Rajnikanth’s 2.0 is a collaboration of India’s biggest superstar with one of the best directors in the country over a period of time. Shankar is not just a simple director who got lucky with one film or two but a director who grew into a brand by himself, making movies like Gentleman, Indian, Jeans, Mudhalvan, Aparichitudu, Shivaji, Enthiran. His films one after the other became huge hits all over South India and with films like Indian, Nayak and Aparichit he is also famous in Northern belts. His movie with Rajni, Enthiran, was dubbed into Hindi and released as Robot and the movie became highest grosser for any Hindi dubbed movie until Bahubali 1 crossed it by miles and earned 100 crores.
There has always been a comparison between Shankar and SS Rajamouli since the later made South Indian blockbuster, Magadheera and followed it up with Eega. Tamil people are known for being eccentric and flamboyant, especially in the way they promote their talent. Obviously there were few Telugu people as well, who wanted to answer the stone with a stone. Once SSR started gaining popularity and delivering hit after hit, his aura rose to a height where a producer was able to believe in his vision and make Magadheera with him. Shankar then made, Shivaji the highest budget South Indian Film. Magadheera earned shares close to Shivaji and Telugus started comparing SSR to Shankar. Shankar then made the movie, Enthiran and it turned out to be an innovative record breaker.
All those records have tumbled down by Bahubali and even bettered them. While Shankar’s I became a disappointment in other languages and a big grosser in Tamil. Several people started commenting Shankar is loosing the battle to a decade younger director. Then an announcement about 2.0 came out with never heard of budget and a span even bigger than Bahubali. Still Bahubali 2 looked to more promising buzz. Everything changed with the first look release. While Bahubali looked simple and a tad bit disappointing in front of magnanimous 2.0, the Rajni’s movie has become talk of the town. The leak of Bahubali 2 war scenes happened exactly at the same time and people have started thinking it is all due to this fight of egos and jealousies that the Bahubali team leaked the unfinished video just like earlier.
One thing to be remembered here, neither Shankar nor SS Rajamouli, have seen each other as competition. In fact, SSR accepted Shankar as far superior creator and regards him as an inspiration. But the timing of leak and it happening again after the leak during the Bahubali 1 release, especially, war scenes made people to doubt. Well, producers caught the real leak behind the incident and police arrest the man, Krishna, who was working as a trainee, in Annapoorna Studios VFX division. All through the incident the team of Bahubali looked really cool and not bothered much. May be they got used to the situation after the first incident but too cool reaction from producers, really disappointed fans. When the number of people work on your project increases may be you should bring in more and more security measures. Are we right, are we right?
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