How International Media Responded to ‘Baahubali 2’

Not many reviews, but the phenomenal success of ‘Baahubali 2’ has got the foreign press interested.

Baahubali 2 is India’s biggest blockbuster and it has also got the international media sitting up and taking notice, but mostly after its huge success. Surprisingly, apart from The Guardian, no one seems to have actually reviewed the film on its release. Here’s a quick look at how the foreign press reacted to the sequel.

A report in BBC calls Baahubali 2: The Conclusion “a sensation of billowing hair and bulging muscles”.

The news report also has film critic Mike McCahill pointing out that, “It’s also the Indian film industry flexing its muscles and saying - Look at what we can do on a fraction of the budget of a Fast and Furious or a Guardians of the Galaxy”.

Writing for Deadline.com, Nancy Tartagilone speaks to BoxOfficeGuru.com editor Gitesh Pandya who says - It is a giant blockbuster, as a Telugu film in North America, its core appeal was to a subset of the overall Indian-American population and there was very little overlap with Bollywood fans. The cliffhanger created a dizzying amount of hype for the concluding chapter to the saga, so Baahubali 2 was even more of an event film that fans needed to see right away.

In a 4-star review of the film for The Guardian, Mike McCahill describes Baahubali 2 as, “a jaw-dropping blockbuster that combines nimble action with genuine heart”. He goes on to observe:

Of the many sequences here primed to cut through jadedness, perhaps the most wondrous is that which finds Baahu guiding Deva mid-battle to shoot three arrows simultaneously – a set piece that speaks both to a love of action, and love in action. The budget’s big, the muscle considerable, but they’re nothing compared with Baahubali’s heart.

The Guardian (Review of Baahubali 2)

The BBC Asian network did this interesting 20-minute Facebook Live with SS Rajamouli and Anushka Shetty last week while the team was in London.

Not many amongst the international media have reviewed Baahubali 2: The Conclusion, but they are reporting on its phenomenal box-office performance.

Reporting for The Daily Mail, Ann Schmidt headlines her piece as, It's Bollywood, but not as you know it: Inside 'Baahubali' - the mega-budget Indian blockbuster that has stunned Hollywood (and Tom Hanks) by smashing box office records. She goes on to say, “This Bollywood film has smashed all kinds of box office records - even beating out Tom Hanks and Emma Watson. Baahubali 2: The Conclusion may not be a familiar movie title to some. It has only opened in 405 theaters in the US, but the Indian fantasy epic made more than $10 million in its opening weekend. Hanks' film The Circle, which stars Watson, only made $9.3 million in its opening weekend. On top of that Baahubali is unlike any other Indian film Americans have seen.”

'Baahubali 2': Is this Box Office Smash the Future of Indian Cinema? is the headline of a report in Cnn.com by Huizhong Wu. The write-up stresses on how Baahubali is not a Bollywood film but “is a production of the Southern India-based film industry centered on the Telugu language known as Tollywood”.

Besides highlighting the use of CGI in the film, the report also comments on how the recently announced film on the Mahabharata - Randamoozham with an estimated budget of $ 155 million, is a sign that the Indian film industry is reaching new heights.

The Hollywood Reporter has been religiously tracking Baahubali 2’s box-office numbers. “With the film collecting $13.1 million in the US, Baahubali 2 also beat previous record-holder Dangal's $12.4 million total haul in the territory” notes a report on the platform.

Variety has excitedly reported about the possibility of a Baahubali 3. They featured an exclusive interview with director SS Rajamouli where the filmmaker says, “Because we have the market and if we made a film for the market without having a compelling story, that would not be honest filmmaking. But who knows, if my father comes up with a compelling story, like he did before, then there is no stopping, we can always make it.”

While the impact of Baahubali 2’s commercial success seems to have been well reflected, we’d surely have liked more reviews of the film in the international press. If not for its scale and VFX, Baahubali’s mythological and exotic elements would’ve appealed to the foreign media for sure.