attempted something visually and technologically ambitious.
And honestly?
I respect that.
Because if we keep demanding Hollywood-level results while refusing to give Nigerian filmmakers room to experiment and make mistakes, how exactly do we expect the industry to grow?
Somebody has to try it first.
And thankfully, Colours of Fire has enough good things going for it.
The production itself is crisp. The world-building is interesting. The mythology is intriguing and there is clearly an attempt to create something bigger than the usual Yoruba epic formula.
And then there is Gabriel Afolayan.
That man knows his onions.
He can enter a production where everybody is doing backflips, fire, AI, CGI and ancestral invocation, and somehow you will still find yourself watching Gabriel.
He understands presence; he understands character.
He just gets it.
Overall, Colours of Fire is not the disaster some people are making it out to be.
It has its own problems.
The casting choices are questionable. The delivery of the Yoruba language is sometimes painful. The combination of animation, AI and live action can feel like three different movies fighting for screen time.
But beneath all that is a filmmaker willing to experiment.
And I would rather watch Nigerian filmmakers attempt something ambitious, fail in some places and improve, than keep recycling the same story with different agbadas.
So yes, criticize the movie.
But abeg, let us also acknowledge the attempt.
Because the next one might actually get it right.
It will get better.
4/10 stars.
