What ‘2.0’ means for Rajini the superstar, and Rajini the politician

It's been a long time since Rajinikanth had two releases in the same year and there's a lot more riding on '2.0' than just its massive budget.

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Rajinikanth's 2.0 finally has a release date. On Tuesday, it was announced that the film will release on November 29. In over two decades, the superstar has not had more than one release in a year. In fact, since 2000, Rajini has been doing a film only once in 2-3 years mostly. In 2014, Lingaa and Kochadaiiyan released but the latter was a motion capture film and did not have Rajinikanth himself on screen.

2018, therefore, is a massive year for both the star and his fans. After a long time, the superstar will have two releases in the same year - Kaala and 2.0. And both of them coming out after he announced his plunge into politics.

What then is riding on 2.0 besides the usual frenzy around a Rajinikanth film?

Pan-Indian film

Rajinikanth is well-known all over India. However, outside of the south, the current generation treats him rather unfairly as a joke. For people who've never watched his films, he's a mere caricature who makes a few stylish gestures to get some whistles. They've never experienced his swag in the context of the films in which he has starred in.

2.0, however, is a pan-Indian film. It has to be, considering it's made on a massive budget which is reportedly between Rs 400-500 crore. That's nearly double of SS Rajamouli's Baahubali 2 which was made on a budget of around Rs 250 crore.

Shankar's Enthiran, the first film, was made on a budget of around Rs 130 crore. In 2010, it was the most expensive Indian film to be made at that point. The dubbed version in Hindi, Robot, also did well, but this time around, the makers have shot the film simultaneously in Tamil and Hindi to make sure the Hindi audiences come to the theatres. Besides, the cast includes Akshay Kumar, one of the top billed actors in Bollywood today, in an important role. Dubbed versions are expected to release in several other languages.

The phenomenal success of the Baahubali franchise has shown that linguistic and cultural barriers can be broken if a film manages to capture the imagination of the audience. Baahubali 2 was the first Indian film to breach the Rs 1000 crore mark at the box-office and it managed to do this despite having actors who are from southern industries and don't have much of a reach in the north. 2.0, with names like Rajinikanth and Akshay Kumar, will want to repeat this success story and do even better.

For Rajinikanth, who is positioning himself as a political leader in Tamil Nadu, 2.0 may well be the vehicle which will increase his appeal across the country - if all goes well.

Political messaging

Rajinikanth's last two films have been with Pa Ranjith. Both Kabali and Kaala were politically loaded films that brought Ambedkarite politics to mainstream cinema on a lavish scale. While this was celebrated by many, several have pointed out that Ranjith's politics and Rajinikanth's real life politics appear to be poles apart.

Rajinikanth's debacle at Thoothukudi right before the release of Kaala, in which the actor ironically asks, "Kumaru, yaaru ivaru?" to a politician, proved to be a thorn in the flesh for the makers. Besides, many fans were also upset about Kabali and Kaala not following the Rajinikanth film template and the question of ownership - were these Ranjith films or Rajinikanth's?

It's not that Shankar's films are devoid of political messaging. But he's stuck to the "one-man army taking on the system" kind of formula, mostly dealing with corruption as a theme so far. Enthiran, which is a science fiction film, was about a robot gone rogue and its sequel, too, is expected to stay within the sci-fic genre.