SS Rajamouli, Jr. NTR, and Ram Charan’s action scenes in RRR have to rank among their most memorable. Cinematographer KK Senthil explained some of the movie’s most famous moments to Film Companion.
Jr. NTR plays badminton at the national level
In a particular moment, Jr. NTR rushes alongside a tiger before facing it off. Before that, a wolf and a fox are pursuing him. Senthil says that they were taken aback by how quickly Jr. NTR sprinted. It turns out that in his teenage years, the actor competed at the state and national levels in badminton. He said that it was difficult to equal his level of fitness.
Another famous scene is Jr. NTR attacking British people by leaping out of a truck carrying several wild animals he had captured. He also plays off Ram Charan’s persona for the first time. “The interval in his films is sometimes better than the climax because of his (Jr. NTR) legacy.” We spent many evenings filming this scene. Thousands of people were forced to act as though they were being attacked by animals in this scene. Our VFX supervisor recommended that we employ motorised vehicles with animal faces; this was beneficial, he said.
Ram Charan looked nervous
Another famous scene features Ram’s character beating up a bunch of Indians who are demonstrating against the British. With his lathi, he enters a sea of people on his own, beats and gets beaten severely, but he doesn’t give up until he subdues them. Senthil discloses that Ram was nervous about performing this scene because he was uncertain about the audience’s reaction to seeing an Indian beat up other Indians.
“There’s a scene in Magadheera where he fights 100 people; now he needed to do something bigger,” he remarked. We increased it to 2000 individuals based on that concept. Being Indian, Charan was very reluctant to beat up other Indians, but Rajamouli persuaded him of the character’s motivation. We first spent three months practicing how to accomplish it. Actors with fighters, young fighters, actors with fighting skills, and more were gathered in circles. Getting the audience to feel like they are a part of the mayhem was the hardest problem. In this moment, Charan has a contemplative face that we tried our best to convey.
Future Projects
Jr. NTR and Hrithik Roshan are presently filming War 2. Along with Koratala Siva and Janhvi Kapoor, he is also working on Devara. Alongside Shankar and Kiara Advani, Ram Charan is aiming for the role of Game Changer. He and Janhvi will soon be featured in a Buchi Babu Sana movie.
