The Story Punk Podcast

This week on Story Punk, we conclude our international cinema series by going gloriously over the top with RRR, S.S. Rajamouli’s 2022 Telugu-language action epic starring N.T. Rama Rao Jr. and Ram Charan.

For me (Scott), it was my first experience with Indian cinema. For Drew, it was another chance to celebrate one of the most joyous, sincere, and spectacular blockbusters ever made.

Inspired by the lives of Indian revolutionaries Komaram Bheem and Alluri Sitarama Raju, during British colonial rule, RRR imagines the two men meeting, becoming friends, and unknowingly pursuing individual secret missions that will put them at odds with one another. Their relationship becomes the emotional engine of a movie filled with superhero-scale action, musical spectacle, historical fantasy, revolutionary fury, and enough slow motion to fully satisfy a Zack Snyder fan.

We discuss why the film’s nearly three-hour runtime never feels empty, how Rajamouli establishes its heightened reality from the opening scenes, and why every impossible stunt works because the movie makes the audience care about the people performing it.

The conversation explores the theme of unity, the instant chemistry between Bheem and Raju, and the emotional sincerity that separates RRR from blockbusters built only around noise and digital spectacle. They also break down the bridge rescue, the animal-filled palace attack, Bheem’s public whipping, the prison escape, and the Oscar-winning “Naatu Naatu” sequence, where a dance competition becomes cultural resistance, romantic comedy, character development, and pure cinematic electricity.

They also discuss the differences between Bollywood and India’s many regional film industries, the international breakthrough of Telugu cinema, the movie’s fire-and-water imagery, Ray Stevenson’s vicious colonial villain, and why Hollywood’s largest action films could learn from a movie this committed to friendship, emotion, and story.

Plus: magnificent mustaches, airborne motorcycles, weaponized wildlife, heroic posing, forty-minute opening credits, and why RRR may be the perfect gateway into the enormous world of Indian cinema.

Listen now to Story Punk, where story matters.