Ram Gopal Varma not sure how VFX driven Telugu action films will work after Dhurandhar: “In just a year or two, people’s tastes have changed completely because of Dhurandhar” : Bollywood News

“There are two very sharply demarcated halves of Indian cinema – those before Dhurandhar and those after Dhurandhar. It’s like BC and AD,” said Ram Gopal Varma with a chuckle.

Ram Gopal Varma not sure how VFX driven Telugu action films will work after Dhurandhar: "In just a year or two, people's tastes have changed completely because of Dhurandhar"

Ram Gopal Varma not sure how VFX driven Telugu action films will work after Dhurandhar: “In just a year or two, people’s tastes have changed completely because of Dhurandhar”Indeed, Aditya Dhar’s Dhurandhar has forever changed the way audiences’ look at cinema, especially the action genre. There is a rapidly growing apprehension among filmmakers in Hindi and Telugu cinema that the ‘big’ FX-driven action film is no longer the chosen genre for massy audiences.

In a panic, the larger-than-life digitally driven Telugu fantasia Kingdom and The RajaSaab have scrapped their proposed sequels (after confidently announcing it at the end of the first part). The most anticipated film for the rest of the year –Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Love & War and Shah Rukh Khan’s King have no special affects in them.

Said Ramu, “You see, basically, a lot of different films will come and anything can do well but it is doubtful that the special-effects driven action film, which Telugu cinema is churning out for the past some years now, will find a market.”

Ramu drew attention to how Aditya Dhar’s film has converted the climate of a standard vendetta film with its raw gritty treatment. “Ranveer Singh has no entry scene. In fact, he is almost molested by a mob in his entry scene. Dhurandhar technically is a template film. There’s a hero, there’s a heroine, there’s a villain, there’s a lofty cause for the hero. Right. But in the way it’s being treated, it is the exact opposite of what we’ve been feeding upon all these years. I’m talking about all action films they are the same, no? Hero, heroism, hero elevation. Mostly vendetta.”

Ramu said that the Telugu Pan-Indian biggies like Kalki 2898 AD, Baahubali, RRR and HanuMan perfected the art of FX spectacles. “All those films which we’ve been subjected to the last five, six years were the benchmark. Now suddenly, this Dhurandhar comes, the only film I saw, where the hero doesn’t have an elevation shot. So-called slow motion, background score and all. All the other characters have. In fact, he stayed in the background most of the movie. He almost disappeared into the story. The story is not being made to bend backwards and forwards. To please, to pander to any hero’s whims.”

Ramu sees an irreversible change in audiences’ tastes. “Dhurandhar doing these kind of numbers, you know, and becoming a bigger hit than all of them, it indicates a very kind of a sea-change in audience’s taste. There is one primary difference between Hollywood and Bollywood. In Hollywood, all the stars can act, can do characters. A Leonardo DiCaprio kind of a star is doing a film like Body of Lies. If you remember that shot when he’s hit on his fingers, he shows genuine pain. So, heroes doing gravity-defining turns and all that, where the hero you don’t even think is a human being, is what we’ve been fed upon in the last few years. In the opening sequence, Ranveer Singh gets battered by some heroes. So, that kind of a treatment, with a vulnerable hero, being accepted in such large numbers, like what we’re seeing in the box office.”

So, is Dhurandhar the first benchmark of Hindi cinema since Sholay? “And before Dhurandhar, we never had a benchmark. Sholay, I think is a little different. Sholay is a highly entertaining film. Right. There are the heroes, the villain, etc. In Dhurandhar, there’s no hero. There’s no villain. See, because all the characters, they’re basically, they come from a motivation, which is the reason audiences are liking Akshaye Khanna as much as Ranveer or maybe more.”

Suddenly, said Ramu, the Telugu FX driven blockbusters look dated. “The biting fight in Pushpa 2, flying around and biting everyone, you know, which is definitely extremely enjoyable to all the audience. But I don’t know how that will work after this, which is a truly miraculous time transition because in just a year or two, people’s tastes have changed completely because of Dhurandhar. Which is the reason I use that word, it’s a quantum leap in cinema. Yeah, I agree with that.”

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