India has never seen a film as big as Baahubali 2.
Filmed simultaneously in Tamil and Telugu, Baahubali was a gargantuan effort, an ambitious epic fantasy actioner directed by the visually inventive SS Rajamouli. Split across two films jointly budgeted at 2.5 billion rupees, the enormous nationwide success of the first film meant the budget for the second film was amplified, reportedly to nearly twice that of the first. The first film, titled Baahubali: The Beginning, ended on a highly dramatic cliffhanger, and all is expected to be unravelled when Baahubali: The Conclusion releases tomorrow.
Prabhas in a still from Baahubali: The Conclusion
It is massive sword and sandal stuff, all volume and brawn and battles and high-strung histrionics, and, despite the overt Amar Chitra Katha influence visible in the storytelling, has to be commended for creating its own loud, larger-than-life mythology.
This would partly be because of the title: only the second film in what could unquestionably be turned into an endless franchise has prematurely been titled The Conclusion. More importantly, it would also be considering the budget: a budget we in India, with the most overstuffed movie industry in the world, are tom-tomming as gigantic. (This is precisely why I used billions to refer to rupee amounts, simply because - as Justin Timberlake said in The Social Network - it sounds cool.)
A poster of the film Gods Of Egypt
This is an unfair comparison, naturally. It is far cheaper to make - and to watch - films in India. We do not come close to matching the unreal (and frequently excessive sizes) of Hollywood behemoths, and seem to be doing just fine upscaling at our own pace, with our films visibly glossier and more slickly produced than ever before. Why in the world should we be expected to match their size?
Except we do indeed match, and even exceed, their numbers in one specific department.
It is even, undoubtedly, impressive - particularly the fact that Padukone, notoriously paid much less than her male counterparts, has cracked the list. However, having our brightest stars rub shoulders with the biggest in the world, at the same time that our most expensive films are made on budgets at par with independent American films, is frightening. It shows the extent to which our movie industry is tilted in favour of the stars.
He might as well have dropped a microphone right after. Our movie industry truly is as oddly proportioned - absurdly top-heavy - as a real-life Barbie doll. No wonder we're falling over.
The stars can't be blamed. The film industry, by handing over pretty much every key to the kingdom, has given a few stars free rein to charge whatever they want regardless of the size of the films themselves. What to do about this is the subject of a larger debate and more exhaustive discussion, but contemplate we must. By fattening our fish we only make our pond look smaller. The next Baahubali deserves a bigger splash.
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