‘RRR seemed cruel’: Lego Movie director questions ‘dangerous’ politics of SS Rajamouli’s film; Into the Spider-Verse director says ‘not surprised’

At least two prominent Hollywood filmmakers have spoken against RRR, and the controversial politics of SS Rajamouli's otherwise beloved blockbuster.

By: Entertainment Desk

New Delhi | February 21, 2023 12:58 PM IST

3 min read

RRR scored one Oscar nomination.

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It doesn’t take long for the tide to turn. Not a year has passed since prominent Hollywood filmmakers endorsed director SS Rajamouli’s period action film RRR, which snowballed into a full-blown awards campaign that resulted in an Oscar nomination. And now, after a controversial interview of the Telugu filmmaker, other prominent Hollywood directors have started to question the film’s politics.

Rajamouli was quizzed by the New Yorker about the Hindu iconography in RRR, as well as his father and RRR writer V Vijayendra Prasad being attached to a film about the RSS. Rajamouli also revealed that he draws creative inspiration from Ayn Rand and Mel Gibson, both controversial figures.

Also read | SS Rajamouli answers if he is ‘supporting the BJP’ with his films: ‘Sometimes Muslims have had objections, sometimes Hindus’

Sharing the interview on Twitter, filmmaker Phil Lord wrote, “So his influences are… 3 generations of right wing nationalists cool cool cool.” Lord is one half of the hit-making Lord-Miller duo, who are behind The Lego Movie, 21 Jump Street, and the television series The Afterparty. “So are we just gonna pretend Apocalypto can’t be a good storytelling reference?” one person asked in response to Lord’s tweet, and the filmmaker replied, “I think the common thread amongst all three is the sublimation of humanistic values to the March of History. Very dangerous…”

He wrote in subsequent tweets that RRR is ‘a lot of things, but apolitical isn’t one of them’. When one person in his replies wrote, “My RRR hype cooled when I saw someone observe, ‘there is a propagandist element to this I can’t quite parse,” Lord commented, “Yes and for me it seemed to both condemn cruelty and be itself quite cruel.”

Pete Ramsey, the Oscar-winning co-director of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, chipped in with his two cents. He wrote, “I’m going to be the a**hole who says ‘hmmm not all that surprised, actually’.” When one person told Ramsey that they couldn’t ‘see how one would say RRR is RW propaganda’, the filmmaker responded, “Not steeped in Indian sociopolitics myself so I’m not going to opine about that. I do know there’s a debate around the film and its framing of historical Indian ethnic issues, a hot topic in the country these days. But nationalism in art is always a tricky thing.”

RRR first began to gain steam in the West after filmmakers such as Scott Derrickson and James Gunn spoke highly of it on social media. More recently, legendary directors such as James Cameron and Steven Spielberg also praised the film. RRR has been nominated in the Best Original Song category at the upcoming Oscars.

Lord and Miller’s upcoming film as producers is Cocaine Bear, which will be released in theatres this week. They will also produce both sequels of Into the Spider-Verse, titled Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse.

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