Indian Flicks with Insane Visual Effects; Dime a Dozen

Highlights

• Indian Films
• Visual Effects
• Movie Benchmarks

What is it about movies that attract us the most? It is perhaps the most consistent in providing the entertainment quotient, along with sports, which is why they’re both so beloved all over the world.

In Brief

India is a large country where two things are worshipped beyond all and they both belong to the entertainment field- movies and cricket, and although things have changed considerably when it comes to hero-worshipping, there are many celebrity icons from both fields that continue to be revered like gods.

The Indian Film Industry has completed more than 110 years with the very first flick being released in 1913, which was called Raja Harishchandra, and Indian Cinema too, along with Hollywood and other film industries, has gradually evolved with each passing decade in terms of technology, visual effects, box office revenues, and a lot more.

Despite the tremendous achievement of Indian Films, it is still considered light years behind Hollywood in all departments but that is far from the truth because there have been many great luminaries in the film industry, be it actors, actresses, directors, stuntmen, etc. that are at par with the best that Hollywood has to offer.

If Hollywood had films like Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur, Indian Cinema had Mughal-E-Azam and Mayabazar, around the same time. Indian films, contrary to popular belief, stands at par with Hollywood/American Cinema, right from the beginning.

If there are certain genres and departments where Hollywood is better, there are also those genres and departments where Indian Cinema scores heavily. If there is one area where Indian Cinema needs improvement, it is the visual effects department, which is why it is considered 10 to 15 years behind Hollywood.

While it is true that Hollywood too has many films with bad VFX and CGI effects, Indian cinema’s list of duds is considerably high, despite the fact that the budget of both Hollywood and Indian films is quite vast.

It is true that in the times when the aforementioned films were made, there was no VFX or CGI in existence and these films had worked on the basis of practical effects instead of computer generated ones.

Hollywood has scored heavily in terms of VFX in their films via the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and other superhero films, but Indian Cinema is truly catching up in the visual department and 2022 alone had quite a few movies that heavily relied on VFX.

List of Films

Let’s take a look at some of the Indian movies that had the maximum number of VFX shots so as to showcase the potential of Indian Cinema in the past decade alone as many can give the best Hollywood superhero flicks a run for their money.

• RRR– The biggest of the lot that has created a huge sensation in the western world that has been completely blown away by the phenomenon that is RRR and a big reason for it was its VFX, which had more than 2800 of them in the whole film
• Baahubali: The Beginning– The movie that started the pan-India revolution in the country had more than 4500 VFX shots that took the whole nation by storm
• Baahubali 2: The Conclusion– The perfect sequel to an already iconic film had around 2400 VFX shots, which is a little less than the previous film but the impact was just as big
• Brahmastra– The latest entrant in the list and the most recent one that came out in September 2022, that scores over all others in terms of VFX at more than 4500 shots, thereby paving way for two more sequels to complete the trilogy
• Son of Sardar– A lesser film in terms of scale and budget of the above 4 but no less when it comes to VFX with more than 3900 shots in the entire film
• Krrish 3– At 3500 VFX shots, the film has surpassed that its two prequels, Koi Mil Gaya and Krrish, in this field because it had more visual spectacles than the other two put together
• Syeraa Narasimha Reddy– Another Telugu language spectacle that scored heavily in terms of VFX with more than 3500 shots added to increase the excitement level
• Bigil– Although a typical Tamil mass entertainer, it had more than 3000 VFX shots to boast of that made this average flick get far more attention than it deserves
• 2.0– This one is a sequel to the 2010 release Enthiran/Robot that had Rajinikanth in the lead but this one had the added bonus of Akshay Kumar as the main villain and more than 2200 VFX shots
• Adipurush– The soon to be released Adipurush is being helmed by Om Raut, who also made Tanhaji: The Unsung Warrior that met with massive acclaim, and even though its teaser is being bashed left, right, and centre for its cartoonish special effects and showing Ramayana in a bad light through its characters’ portrayals, the movie itself, apparently, boasts of more than 8000+ VFX shots, the highest for an Indian movie so far 

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