One of the biggest movie events of the year opens in March, but many moviegoers in the US might not know much about it. RRR is a Telugu-language movie from Southern India which has been in production for years. The story follows two real-life Indian heroes, Alluri Sitarama Raju and Komaram Bheem, played by major stars of Telugu cinema.
But RRR is no conventional biopic. Instead, this movie imagines a friendship forming between the two men while they were both in transitional periods in their life — and it envisions the wild adventures they might have had together.
Here's the RRR trailer, and some background on the massive new movie.
Watch the RRR Trailer
The best place to start with this movie is the explosive trailer, which you can watch just above. Some of the big moments — like a man screaming directly into the face of a tiger — should be enough to let you know that this one is more fiction than fact, even though it is inspired by real people. But what a terrific-looking fantasy!
The Story of RRR
In real life, Alluri Sitarama Raju and Komaram Bheem, played by Ram Charan and N.T. Rama Rao Jr., were both revolutionaries who fought against aspects of British colonial rule after being inspired and inflamed by their experiences as young men. They never met, though Bheem was inspired by Alluri Sitarama Raju, whose revolutionary actions began a few years before Bheem's.
Director S.S. Rajamouli was inspired in part by THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES, which depicted Che Guevara's transformation into a revolutionary. He combined facts from the histories of his two main figures, some of the notions from the Guevara story, and his own talents for creating over-the-top epic action. The result is RRR, which envisions Raju and Bheem meeting and collaborating during their formative periods.
RRR Opens in March
After multiple release date delays incurred when Covid shut down production and closed cinemas in some parts of India, RRR is finally set for release on March 25 in India, and March 24 in the United States.
What Does the Title RRR Mean?
The RRR title has two meanings. You'd probably think that RRR is an acronym related to the country's history or fight for independence. In fact, RRR means something else entirely: It stands for Rajamouli, Ram Charan and Rama Rao, the movie's director and two stars. But the title is actually an acronym, with slightly different expressions in different languages: Raudraṁ Raṇaṁ Rudhiraṁ in Telugu, Rattam Raṇam Rauttiram in Tamil, Raudra Raṇa Rudhira in Kannada, Rudhiram Raṇam Raudhram in Malayalam, and Rise Roar Revolt in Hindi.
The Creation of RRR
Director S. S. Rajamouli is one of the biggest filmmakers in Tollywood; his movies BAAHUBALI: THE BEGINNING and BAAHUBALI 2: THE CONCLUSION are the two highest-grossing Telugu movies. Following the release of the latter title, he began to tease the development of RRR. Many of his regular collaborators signed on to contribute their talents to the movie. Stars Ram Charan and N.T. Rama Rao Jr. are two of the biggest names in Tollywood, and so RRR instantly had the potential to be a blockbuster. (Hence the movie's title.)
In 2019, Rajamouli explained that "When I read about Alluri Sitarama Raju and Komaram Bheem, it was exciting to know that their story is similar. They never met each other. What if they had met? What if they had got inspired by each other? That is what RRR is about. It is completely fictitious. The film is mounted on a very large scale. We had to do a lot of research for it. To know costumes, their dialect, their way of living and that is why it took so much time for us to get this together."
What Is Tollywood?
India is a union of 28 states and 8 territories, with a wide plurality of languages, cultures, and traditions. Several regions have their own unique movie industries. As a whole, India produces more movies per year than any other country.
You've probably heard of Bollywood, the Hindi-language film industry. It is a massive part of movie production in India. Hindi-language movies remain the biggest single segment of cinema from that part of the world. But there's a lot more to Indian movies than Bollywood.
The cinema of South India, which features massive production systems that create movies in the Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Kannada languages, is bigger at this point than Bollywood, when taken as a whole. As of 2021, Telugu cinema, sometimes referred to as Tollywood, was the biggest and fastest-growing section of South Indian movies. Tollywood fans are as devoted and vocal as audiences for Marvel and DC movies in the US.
RRR opens in the US on March 24!
All images courtesy of DVV and PHF.