Ra.One – Bollywood’s Most Expensive Movie Till Date
“Wanna Be My Chammak Challo”
The song’s title is enough to make our feet tap and lips hum. It was the bollywood’s most awaited and best item song of the year 2011. In a survey, conducted by wireless telephone major, Airtel, the song has been rated as the most downloaded song and video of 2011. The female and male voices were provided by Hamsika Iyer and none other than the very popular Senegalese-American hip hop singer, Akon. It was for the very first time that Akon had collaborated with Indian artists.
Ra.One, was epic and an incredible movie not only because its songs had reached the top of chartbuster but also because of the huge, estimated and astonishing investment of $ 20-32 million, it had. It was the most expensive Indian films at the time of its release. This award winning movie had set an epoch-making and a new record by having a total gross income of $ 28 million. Ra.One, with the pre- release revenue of $ 21 million had shattered regional, national and international box office records with the biggest opening followed by biggest single day collections for an Indian film. The movie, produced by Red Chillies Entertainments had more than 4000 screens worldwide, released in 2D, 3D and dubbed versions. The title of the movie “Ra.One” was named after the villain who played an antagonist role in the movie.
“Cast n Crew”, “Costumes”, “Plot” and much more
Ra.One defined a new era in animation, graphics and film-making. It was a science fiction that involved a total of 50 foreign trained-technicians. This spectacular and benchmark setting movie changed the definition of Indian films for its fresh and new genre. Ra.One won the Filmfare Award for the best special effects which was conspicuous for it involved the amalgamation of dexterous hands and minds. Jeff Kleiser was the main supervisor who worked in cooperation with Indian supervisors, Arjun Mehta and Snehil Pandey to bring out crystal clear view by working over tortuous aspects of 2D and 3D. MAYA, HOUDINI, Macs, NUKE and SHAKE were some of the software on which a team of 750 professionals worked. They were hired from all over the globe to forge this technologically high-end film. The most flabbergasting fact was, a total of 3500 VFX (visual effects) shots were incorporated out of which 800 shots were solely committed to G.One’s suits. This count outnumbered the total number of shots employed in “Avatar”, decade’s biggest sci-fi saga.
Stargaze and their roles:
Shahrukh Khan: Shekhar Subramaniam/G.One, plays the pivotal character of a game designer who works in Barron Industries and has a wife named Sonia (Kareena Kapoor). A challenge has been imposed over to the employees, by the owner to develop an ultimate video game. Shekher is struck with the idea when he gets acquainted of his son, Prateek’s dream to have a “kick-ass villain” in a game that is more powerful than the hero. Shekhar thus comes up with an indestructible antagonist named, Ra.One and its arch-enemy, G.One.
Jenny and Akashi are the teammates of Shekhar who gives Shekhar’s face to the protagonist (G.One) and the latter works over implementing movements to the characters. Akashi gives each character a special device – H.A.R.T (Hertz Amplifying Radio Transmitter). This device is a source to provide powers and any character not possessing this device cannot be killed. The game is divided into three levels. The last level is the one in which, one character gains a gun with one bullet and kills the other character.
On a day of the official launch of the game, Prateek insists on playing it and logs in as “Lucifer”. Prateek could not complete the second level as he was interrupted by Akashi; Ra.One enraged at the incompletion of the level gets tenacious about killing Lucifer and enters the real world through a Wireless technology. The entry of Ra.One is accompanied with the devastation of the lab. Shekhar understands the situation, upon being informed by Akashi and runs for saving his family’s life. In the interim, Akashi gets killed by the shape-fitting Ra.One who takes his form. The antagonist, on a search of its prey meets Shekhar where the latter claims to be Lucifer but Ra.One after knowing the real identity kills Shekhar and makes it look like a car accident.
After this catastrophic incident, mother of Prateek, Sonia decides to return to India after the funeral ceremony of her husband. One day, intriguing Prateek got to notice the digital pattern on the road where his father had died and realizes that Ra.One has come to the real world. Jenny endeavors to bring G.One into the real world to finish Ra.One. G.One becomes successful in taking H.A.R.T of Ra.One through a gas explosion but the latter finally tracks Prateek at his birthday party. Ra.One changes his form from the model (Arjun Rampal) on a hoarding to Sonia by hypnotizing her. G.One though successful in saving Sonia’s life had to fight a real battle in a virtual world. In the game, G.One’s power was waning and so he tricked Ra.One by removing its H.A.R.T. Ra.One incensed at this ruse, created ten copies of itself. Prateek finally asks G.One to repeat the quote of his father that engulfed the tactic to kill Ra.One. “If you join the forces of evil, its shadow shall always follow you” and it was the time for a bang on when G.One shoots the one with a shadow.
The director Anubhav Sinha left no stone unturned to turn the King size dream project of King Khan into reality. As claimed by Shahrukh Khan, the worth of each of 20 different costumes donned by him is not million rupees but million dollars. Rajinikanth had played a cameo in Chitti’s avatar. Putting aside his health issues, he flew to Mumbai and made a heart-warming presence for the shoot.
Marketing and Controversies: come in pairs
Industrious Ra.One movie team adopted such magnificent and pervasive marketing prowess that people were not left with any option than to watch it. It was estimated that, a net budget of $ 8.3 million was consumed for film’s marketing. For the first time in history of Indian movies, marketing was just not limited to merchandise or live chats on Google Plus but also got extended to “Ra.One – The game” as a game for PlayStations. Seventymm, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, UTV Indiagames were the few with whom Shahrukh partnered.
Indian movies are incomplete without controversies. Ra.one faced vicious allegations on grounds of plagiarism as many found the movie similar to Terminator 2, Batman series, Iron Man, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Shahrukh debunking all allegations said, “I got inspired from a lot of superhero movies but the movie is original”.
Awards and Achievements
A movie is either a hit or a flop but eclectic comments and reviews have landed on to marking it as “neither a hit nor a flop”. Ra.one, a technologically sound with commendable visual effects has received several nominations and awards in India as well as abroad. Ra.One well deserved the honor of receiving National Film Award and Filmfare Award for best visual effects and four International Indian Film Academy Awards.
Ra.One will always be phenomenal for even after fighting against several controversies and getting mixed critics’ reviews, showed splendid technological foundation.
