Baahubali 2: The Conclusion is a costlier film than Baahubali: The Beginning. Parts of the sequel had already been shot when the makers had just released the first film in 2015. Thereafter, SS Rajamouli and his team took their own sweet time to make Baahubali 2: The Conclusion as perfectly as they could. The results are finally here and the film looks and feels stupendous, unlike anything Indian cinema has ever seen before.
Together, the Baahubali films have been in the making for five years. In the two years between Baahubali: The Beginning and Baahubali 2: The Conclusion, SS Rajamouli got the time and the money to make Baahubali 2 better than the first film. The first film was a huge success but it had its shortcomings since Rajamouli and his team did not have any reference point for it. Once, The Beginning had released, Rajamouli realised his mistakes and thus, Baahubali 2: The Conclusion became a better, more pristine product.
Here are five ways in which director SS Rajamouli made Baahubali 2: The Conclusion better than Baahubali: The Beginning…
Baahubali 2’s women are better, stronger
In Baahubali: The Beginning, Avanthika (Tamannaah) was introduced as a strong, gutsy woman warrior. However, soon enough, Shivudu (Prabhas) is seen wooing her against her consent and in a controversial sequence, Shivudu undresses Avanthika as the latter simply fumes in anger during the process. Within minutes, Avanthika has falled for Shivudu’s manly charms and the ‘warrior woman’ disappears out of the window and Avanthika simply becomes Shivudu’s love interest and a side character.
However, in Baahubali 2: The Conclusion, SS Rajamouli atones for his sins against Avanthika by turning Devasena (Anushka Shetty) into a meaty woman of substance. Devasena is the love interest of Amarendra Baahubali but she is shown to be a woman who is a deft warrior in her own right and when she is not fighting, she has a life of her own, thoughts of her own, a story of her own detached from Baahubali’s character arc. When Devasena is brought to Mahishmati, her sparring of words with Sivagami (Ramya Krishnan) lends her character a lot of credibility. Meanwhile, Sivagami is also developed adequately as a character and kudos to Rajamouli that an actor as fantastic as Ramya Krishnan is used adequately.
Baahubali 2 has better VFX
Much of Baahubali 2’s additional budget (Rs 250 crore compared to the first film’s Rs 180-crore budget) was allocated just for the visual effects. Director SS Rajamouli envisioned the second film to be bigger and grander and he wanted its visual effects to have more class and finesse than what the first film’s VFX had. Several studios simultaneously worked on the visual effects of the second film. Makuta VFX (Hyderabad), Firefly Creative (Hyderabad), Prasad EFX (Hyderabad) and Tau Films (Malaysia) worked on the film day and night to make each frame perfect.
Thus, Baahubali 2 had some stellar, memorable sequences such as the opening sequence with the elephant, the fantastic song sequence that was Hamsa Naava and of course, the climactic battle between Baahubali and Bhallala Deva (Rana Daggubati).
Baahubali 2 is funnier
Baahubali: The Beginning mostly concentrated on introducing the primary characters to the audience before these characters would be made to clash against each other in The Conclusion. As such, there was no scope for character-based comedy in Baahubali: The Beginning.
However, in the first-half of Baahubali 2: The Conclusion, when the romance between Devasena and Amarendra Baahubali is being established, there are a lot of comic interludes involving Baahubali, Katappa (Sathyaraj), Devasena and the bumbling royal Kumara Varma (Subbaraju). These scenes successfully divert the attention from the emotionally intense story-line of the Baahubali saga.
Katappa comes full circle
Katappa is not one of the lead protagonists of Baahubali on paper like Amarendra/Mahendra and Bhallala Deva are but nevertheless, he gets a very well-written, complex role in the Baahubali saga. In the first film, Katappa was shown to be a loyal servant to the royal Mahishmati empire and there was not much scope for characterisation for him as he moved from slaying one person to another.
In the second film, Baahubali 2: The Conclusion, Katappa is seen as being Baahubali’s wingman as the latter attempts to charm Devasena in her kingdom. The audience gets to see a different side of Katappa who is not always wielding his sword. He has a few comic scenes and once the comedy disappears from the screenplay, the emotional turmoil inside him after he is instructed to kill Baahubali is beautifully portrayed. All in all, Katappa comes across as a full-fledged character.
Hamsa Naava > Dheevara
Dheevara was the star attraction in Baahubali: The Beginning as far as the romantic song of the film was concerned. It was a beautifully conceptualised video where Mahendra Baahubali is seen climbing the 1,000 feet-tall waterfall as he chases an imaginary Avanthika and finally reaching the latter’s stronghold. It had amazing use of VFX and on the big screen, Dheevara looked really grand.
Dheevara’s counterpart in Baahubali: The Conclusion is Hamsa Naava and boy, this song sequence is, perhaps, the most beautiful song sequence ever filmed in Indian cinema. Amarendra Baahubali and Devasena make their way towards Mahishmati on something that looks like half-bird and half-ship (it has to be seen to be believed) and after a while, it turns into a bird and flies high in the sky. This is a spectacular sequence that is as well-executed as it is well-imagined and in comparison, Dheevara pales in front of Hamsa Naava.
