Bardriqᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ

I Am Hypocrite, I Am All Of Us.

[Bardriqᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ @Bardriq]

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[Bardriqᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ @Bardriq]

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[Bardriqᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ @Bardriq]

@Bet9jaOfficial Liverpool 2 vs 2 Atletico Madrid
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[Bardriqᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ @Bardriq]

@Bet9jaOfficial 27th Minute
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[Bardriqᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ @Bardriq]

@Bet9jaOfficial Real Betis 0 vs 2 Real Madrid
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[Abolaji Rasaq Oluwapese @bolazeal]

THE COLOR OF FIRE
Nollywood Needs More Films Like This

I think one of the problems The Color of Fire is having with some Nigerian audiences is that we are not quite sure what to do with a film like this.

Nollywood has trained us to expect a certain kind of performance and visual language. Even when our stories are epic, the filmmaking often remains familiar and relatively restrained. Then Nìyí Akinmolayan comes along with The Color of Fire and deliberately moves in another direction.

The film is theatrical, colourful, dramatic, artistic and bold.

And I absolutely love that audacity. This is not conventional Nollywood. One criticism I have seen is that the acting is "too dramatic." But I think there is a difference between bad acting and heightened acting.
Indian cinema understands this very well. Theatre understands it. Mythological and fantasy cinema understand it. Sometimes a filmmaker deliberately abandons naturalism because the world being created demands something bigger than everyday behaviour.

The Color of Fire operates in that territory.
Its world isn't supposed to feel entirely ordinary. The costumes are larger than life. The colours are intense. The compositions are dramatic. The characters sometimes seem to exist somewhere between reality, folklore and theatre.

So, yes, the performances are sometimes big. That is largely the point.

Does it always work? No. There are moments when theatricality threatens to become exaggeration. Some performances could have benefited from a little restraint, and occasionally you can almost see the film's ambition fighting against the limitations of its resources.

But I would rather watch a Nigerian filmmaker occasionally stumble while attempting something ambitious than watch another perfectly competent film that I have already seen fifty times.

About the AI controversy.
Perhaps the loudest criticism surrounding The Color of Fire is the alleged use of generative AI in some of its imagery.

But how exactly are we determining what is AI?
Not every unusual visual is automatically AI-generated.
Nìyí Akinmolayan isn't a filmmaker who suddenly discovered visual effects yesterday. His company, Anthill Studios, has considerable experience in animation, post-production and visual effects. So unusual imagery coming from an Anthill production shouldn't automatically be dismissed as someone typing a prompt into an AI generator.

And even if AI was used in parts of the production, I think the more intelligent question is: how was it used?
AI is a tool. CGI is a tool. Green screen is a tool. Compositing is a tool. Matte painting is a tool.
Cinema has always evolved through filmmakers discovering new ways to create things that would otherwise be too expensive, dangerous or impossible to put on screen.

That conversation becomes even more important in Nollywood.

Hollywood can spend tens or hundreds of millions of dollars building worlds. Nollywood simply doesn't have that financial war chest. Nigerian filmmakers are routinely expected to produce Hollywood-level spectacle with a tiny fraction of Hollywood resources.
If a filmmaker has a massive visual idea but only a fraction of the budget required to realise it conventionally, I am not automatically offended if technology helps close the gap.

What matters to me is whether the technology serves the story.

That doesn't mean AI or digital effects should escape criticism. If an image looks inconsistent with the rest of the film, criticise it. If an effect pulls you out of the story, criticise it. If the technology becomes more noticeable than the storytelling, then something has gone wrong.
But reducing The Color of Fire to "that AI movie" would be incredibly unfair.

Because the film is so much more than its visual effects.
Look beyond the technology
Look at the production design.
Look at the costumes.
Look at the colours and compositions.
Look at the world-building.
There is intentionality everywhere.

The costumes don't merely clothe the actors. They participate in the storytelling. The art direction doesn't simply decorate locations; it establishes the atmosphere of the world. Colour itself becomes part of the film's emotional language.

And underneath all that spectacle is a compelling story.
That matters because technology alone cannot make a good film.

You can generate an impressive image. You can create an enormous landscape. You can manufacture fire, armies, palaces and impossible environments.
But cinema is ultimately an accumulation of human creative decisions.

Where do you put the camera? What should the character wear? How should this scene feel? What should the actor do? When should information be revealed? When should it be withheld?

Those are filmmaking decisions.
And The Color of Fire contains plenty of good ones.

The performances
Gabriel Afolayan is stellar.
He understands the assignment. In a film operating at this heightened dramatic level, an actor has to walk a dangerous line. Too little and you disappear inside the spectacle. Too much and you become a caricature.
Gabriel finds that balance remarkably well. There is authority in his performance, but there is humanity too.

Osas Ighodaro is equally compelling. There is something quintessential about her presence in this world. She doesn't merely wear the costumes; she inhabits them. In a production where faces, fabrics, silhouettes and colours are doing so much visual work, that kind of screen presence matters enormously.

The imagination is bigger than the budget. Ironically, some of the imperfections of The Color of Fire are part of what excites me about it. Sometimes you can see the film reaching beyond its resources. That is not necessarily an insult.

It means the imagination is bigger than the budget.
And this is perhaps the biggest thing The Color of Fire confirms for me about Nìyí Akinmolayan.

Give this man money.
Serious money.

Give him the resources for extensive pre-production, enormous sets, practical effects, sophisticated VFX, longer post-production schedules and the freedom to execute his ideas without constantly negotiating with budgetary limitations.

Because this film convinces me that Nìyí understands spectacle. More importantly, he understands that spectacle without storytelling is merely decoration.

Nollywood must be allowed to become strange
This is ultimately what I admire most about The Color of Fire.

It is strange. And Nollywood desperately needs strange films.

We need filmmakers who will occasionally abandon the safe visual grammar of contemporary Nigerian cinema.
Not every Nigerian movie must look familiar. Not every actor must perform with television naturalism. Not every historical film must resemble every historical film that came before it. And not every African epic must imitate Hollywood's interpretation of Africa.

Think about our own storytelling traditions.
Our masquerades are theatrical. Our traditional performances are colourful, musical and dramatic. Our folklore is filled with spirits, gods, transformations, prophecies, impossible creatures and worlds colliding with other worlds.

Why then should our cinema always behave itself?
The Color of Fire doesn't behave itself.
That is precisely why I find it exciting.
It is theatrical, colourful, dramatic, excessive, artistic and unapologetically ambitious.

Some experiments work better than others. Some effects could be more seamless. Some performances could occasionally be pulled back. A larger budget would probably have allowed its visual language to achieve greater consistency.

But none of these should overshadow what has been attempted.

Nìyí Akinmolayan has made a film that tries to expand the visual vocabulary of mainstream Nollywood. We should be having a much bigger conversation about that than simply arguing about AI.

We should be talking about ambition.
Because after watching The Color of Fire, one thought stayed with me: If this is what Nìyí Akinmolayan can do within the financial constraints of Nollywood, imagine what he could do without them.

The man knows what he's doing.
And Nollywood needs more filmmakers willing to take this kind of risk.

Abolaji Rasaq
Emergency Film Critic. Social Commentator. A realist.

[Bardriqᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ @Bardriq]

@HaysonWoodys Iwa weyrey🤣

[mutiu s oladimeji @HaysonWoodys]

I don de average 15views and 3likes per post

My God how am I going to handle this fame

[Oluwaseun @Iam_Jyde]

4 private radio stations came together to organise a governorship debate for the leading aspirants, only the AAC candidate showed up despite being aware of this weeks ahead.. SHAME! Not surprised as the major aspirants campaign strategy has been to attack each other

[𝕎ℍ𝕆𝕀𝕊ℝ𝔸𝕃ℙℍ🥂 @whoisralph29_]

Oshi wa Lara nau 😂

[Bardriqᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ @Bardriq]

Not weird after all

[JT Khalid 💸 @stfukhaleeed]

Bro to bro: grow your hair out

[Bardriqᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ @Bardriq]

@TheLastbornO He play well?

[Bardriqᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ @Bardriq]

Lol

[𝕎ℍ𝕆𝕀𝕊ℝ𝔸𝕃ℙℍ🥂 @whoisralph29_]

A club we use to own

The debate is about farming aura with opponents colors now hun 😂

[Bardriqᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ @Bardriq]

@whoisralph29_ "We use to own"
What Era or timeline did that happen?🤣

[Olóyè Jatto @JattoQudus]

During my nysc, I saved up parts of my allawee, when others were chopping chicken lapse and shawarma... I wíll be there alone for gulping garri.... Few months to our POP, I rented shop and started filling gas (LPG) in the neighborhood. Today, the small gas then has turned to big ones. Thank God.

[Bardriqᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ @Bardriq]

Wearing Blue better than The Blues @whoisralph29_

[Oniero❤️🦅🍀🪡 @TheLastbornO]

LY💙❤️

[mo @mosogynist]

fuck it christopher nolan tier list

[Bardriqᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ @Bardriq]

@Kelvin71506055 Put Price now

[Bardriqᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ @Bardriq]

@isbae_u Bukky Wright

[Bardriqᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠᅠ @Bardriq]

@chudy_jnr @Ofochebe Just STFU brother